The minimum wage debate takes place against a confusing economic backdrop. John Morgan’s pitch is simple: Florida’s minimum wage for 40 hours a week totals just $338.

John Morgan, perhaps Florida’s most prominent personal injury attorney and certainly its best-known advocate for medical marijuana, has a new mission.

The Orlando lawyer is spending millions on a campaign to boost the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour -- a hefty increase that a prominent business group calls unreasonable. Morgan’s Florida for a Fair Wage political committee has collected most of the signatures it needs to put a constitutional amendment to voters in the November 2020 presidential election.

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The proposed ballot question calls for Florida’s minimum wage, pegged at $8.46 an hour in 2019, to jump to $10 on September 30, 2021, and then rise a dollar a year until reaching $15 in 2026. After that, the minimum wage would be subject to annual cost of living increases.

Morgan calls living wages a question of compassion. If a full-time worker can’t survive on the minimum wage, he argues, the level needs to be increased.

"To me, it’s just a morality issue," Morgan said in an interview. "We cannot let people suffer after doing everything right."

He financially supports a food bank in Central Florida, and Morgan said he’s heartbroken when he sees parents show up in their work uniforms for handouts.

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"We’re the richest country in the history of the world," Morgan said. "And you’ve got people suffering right in the same ZIP code."

Companies that employ low-wage workers oppose Morgan’s measure. The Florida Restaurant & Lodging Association has criticized the proposal as a job killer that would reduce opportunities for unskilled workers.

"We believe they deserve fair and competitive wages," the organization says on its website. "However, a 77 percent increase in labor cost is not sustainable for any business, and we want to protect hospitality jobs. In order to address such dramatic cost increases, businesses will cut employee hours and increase automation."

Carol Dover, the group’s head, says most hospitality businesses operate on profit margins of 3 percent to 6 percent, and a big increase in labor costs will force them to skimp on labor.

"We’re going to kill this industry by doing this," Dover said in an interview. "It’s going to hurt the people it’s intended to help."

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Unapologetically profane and provocative, Morgan points out that the nonprofit Florida Restaurant & Lodging Association’s tax return for 2017 shows Dover was paid nearly $621,000 that year.

"She makes $625,000 a year, and she’s trying to tell me that maids and cooks and basically servants only need to make $8 an hour or so," Morgan said.

Dover counters that she once worked for minimum wage herself. As a 12-year-old in Orlando, Dover’s father died, and her mother struggled to support the family.

Dover worked for minimum wage at a Howard Johnson’s motel while she was in high school. At Florida State, Dover paid her tuition by waiting tables. At any rate, she argued, her current compensation isn’t germane to the debate.

"John Morgan and Carol Dover are irrelevant," Dover said. "I’m more worried about the 1.6 million employees who are getting ready to lose their jobs and don’t even realize it."

Morgan’s face graces billboards around the state, and in addition to his law practice, he owns Marriott hotels that would be affected by a wage increase.

"I have hotels, so if this thing passes, I’m OK with it," Morgan said. "I’ve done the math, and I’ll be fine."

Morgan wears fancy suits in public, but he says his real loyalty lies with a working class that he sees being left behind.

"They have no choice but to do these jobs," Morgan said. "The jobs they do are the worst jobs. I would tell your readers, ’Go out and get a shovel and dig a three-foot hole and see how you like it.’"

Morgan has hard-won experience amending the Florida Constitution. Spurred by the relief his paralyzed brother felt after smoking cannabis, Morgan became the driving force behind ballot initiatives to legalize medical marijuana. He spent millions on a 2014 amendment that narrowly failed to win 60 percent of the vote and millions more on a 2016 measure that easily passed.

The result has been a fast-growing cannabis industry. As of Oct. 11, nearly 275,000 Floridians held medical marijuana cards, and state-licensed pot providers operated 180 cannabis dispensaries statewide.

Echoing his prominent role in the cannabis campaigns, Morgan is the primary financial supporter of the Florida for a Fair Wage initiative. Morgan this year has written checks for more than $4 million, according to the Florida Department of State Division of Elections. The only other significant contribution was a check for $250,000 from the Southern Poverty Law Center of Montgomery, Alabama.

