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Campaign for home care workers to make $15 an hour in Florida heats up

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Spurred on by organized labor, a campaign to drive up the wages for fast-food workers spread locally and across the country last year. That campaign is now encompassing other low-income industries. Last week a group of adjunct professors held a protest on the USF campus in Tampa calling for higher wages, and now the movement is spreading to home health-care workers. “I think it’s just time for a change,” says Reuben Masas, a home health-care worker employed at BAYADA located in South Tampa.…

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David Jolly takes Ryan Pate case to Fox News

in The Bay and the 'Burg/Top Headlines by

David Jolly made the case once again this morning for Ryan Pate, a Pinellas County constituent in a big legal mess overseas right now. Pate is the helicopter mechanic from Belleair Bluffs who was recently thrown in jail in the United Arab Emirates after he severely criticized his UAE-based employer on Facebook while in the States. He’s scheduled to go on trial in the UAE in 11 days for his critical remarks, where he could face up to five years…

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U.S. adds a robust 295K jobs; jobless rate falls to 5.5%

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U.S. employers extended a healthy streak of hiring in February by adding 295,000 jobs, the 12th straight monthly gain above 200,000. The Labor Department said Friday that the unemployment rate fell to 5.5 percent from 5.7 percent. But the decline in the rate occurred mainly because some people out of work stopped looking for jobs and were no longer counted as unemployed. The strong job gains weren’t enough to boost wages by much. The average hourly wage rose just 3…

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Senate Prez Andy Gardiner sends memo to members: ‘We have the obligation to make coverage affordable …’

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Senate President Andy Gardiner, who kicked off the session by saying the state needed to have a “discussion” about Medicaid expansion, explained in a memo to senators why he was pushing ahead with a bill that would extend coverage to 800,000 Floridians. The memo was accompanied with a detailed breakdown of the lengthy bill that will be considered next week by the Florida Senate. See story here. “Some say Florida should not expand the existing Medicaid program and I agree,”…

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Education officials say testing mishaps easing

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Florida officials say more than 333,000 students have been able to take the state’s new standardized test. Education Commissioner Pam Stewart said Thursday that the problems that forced districts to suspend testing earlier this week have been subsiding. Stewart told school superintendents that the number of students successfully logging into the online portal is the highest it has been since testing started Monday. Students in middle school and high school are using the portal to take a required writing test.…

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Budget battle may doom tax cuts and school spending

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Their session only days old, the Florida House and Senate appeared already to be on a collision course Thursday over how to balance the state budget. State Sen. Tom Lee, a Brandon Republican and the Senate budget chief, warned Thursday that the potential loss of more than $1 billion in federal aid for hospitals is forcing the Florida Senate to reconsider big-ticket spending items. Lee acknowledged that Gov. Rick Scott’s push for nearly $700 million in tax cuts is in…

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