In a report from the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty and the National Coalition for the Homeless, four of the top ten cities considered having the worst living conditions, St. Petersburg (2), Orlando (3), Gainesville (5), Bradenton (9), are from Florida.

Conveniently, Florida is considered a right to work state, a policy with the false connotation of being a human service to all individuals willing to work, however, has proven to be a scapegoat for many employers to get rid of employees without having to offer any benefits.

The 90-day probationary period is to entitles the employers the ability to hire without fear of being responsible for unemployment payment if the employee was not up to par. However, if the worker does not have an address, receiving paperwork to government entitled unemployment is impossible. Also, there is not a governing body monitoring the allocation of the proper W-2’s so the employee can not only receive unemployment, as well as filing for taxes to receive any tax returns or benefits from government sponsored stimulus packages. And, if said homeless person does not have access to the internet (many libraries require local address to use facilities) cannot attain appropriate information pertaining to such laws or afford to spend such unemployment on a post office box.

In some restaurants, employers report to the state the hire of, say, one cook, waiter, host, etc., in order to exempt themselves from regulations of paying taxes on additional employees, rewarding benefits, proper raises, and other benefit so f paying under the table, as well as, if using a paper trail, they can fudge the numbers of actual grossed income allowing the upper management to become richer and the unaccounted for workers to remain stagnant in their wages.

Also, many employees that are considered aliens have gained employment, most commonly in the labor or ‘back of house’ sector of the service industry by the employees by employers opting not to waive their duty to file applications for Alien Labor Certification directly to the United States Department of Labor, thus not be considered to have the rights of a worker and be waged and granted benefits at jurisdiction of the management.

I have also great concern over the considering of applicant who must take a drug test. Employers, whether legally or illegally, chose to not submit test results to higher ups or even administer at all in fear that their top employees will fail. In my experience, I have not only been told my a former manager that if they tested all of their employees, they would be out of business, but also in my experience I have taken a drug test and not asked to fill out paperwork in regard of my medication, one of which I am prescribed is tested