Note: Confirmed by an Orlando Sentinel editor: In the April 6 editorial below, "she" is Sarasota County Commissioner Nancy Detert, who when a state Senator co-sponsored a disastrous unemployment bill:
By ORLANDO SENTINEL EDITORIAL BOARD
ORLANDO SENTINEL |
APR 06, 2020 | 1:07 PM
Rick Scott instigated the movement a decade ago to deny unemployment to the unemployed, but he couldn’t have done it without help.
Republican lawmakers were squarely behind the the newly elected governor’s agenda in 2011, passing a sweeping unemployment compensation law designed to punish workers who lost their jobs — “slackers and malingerers” as one state senator [Nancy Detert] put it at the time.
She [Detert] perfectly summarized the contempt some felt for the unemployed, which led to the overwhelming passage of a law that:
She [Detert] perfectly summarized the contempt some felt for the unemployed, which led to the overwhelming passage of a law that:
- reduced the number of weeks someone can collect unemployment to as few as 12,
- required workers to prove they had contacted five potential employers each week,
- expanded the types of fireable offenses that disqualified an employee for benefits, and
- cut benefits if an employee received severance pay.
Workers also were forced to apply for benefits online, which was bad under the existing computer system and calamitous today under the one Scott’s administration replaced it with.
As others have observed, it was a system designed to help business by failing workers, those “slackers and malingerers.”
Read the entire April 6th editorial here.
Detert was also explicitly referenced in a March 23, 2020 Sentinel article entitled: The workers who sustain us during the coronavirus crisis deserve Florida’s respect:
Detert was also explicitly referenced in a March 23, 2020 Sentinel article entitled: The workers who sustain us during the coronavirus crisis deserve Florida’s respect:
We’ve built a rigged economy, particularly in Florida, where people in this ongoing crisis are among the most essential workers, alongside police and firefighters and doctors and nurses.
How has this state treated them before now?
Our lawmakers have been dead-set against a meaningful increase in the minimum wage, prompting a successful campaign to get a $15 an hour minimum wage on the ballot this fall.
They refused to do anything about businesses failing to offer paid sick leave, and then passed a law that stopped communities like Orange County from doing something on their own.
Over the course of a decade, they skimmed nearly $2 billion from a fund that was supposed to provide money for affordable housing.
Dist. 3 Commissioner Nancy Detert
In 2011, urged on by then Gov. Rick Scott, they stacked the deck against workers trying to collect unemployment benefits. The Legislature cut the number of weeks unemployed workers were eligible for unemployment — to as low as just 12 weeks, depending on the unemployment rate — and made it easier for employers to deny benefits. All this while keeping one of the worst weekly benefits in the nation — $275 max. A Republican state senator at the time, Nancy Detert, said she wanted to be rid of “slackers and malingerers.”
More on Florida's appalling unemployment predicament:
Herald Tribune 5.25.12: Nancy Detert with Doug Holder sponsored the unemployment bill
And from Lloyd Dunkelberger in the Florida Phoenix 4.7.20:
FL Senate Democrats urge changing eligibility date for jobless workers denied help because of a broken benefits system
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