The chronic failure of the legislature in Georgia to hire sufficient employees in the public service violates people in need of protection in the entire state – rural residents, African Americans, women and the working class.
The report by Morehouse College, published in September, asked the political decision-makers of Georgia to expand collective bargaining rights to all 680,000 public workers in the state in order to improve the fate of the left-behind people who are back from the pandemic of Covid-19.
The report comes when inflation is an important topic for Georgia voters in the hot competitive races for the governor and the US Senate. Pro worker candidate Stacey Abrams takes over the incumbent governor Brian Kemp and the Pro-Work Senator Raphael Warnock before Herschel Walker.
The expansion of collective bargaining rights “will ensure that all public workers benefit from the trade union fair -wage premium -in particular from public employees of the working class without a university degree,” the report says. “Collective negotiations offer these employees an important premium for fair wages to ensure that they earn up to 8% more than their colleagues in the private sector and are up to 20 percentage points higher … than public employees in states in which public collective negotiations are prohibited.”
The authors of the report showed Virginia as an example of Georgia. In 2020, the Commonwealth expanded the tariff rights for the local government after a strong advance from Afscme. This year, the legislators in Colorado passed a pioneering measure that expanded collective bargaining rights to more than 36,000 district employees in the whole state. This law used by AFSCME members enables the public service employees to negotiate the conditions of their employment.
“Although the health of the Georgian economy benefits from a strong public sector, politicians have decreased the proportion of public sector workers in the Georgian economy in the past 15 years,” the report said.
The American Rescue Plan (ARP), which the AFSCME members promoted through the congress last year, comprises 350 billion US dollars for state and local governments. This money is intended to fulfill public services and help governments hire more workers in order to offer these valuable services. According to the US House Oversight and Reform Committee, Georgia's proportion to the ARP fund is 8.40 billion US dollars.
While some states and places used the ARP money to spark a fair recovery in their communities, many others have to reinforce the pace of hiring the public sector. As Afscme President Lee Saunders noticed, there is not the time for austerity measures. State and local governments have to expand their workers in order to provide and earn the services that their communities need, whereby the ARP funds provided for this purpose are used.
However, legislators in Georgia clearly did not hear the message – the need to choose managers such as Abrams and Warnock.
According to the Morehouse College Report, the public sector employment in Georgia has declined by 12% since the great recession in 2008-and 4.3% since the beginning of Covid 19 pandemy in March 2020. The report has been in Georgia in the past decade.
“This relative scarcity of the public sector employees means that the Georgians receive worse services and workers in the public sector work under increasingly stressful working conditions,” the report said. “A strong public sector – in particular one with collective bargaining rights – creates good jobs and sets a high standard for all employers in the state. With collective bargaining rights, the workers of the public sector have a voice in the job and they can ensure that they and their customers (the people in Georgia) are treated well.”
Afscme members urge the congress to adopt the freedom of the public service in order to negotiate what a minimal nationwide standard for collective bargaining rights would determine that the states must provide. Almost half of US states lack meaningful tariff laws for employees in the public sector. Legislation would enable employees of the public service across the country to combine themselves in unions in order to gain respect and fair treatment at work.
