A bill that would ease restrictions on the kind of work 16- and 17-year-olds can do on construction sites is nearly on its way to the desk of Gov. Ron DeSantis, after picking up bipartisan, bicameral support in the Republican-dominated Legislature.
The controversial legislation, written by lobbyists for home builders and construction contractors, passed the Florida Senate unanimously on Friday, and passed the House earlier this week in a 84-30 vote with some bipartisan support.
Not a single Democrat voted against the legislation (HB 917/SB 460) in the Senate (with Democratic Sen. Jones absent), while GOP Rep. Mike Beltran was the only Republican lawmaker in either chamber to cross party lines to vote it down.
Orlando-area state Rep. Johanna López, a Democrat, even co-sponsored the bill exactly nine minutes ahead of its passage in the House on Wednesday.
Supporters of the legislation, including a number of Democratic lawmakers, have argued that the intent of the bill has been taken out of context, and that the bill has been incorrectly labeled a “child labor bill.”
“People take a snapshot of a bill, a bill number, and then they can never be told something else along the process,” said Sen. Jason Pizzo (D-Hollywood) on Friday, “even [if] it goes through material or substantive changes.”
Pizzo, like his Democratic colleague Sen. Davis before him, all but begged Simon to give the public a reason not to lambaste him and other Democrats for voting up the bill.
“If you’d just walk through what it was and what it is today? Please, thank you,” he said, placing down his microphone in exasperation.
The legislation does in fact affect Florida’s child labor laws (not teen labor, but literally “child labor”) by narrowly targeting restrictions on hazardous work performed by minors. Under existing state law, minors are prohibited from working on “any scaffolding, roof, superstructure, residential or nonresidential building construction, or ladder above 6 feet.”
The legislation as originally filed would have gutted that restriction for minors aged 16 and older. However, following public pressure, the legislation was amended by the bill sponsors to largely maintain that prohibition.
The legislation has also been amended to clarify that minors are not legally permitted to work on commercial construction sites — only residential ones — and that employers are barred from forcing minors to perform any work that would conflict with federal child labor standards under the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA), or any other federal rule.
Bill opponents, however, argue that the bill could still conflict with federal law due to a federal prohibition against allowing minors to work on any roofing job, regardless of how far off the ground they are laboring.
Furthermore, because federal law specifically covers only organizations or enterprises that do more than $500,000 a year in business (with limited exceptions), the nonpartisan Florida Policy Institute estimates that thousands of construction contractors in the state of Florida would not be bound by the standards of the FLSA as referenced in the Florida legislation. The Florida Policy Institute has been a firm opponent of the legislation both as filed and as amended.
Rich Templin, director of politics and public policy for the Florida AFL-CIO — the state’s largest federation of labor unions — similarly believes this “loophole” (as the Florida Policy Institute has framed it) could unnecessarily put older teens at risk on potentially dangerous work sites.
He pointed out that under the bill, minors are required to obtain the most base-level OSHA certification (OSHA 10) to work in construction and must work under the supervision of an adult at least 21 years of age or older who has similarly completed the 10-hour training course required for that certification.
But workers in the trades have argued this isn’t good enough. And it won’t keep older teens safe on the job. “So we have inexperienced people with little to no training supervising 16- and 17-year-olds on some of the most dangerous work sites in the state,” Templin told Orlando Weekly over the phone after the final vote Friday.
Construction drives the highest number of unlicensed activity complaints in the state, and research has found that it is the deadliest industry for youth nationwide, behind agriculture.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, construction is also one of the most common industries in which child labor violations occur already, in addition to wage theft — which the state of Florida does not have a good track record on combating.
Then there’s the federal prohibition on minors working “on or about a roof,” which Templin argues isn’t fully clear of conflict with the legislation as it is currently written.
“It doesn’t clarify that 16- and 17-year-olds can’t be on a roofing site,” said Templin, which he says “is problematic, at best.”
A state law enacted in Iowa last year, similarly targeting hazardous worksite protections for children in the workforce, was flagged by U.S. Department of Labor representatives for conflicting with federal law.
Because Florida has literally only seven state employees dedicated to the task of enforcing Florida’s child labor protections, as of December, the task of protecting children on the job largely falls on the federal Wage and Hour division and OSHA, which similarly have a limited enforcement capacity in Florida.
The problem of a potential conflict with federal law was brought to the attention of Florida lawmakers several times during the bills’ multiple committee stops, and Templin says they provided language to the bill sponsors to help close any potential loopholes that could get Florida employers in trouble with the feds.
Those proposed changes, he said, weren’t accepted.
“What they’re creating is a statute that contractors will use to say, we can use 16-year-olds to do manual labor on a roofing job, when in fact, that’s illegal by federal law,” he added.
Even critics of the legislation, however, have admitted the bill is not all bad. There’s literally just one small section of the 26-page bill, titled “Career and Technical Education,” that affects child labor protections.
The rest largely concerns career and technical education programs in schools, which are broadly supported, but not fully accessible in all of Florida’s school districts. This legislation, in part, aims to address that problem, according to its sponsors, and to help expand opportunities for Florida students to explore multiple career pathways, including construction.
“What we wanted to do through this bill is ensure that these young people had an opportunity, that were interested in in construction, to start to get their feet wet so that they can expand their knowledge base as they move forward and graduate from high school to see if this is actually an interest,” said GOP Sen. Corey Simon, a former professional football player and sponsor of the legislation in the Florida Senate.
“And so that’s all this bill does, is gives them an opportunity to really engage our construction trades,” he explained.
It’s a nice talking point that the authors of the legislation probably appreciate, too.
Public records originally obtained by Orlando Weekly show that a lobbyist for the Associated Builders and Contractors of Florida, an industry trade group that’s historically lobbied against policies like minimum wage increases, fed Sen. Simon the legislation over email late last year.
The lobbyist, Carol Bowen, also named a lobbyist for the Florida Home Builders Association as a fellow point person.
Bowen has admitted during public testimony that she worked with the bill sponsors on the legislation, and that additional labor is needed in the construction industry due to a looming shortage with older workers retiring, and a current shortage of workers that critics say has been driven in part by a harsh immigration measure signed into law last year.
“More than 50% of the industry is 50 years of age or older and retiring and we are just uniformly working to expose students in school to career and technical education opportunities,” Bowen shared during the House bill’s first committee hearing in January.
Child labor violations in Florida and across the country have risen in recent years, as have the number of industry-backed bills filed in state legislatures aiming to loosen child labor protections in states across the country.
The Home Builders Association of Iowa backed the state’s own child labor rollbacks last year, while the Michigan Home Builders Association explicitly opposed a bill in their state that would establish higher penalties for child labor violations.
Florida GOP Senate bill cosponsor Keith Perry, a roofing contractor whose own company has been found guilty of wage theft, has argued the bill is unlikely to affect the number of child labor violations that occur, if employers are already violating the law as it is.
“I started roofing when I was 16 years old. I started my business when I was 17 years old — which was illegal, is still illegal, and will be illegal under this bill,” Perry stated candidly during a committee hearing on the legislation last month. “People who break the law are not going to follow the law anyway, whether this bill is passed or not.”
Due to some last-minute edits to provisions of the bill (not affecting child labor standards), the bill is currently “in messages,” meaning it’s headed back to the House for another vote.
Meanwhile, another bill written by a billionaire-funded conservative think tank, similarly targeting Florida’s child labor standards, is also close to securing final passage.
If approved by Gov. DeSantis, both bills would go into effect July 1, 2024.
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McKenna Schueler
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