PEO Unfriendly House Bill 1305 Passed in Florida

Florida House Bill 1305 Passes

Unfortunately, HB 1305 – Workers' Compensation Insurance for Employee Leasing Companies passed through the House Insurance & Banking Subcommittee Tuesday, March 23'rd.  

The bill was amended, the entire bill was replaced with a new version.  Here’s the amendment which replaced the previous text of the bill so you can see how damaging that language could be to the PEO Industry.

It is important that we all reach out and thank those that voted for PEO and more choice for Florida businesses. Please send a message of THANK YOU to these lawmakers for standing up to support PEO's in Florida: 

• Representative Kamia L. Brown (Orlando)  Kamia.Brown@myfloridahouse.gov
• Representative Fentrice Driskell (Tampa) Fentrice.Driskell@myfloridahouse.gov
• Representative William Cloud 'Will' Robinson (Bradenton)  Will.Robinson@myfloridahouse.gov

This bill now moves to the House State Administration & Technology Appropriations Subcommittee. FAPEO, NAPEO and all interested stakeholders are working to prevent this bill from getting heard and killing this bill outright.  

We will alert you to the new committee members that will be our focus to educate on why this bill is bad for Florida.

As a reminder, here are some talking points to select from and adapt for this communication:  

• An employee leasing company covers 100 percent of their employees with workers compensation coverage.
• What bill proponents call a “gap in coverage” is simply workers compensation fraud in construction (paying under the table) and has been persistent in Florida in the traditional business model as well with subcontractors utilizing an employee leasing company.
• Rather than work to address the underlying problem of workers comp fraud, the bill only shifts liability from general contractors to employee leasing companies for workers comp fraud.
• This  bill would only increase workers compensation fraud in construction in Florida.
• It financially encourages general contractors to turn a blind eye to both the price of a subcontractors work and checking workers for subcontractors who are on their jobsite for workers compensation coverage. 
• And it reduces workers compensation coverage options for small to medium sized construction companies that already have limited options for coverage in the open market.

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Contact Professional Employer Organization (PEO) Expert, Paul Hughes

Paul Hughes has been working with the Professional Employer Organization (“PEO”) industry since 1995 and data management since 2005. He is responsible for the day to day operations of both Libertate Insurance Services, LLC and RiskMD, which reports into the overall Ballator Insurance Group family of companies. Learn more about Paul.

Specializing in PEO Services: Workers Compensation, Mergers & Acquisitions, Data Management, Insurance Focus on: Employment Practices Liability (EPLI), Cyber Liability, Health Insurance, Occupational Accident, Business Insurance, Client Company, Casualty, and Disability Insurance.