Florida’s $15 Minimum Wage Vote Might Be a Tipping Point
The Sunshine State is called a bellwether in the nationwide campaign to boost pay for hourly workers.
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Pressure on Congress to boost the federal wage floor for the first time in 13 years is building after voters in Republican-leaning Florida approved a ballot initiative to raise the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2026.
Seven states already have passed laws that will eventually bring their minimum wage to $15, but they’re ones that typically back Democrats and progressive labor policies, including California and New York. That Floridians bypassed their Republican-controlled legislature to enact the new wage by constitutional amendment will be impossible to ignore, says Chris Melody Fields Figueredo, executive director of the progressive Ballot Initiative Strategy Center in Washington.