Repeating a line he used often during his pot pushes, Morgan said he doesn’t keep track of his spending.

"I have no idea," Morgan said. "I just keep writing checks."

The national debate about the minimum wage takes place against a confusing economic backdrop.

On the bright side, the U.S. unemployment rate is at a 50-year low, and Florida’s job growth has been robust over the past 10 years. On the other hand, income inequality has widened and social mobility has stagnated.

President Donald Trump has addressed those concerns with tax cuts and with tariffs that he argues will bring jobs back to the U.S. Liberals have suggested widening the government safety net by providing a universal basic income, a sort of subsistence-level government payout, and by forcing employers to pay entry-level workers more.

Those on both sides of the minimum-wage issue have staked out dramatic positions. Proponents of higher minimum wages say employers who don’t want to pay more are simply greedy. Opponents counter that the measures hurt those they’re designed to protect by leaving employers no choice but to hire fewer workers.

"It is an emotional issue," said Wells Fargo economist Mark Vitner. "The politics have gotten ahold of the economics."

Vitner says the type of workers in low-wage jobs has changed dramatically in recent decades, a shift that brings credence to the push for a higher minimum wage.

"It used to be that most people who earned the minimum wage were teenagers from affluent households," Vitner said. "They were predominantly working part-time. That’s not the case today. Fewer teenagers work, and the people who do work for minimum wage are supporting themselves."

That’s a key part of Morgan’s pitch. A worker collecting Florida’s minimum wage for 40 hours a week grosses just $338.

Florida, always a low-paying labor market, has large numbers of minimum-wage jobs at hotels, restaurants, stores and theme parks. Home health aides are another big group of low-wage workers.

Those sectors operate on thin margins, and Vitner questions whether mandating raises is realistic.

"It’s nice to have higher wages, but businesses have to generate the income to pay them," Vitner said.

And a statewide minimum wage strikes Vitner as a blunt instrument in a labor market where wages vary widely by geography. In South Florida, Tampa and Jacksonville, the average weekly wage is about $1,100, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. In Lake and Osceola counties in central Florida, the typical paycheck is less than $750.

"A higher minimum wage makes a lot of sense in urban areas, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense in rural areas," Vitner said.

While progressives have seized on the minimum wage, Morgan attempts to reframe the issue. Higher wages, he argues, would reduce government spending by persuading marginal workers to trade in food stamps and other government assistance for paychecks.

"At $8 an hour, $300 a week, there’s a real case not to work. Why would you?" he said. "If somebody’s making $15 an hour, it’s a different calculus. Now, people say, ‘It’s better for me to work than not to work.’"

In the euphoria after his 2016 ballot measure passed, Morgan considered running for governor as a Democrat. During a 2017 speech at a cannabis conference in Manalapan, Morgan hinted at his candidacy and said legalizing marijuana would be part of his platform.

But Morgan decided not to enter the 2018 race to succeed two-term Gov. Rick Scott. Morgan suggests he lacks the patience for politics and governing. He’s also no longer a Democrat, switching his voter registration to no party affiliation.

Morgan decided he can make his biggest impact by bankrolling a constitutional amendment.

"I’m 63. I’m tired. I’ve built a house in Maui where I plan to live for half the year," Morgan said. "My thought is I have one last crusade in me."

Dover, for her part, says restaurant and hotel employers would be willing to boost Florida’s minimum wage beyond its current level of $8.46, but not as high as $15.

"I’d like to sit down and work out something reasonable," Dover said. "This is just not reasonable."

jostrowski@pbpost.com

@bio561

This story originally published to palmbeachpost.com, and was shared to other Florida newspapers in the GateHouse Media network via the Florida Wire. The Florida Wire, which runs across digital, print and video platforms, curates and distributes Florida-focused stories. For more Florida stories, visit here, and to support local media throughout the state of Florida, consider subscribing to your local paper.