Low wages, pay equity, public assistance, and drug use are
related issues for Georgia.
This month, a series of reports have been published
concerning Georgia’s labor force, most of them negative. The UC Berkeley Center
for Labor Research and Education published a study titled “Producing
Poverty: The Public Cost of Low-Wage Production Jobs in Manufacturing”.
In
it they found that 47 percent of production workers in manufacturing and
temporary services relied on some form of public assistance:
Earned Income Tax Credit
|
Medicaid/CHIP
|
Food Stamps
|
TANF
|
Total Participation
|
|
Georgia
|
39%
|
15%
|
22%
|
1%
|
47%
|
The study also provides an explanation for these high
rates of public assistance. “Historically, blue collar jobs in manufacturing provided
opportunities for workers without a college education to earn a decent living.
For many manufacturing jobs, this is no longer true. While employment in
manufacturing has started to grow again following the great recession, the new
production jobs created are less likely to be union and more likely to pay low
wages. When jobs do not pay enough for workers to meet their basic needs, they
rely on public assistance programs to fill the gaps,” according to the report.
This past Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Labor issued
its new rules for overtime.
In a map accompanying the announcement, USDOL indicated that the updated protections
would extend protections for an additional 158,000 workers in Georgia. This in
a state where 4.4 percent of workers were already at or below the minimum wage,
a figure much higher than the national average.
The American Association of University Women published a
study showing the median earnings for men and women across the nation. In
Georgia, the gap was widest in Congressional Districts 6 (Price, R-GA) and 11
(Loudermilk, R-GA). In the 6th Congressional District, women earned on average
27.4 percent less than men. In the 11th Congressional District, the difference
was 25.8 percent. This compares to a 21 percent gap nationally.
Georgia Congressional Districts with widest earnings gaps
between men and women (2014)
Member of
Congress
|
District
|
Earnings Ratio
|
Price (Republican)
|
GA-6
|
72.6%
|
Loudermilk (Republican)
|
GA-11
|
74.2%
|
Scott, A. (Republican)
|
GA-8
|
75.6%
|
Westmorland (Republican)
|
GA-3
|
76.3%
|
Hice (Republican)
|
GA-10
|
77.0%
|
As it happens, the two Congressional districts are
side-by-side, with the 6th District including much of the northern
suburbs of Atlanta including portions of Cobb, Fulton, and Dekalb counties. The
11th District is located in the northwestern part of the Atlanta
metro area and includes Cartersville, Marietta, and Woodstock proving that the
worse problems were not just in the traditionally rural parts of South Georgia.
Finally, The New
York Times published a story this week on “Hiring
Hurdle: Finding Workers Who Can Pass a Drug Test.” In the story, Georgia officials
and company managers were dismayed to find that companies in Georgia are having
trouble finding workers due to the number who fail company drug tests.
Taken individually, the stories can be read as a series
of “what’s wrong with Georgia”, but they should not be read as unrelated
issues.
Low wages, low rates of unionization (only 4 percent of
workers in Georgia are members
of unions), and significant problems in pay equity between men and women
feed on each other. The results show up as social problems including greater need for public assistance and greater drug use.
Georgia has done an excellent job of luring companies,
and most recently the film industry, to the state. Now they need to commit to raising
their labor force, not by creating more rules and barriers but by taking a
positive approach to developing its workforce by supporting efforts at great
pay equity and higher wages for both men and women even if that means taking a
less confrontational approach towards unions.
The same positive approach Georgia officials take to economic development should be applied to labor development.
