Raise the wage floor for Florida state employees?

The below post from AFSCME Retiree member Dr. Richard Hopkins first appeared in the Tallahassee Democrat.

I am glad to see both California and New York deciding to move their minimum wage to $15 per hour over a period of several years (slightly less outside New York City). What would the impact be on Florida state government if it were raise the minimum hourly wage for state employees to $15?

Currently Florida’s minimum wage is $8.05 per hour. Excluding the state courts and the university system, the state of Florida employs 107,847 people either full or part time. (The data are on-line atsalaries.myflorida.com). Of those, 6,994 make full-time salaries less than $23,540, the cutoff for Food Stamps for a single person living alone, and 35,885 make less than $31,860, the Food Stamp cutoff for a two-person household.

There are 29,784 full- and part-time employees who make less than $15 per hour, or $30,600 per year. Bringing them up to a minimum hourly pay of $15 would cost the state (excluding courts and universities) a little over $140 million per year.

This takes no account of possible increased benefits costs, nor of savings from not paying for Food Stamps and other entitlement benefits for low-income workers. It also does not take account of additional savings due to lower turnover of employees, less sick leave taken, higher morale and higher productivity, all of which have been shown to accrue to employers who pay a living wage. Also it does not take account of people who work for the state indirectly, as contractor employees.

For comparison, the total budget of the state of Florida for 2016-17 without the universities and the state court system is about $68 billion. The $140 million would be about 0.2 percent of the total appropriation. This amount is comparable to the price tags for proposals in the 2016 Florida legislative session for general state-employee pay raises, of which there has been one in the last eight years.

Dr. Richard Hopkins is a retired Florida Department of Health employee. He worked for the health departments of several different states for a total of more than 30 years.