By Luke Torrance
Tampa Bay Business Journal, Nov 5, 2020

While the country awaits the outcome of the presidential election, Florida business owners are already starting to prepare for an increased minimum wage, which was approved by the state’s voters on Tuesday. ...

Several Tampa Bay small businesses said they thought the wage increase would lead to more spending money that would be invested back into the community.

“A lot of people now, they’re deciding if they’re going to spend their income between food and health care - they’re not buying things that are everyday luxuries...

By Eli Rosenberg
Washington Post, Nov 4, 2020

Florida voters approved an amendment Tuesday to raise the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour over the coming years. ...

Scott Fuhrman, the owner of Lakewood Organic, a juice company in Miami that employs about 100 people, said that he supported the measure, after seeing the change in his workers when he increased hourly wages at his company to $15 a couple of years ago.

“We saw an immediate reduction in errors and turnover to some extent,” Fuhrman said. “It’s not just ethically right, it’s necessary to...

By Aarthi Swaminathan
Yahoo Money, Nov 4, 2020

Florida voted on Tuesday to increase its minimum hourly wage to $15, adding fuel to a growing national movement that aims to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 per hour. ...

“We are so excited that Floridians did the right thing, and voted for our economy,” Kristine Ownley and Leigh Anne Balzekas, co-owners of the Tampa-based The Disco Dolls Studio, told Yahoo Finance.

The company had campaigned for the $15 increase — along with several other business leaders [more than 160] — “because we feel that wages have...

By Cooper Levey-Baker
Sarasota Magazine, Nov 4, 2020

Supporters of Amendment 2, the effort to change the Florida constitution to raise the state’s minimum wage to $15, needed to earn more than 60 percent approval from the state’s voters on Tuesday, and they did it ...

Many low-wage workers, unions and other labor activists supported and campaigned on behalf of the hike. A coalition of business owners known as Florida Business for a Fair Minimum Wage also worked to pass the amendment. That group included five business leaders from Sarasota County, where the amendment earned the approval of...

By Sam Bloch
The Counter, Nov 4, 2020

... When Florida voted to re-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday, it also achieved a long-sought victory for labor unions, low-wage workers, and even some small-business owners: Voters in the Sunshine State passed an amendment to raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour. ...

Florida Business for a Fair Minimum Wage, a new coalition of over 160 business owners and executives that backed Amendment 2, praised the win, saying in a statement on its website that a higher minimum wage boosts consumer buying power and improves work productivity by reducing turnover. ...

Read more

By Chabeli Carrazana
The 19th, Nov 3, 2020

In a year of unprecedented job loss for the nation’s low-wage workforce, Floridians voted to offer some relief in the form of a pay raise. 

A constitutional amendment on the ballot to raise Florida’s hourly minimum wage from $8.56 today to $15 in 2026 passed with 61 percent of the vote ...

Other businesses say paying workers above minimum wage has other benefits, including improved retention rates and productivity. 

At Love Life Cafe in Miami, co-owner Veronica Menin said she pays her entry-level dishwashers $12 an hour and pay goes...

By Daniel Villarreal
Newsweek, Nov 3, 2020

Florida just became the eighth U.S. state to raise its minimum wage to $15, thanks to the passage of Amendment 2. ...

California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York have all passed various legislation to raise their minimum wages to $15. All of the plans, like Florida's involve a gradual phasing in of the increased wage.

Supporters of Florida's amendment said it would lift millions of low-wage employees out of poverty, including women and people of color who disproportionately work longer in lower-wage positions. A September 2020...

By McKenna Schueler
Orlando Weekly, Nov 3, 2020. Also in Creative Loafing Tampa Bay

Florida’s Amendment 2 – aka the $15 Minimum Wage Initiative – has passed with more than 60 percent voter approval in a major victory for Florida’s low-wage workers. ...

Get-out-the-vote efforts for Amendment 2 were also bolstered by the grassroots Florida for 15 coalition – composed of more than 20 pro-labor organizations and unions, and driven by Florida’s essential workers – and the Florida Business for a Fair Minimum Wage coalition, which boasted a membership of more than 150 Florida business owners...

By Ryan Lynch
Orlando Business Journal, Nov 3, 2020

The fight to raise Florida's minimum wage comes to a head on Election Day. ... The move comes as Orlando is the second-worst metro in Florida for minimum wage worker livability and 57th out of 75 of the most-populated U.S. cities, according to Salt Lake City-based Move.org. Only Miami was worse in Florida. ...

Florida Business for a Fair Minimum Wage, a coalition of roughly 160 businesses that approve of the increase, includes a number of local businesses. ... [John] Morgan was among those business owners that signed on in...

By McKenna Schueler
Creative Loafing Tampa Bay, Nov 2, 2020

As Election Day arrives, a growing coalition of Florida business owners and executives—dubbed Florida Business for a Fair Minimum Wage—are calling for the passage of Florida’s Amendment 2.

In a statement posted to its website,  the coalition—including almost two dozen from Tampa and St. Petersburg—wrote that, “Today, grocery workers, healthcare aides, cleaning staff, childcare workers and other Floridians are working at the $8.56 minimum wage or near it. We can’t build a shared recovery on a minimum wage that’s too low to live on.”...

By Mike Schneider
Associated Press (AP), Oct 31, 2020

ORLANDO — Joseph Gourgue wishes he could help out his children and grandchildren financially, but his $9 an hour wage as a wheelchair attendant at Orlando International Airport doesn’t let him. ...

Having workers earn a good wage makes them more productive and willing to stay, especially in an industry like the restaurant business, which has high turnover, said Diego Tosoni, a Miami restauranteur who supports Amendment 2.

Tosoni, who with his partner owns two Love Life Café locations in Miami and is planning a new one...

Gulfshore Business, Business Daily, Oct 30, 2020

... FLORIDA BUSINESS COALITION BACKING AMENDMENT 2 GROWS TO MORE THAN 150 BUSINESSES

A growing coalition of more than 150 business owners across Florida is calling for passage of Amendment 2, which would gradually raise the minimum wage to $15 by 2026. Florida Business for a Fair Minimum Wage, which includes restaurants, retail, manufacturers, tourism, personal services, construction, and more, says minimum wage increases will boost consumer spending, strengthen Florida’s workforce and help the economy. If passed – with a 60% majority required for approval – Amendment...

By Antonio Fins
Palm Beach Post, Oct. 30, 2020

... The [$15 minimum wage] amendment has picked up support from small-business owners, too.

By Laura Layden
Naples Daily News, Oct 29, 2020

A longtime fight for a $15 minimum wage in Florida will be decided Tuesday....

Tom Williams, the owner of Williams Agencies, a life insurance business with an office in Fort Myers, is for the change, which he said is sorely needed.

He's paid his starting workers at least $12 an hour for more than two years — and before that his lowest earners made $10, he said. And he has no qualms about raising his minimum hourly pay to $15 over the next few years. ... 

Paying higher...

By Ashley Portero
South Florida Business Journal, Oct 29, 2020

Jennifer Todd knows what it’s like to barely make ends meet. She spent years earning $12 an hour working as a secretary before launching Pompano Beach-based LMS General Contractors, a construction and demolition company, in 2013. ...

“I want [my employees] to be able to come to work without worrying about how they’re going to get to and from the job, or how they’re going to buy groceries,” she said. “I’ve been on that side and I don’t want them in that position.”

Todd supports Florida’s Amendment...