In 2026 Florida AG race, Jose Javier Rodriguez promises to protect wages

¡Por fin! Someone running for Florida Attorney General who actually wants to enforce the laws already on the books instead of dressing up in campaign cosplay with the governor in some makeshift prison in the middle of the Everglades.
Democratic candidate José Javier Rodríguez brought that message to Miami at a press conference Monday, where he was joined by workers and union leaders to call attention to something most Tallahassee insiders would rather ignore: the ongoing, unaddressed, and completely avoidable crisis of wage theft in Florida.
The timing is no accident. On September 30, Florida’s minimum wage will go up again — as required by the constitutional amendment passed overwhelmingly by voters in 2020 — this time, to $14 an hour.
But aquí está el problema: a higher minimum wage means nothing if nobody enforces it.
And according to Rodríguez — and, frankly, to anyone paying attention — millions are being stolen from workers every year by employers who simply don’t pay what they owe. “Florida voters did their job. They raised the minimum wage,” Rodríguez recently told Orlando Weekly. “Now it’s time for the Attorney General to do theirs.”
Under Florida statutes, the AG already has the power to go after these crooks. Civil action. Statewide enforcement. The tools are there and include the power to impose a fine of $1,000 per violation, payable to the state, for any employer found to have willfully violated minimum wage requirements.
But Florida’s recent Attorneys General have acted like their job description ends at press releases and culture wars.
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To be fair, it’s not just the currently appointed James Uthmeier, who would rather record hype videos about Alligator Alcatraz and put more guns on the street than protect the state’s low-wage earners. DeSantis’ new bulldog is sharp, loud, and bites off more than he can chew. He thumbs his nose at judges and has already shown that he aims to enforce laws not always because they’re clearly legal, but because they feel like they advance the mission. It’s clearly not a priority for him. There’s not even a mention on the state’s website.
But according to workers advocates, the Florida AG office has not brought a single civil action to enforce the minimum wage law since it was enacted back in 2005.
Between 2011 and 2016, AG Pam Bondi — now the U.S. Attorney General for Donald Trump — took no enforcement action for minimum wage violations that were reported. Between 2016 and 2019, the Orlando Weekly reported that the AG’s office received 29 complaints of minimum wage violations, but had no evidence of any fines issued or monies recovered.
More recently, there were 12 complaints lodged in 2023, but records show that only one person recovered wages — about $544 — through the attorney general’s intervention.
¿Y mientras tanto? The dishwashers, construction workers, cashiers, and nursing home aides — the backbone of Florida’s economy — are being ripped off and left on their own to fight for crumbs. Statistics show that the industries most affected include agriculture, food service/hospitality, retail, and low-wage personal services (laundries, salons, etc.) and that immigrant workers, Black and Latina women, people of color overall are over-represented among those hurt by wage theft.
“It targets those least able to fight back,” said Jeffrey Mitchell, president of the South Florida AFL-CIO, who joined J-Rod at a press conference Monday. “What good is a $14 minimum wage if no one enforces it?
“Wage theft is an injustice that has become too common, too comfortable, too tolerated in the state of Florida,” said Mitchell, who has been on the frontlines for years and knows exactly what’s at stake. “It happens in our kitchens, on our construction sites, in our hospitals, and in our homes.”
Karla De Anda, a workers’ rights and labor trafficking advocate, said she knows nannies and domestic workers who work 14 hours a day, six days a week, for $600. These are typically undocumented women who fear speaking out, more now than ever. And they don’t vote.
Currently a partner at Sugarman & Susskind, specializing in workers rights, Rodriguez also served as assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of Labor under Joe Biden. Before that, Rodriguez was a state rep and a state senator until he lost to Ileana Garcia in the stolen District 37 election in 2020, where former State Sen. Frank Artiles ran a ghost plantidate against him.
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Now, Rodriguez is making wage protection part of his platform in his comeback campaign for Florida AG.
“Unlike other states that aggressively pursue wage theft cases, Florida’s Attorneys General have looked the other way,” Rodriguez said. “I’ve been fighting for workers for years — as an attorney, as a legislator, and in the Department of Labor — and I know the difference it makes when someone stands up for everyday people.
“While workers are losing money they earned, politicians in Tallahassee waste resources on political theater and Washington headlines. As Attorney General, I will enforce the minimum wage law with lawsuits, investigations, and real accountability, because every worker deserves to be paid what they are owed,” Rodriguez said.
“If you work for a living, I am your candidate.”
This is real life for thousands of Floridians, especially in South Florida, where the cost of living keeps climbing while wage protections remain a joke. Florida has roughly 1 million workers who earn minimum wage and who are uniquely vulnerable because former Gov. Jeb Bush had the bright idea of dismantling Florida’s department of labor more than 20 years ago. Efforts by Democrat legislators to establish some replacement have been fruitless.
Meanwhile, counties like Miami-Dade and Broward struggle to do the AG’s job for them, setting up local enforcement systems to catch violators. And not well.
How many billions of stolen wages will it take for someone in Tallahassee to grow a spine?
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