Reina Fernández remembers her constant fear of fleeing from an abusive husband while keeping a job he knew she had.

“I’d go to work and he’d follow me, standing outside my office and watching the boss,” said Fernandez, 53, of Miami. “It’s scary for domestic violence victims because you’re going to work full well knowing that this person is threatening you, is threatening your coworkers, and you don’t know what could happen.”

That’s why Fernandez joined close to four dozen other domestic violence survivors and activists on a bus to Tallahassee to lobby for a bill to amend the state’s unemployment system to allow domestic abuse victims who leave work for safety fears to qualify for unemployment insurance.

The bill is being sponsored in the Senate by Oscar Braynon II, a Miami Gardens Democrat, and in the House by Darren Soto, an Orlando Democrat. Senate majority whip Anitere Flores, a Republican from Miami, has also said she’ll back the proposal.

Soto, an attorney who’s represented several domestic violence victims , said his clients are often “revictimized” at their workplace.

“Maybe they will live in areas where the aggressor doesn’t know about, like a domestic violence clinic or halfway house, but if the place of employment remains the same, it becomes a hot spot for victims to be confronted yet again by their attacker,” he said. “They end up being sitting ducks and the system needs to care for them.”

If passed into law, the bill would allow individuals who quit their jobs because they believe continued employment would jeopardize their safety and their family’s safety to qualify for unemployment benefits, if they show reasonable documentation. Soto said individual employers would not be penalized and that funds from the state’s general unemployment pool would finance the benefits.

“The amendment is about fairness,” Braynon said. “We want to protect and support individuals who have been victimized, battered and abused.”

South Florida has felt its share of workplace tragedies related to domestic violence in recent months. In November, police accused said Hialeah resident Reynaldo Cabrera stormed into the kitchen of Cafe Latino, in Northwest Miami-Dade, to shot and kill his wife, Misely Gonzalez, an employee there. Gonzalez had told her father a week before her death that Cabrera had threatened to kill her.

About 10 hours after the murder, Cabrera was shot to death by officers in a confrontation outside his Hialeah apartment.

The case reminded many of the deadly shootings at the Yoyito Restaurant y Café in Hialeah in June 2010, when another man showed up at his wife’s cafeteria job just weeks after she left him. Gerardo Regalado shot and killed Liazan Molina and three of her female coworkers. Another three were wounded.

After the rampage, Regalado drove off and shot himself in the head a few blocks away.

Rossana Torres, a domestic violence survivor who joined Monday’s group to Tallassee, said victims need financial help to safely leave violent homes, find new jobs and become independent. In her own case, she lived inside an old Cadillac for four days with her two small children and two dogs after leaving an abusive relationship. Then, for 11 months, the family lived in a homeless shelter.

“I had no way to make a living, and nowhere to go,” said Torres, 57. “I’ve had to go through so many horrible situations that I don’t want others to suffer through. For that reason, I want to do something for other victims who are still out there.”

Marcia Olivo, director of the Miami-based organization Sisterhood of Survivors, said there no study has been conducted to determine how many people could seek the unemployment benefits. Still, she said that in the 32 states where similar laws have been passed, only a handful of victims claim the benefits each year.

“I know that one of the fears some senators might have is the potential cost,” said Olivo, whose organization is lobbying in support of the bill alongside the social justice group Florida New Majority. “But what we do know is that in the states where these laws do exist, very few people claim the benefits.”