The new year brings new opportunities for workers to build power across the South. In Georgia specifically, one such significant opportunity lies in fighting for collective bargaining rights for public sector workers throughout the state. But what exactly does that mean and why is it so important?

Before we dive into that, we must first answer the question of what constitutes public sector work in Georgia. Public sector jobs are tax-payer-funded and service-driven. The most common examples are public school teachers and staff, firefighters, and healthcare workers, but public sector work is also in child care, social services, transportation, public utilities, sanitation, parks and recreation, environmental protection, libraries, museums, historical sites, and much more. Looking at that list, it’s clear that public sector work plays a crucial role in making local communities function and thrive, and it’s imperative that we empower these workers to have a democratic say in how their own workplaces operate. 

Collective bargaining allows workers to negotiate their wages, hours, health benefits, and other workplace conditions. In other words, collective bargaining gives workers a seat at the table, so of course, it is vital to our goal as Socialists to win power back to working people. However, in Georgia, public sector workers are banned from bargaining a contract. Most private-sector worker unionization in the United States is overseen by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRB), but the legal scope of collective bargaining for state and local public sector workers falls to states and local authorities. Our state does permit public sector workers to form and join unions, but Georgia law prohibits those unions from bargaining on behalf of their members. That means that the state has total control over these workers’ wages, health benefits, retirement funding, sick leave, and workplace health and safety. 

Additionally, Georgia is a right-to-work state, which means workers cannot be required to join or pay union dues if their workplace is unionized. Without collective bargaining rights, unions have less power and therefore there is less of an incentive for workers to join, which only further diminishes unions’ potential reach and strength. That’s part of the reason why Georgia has the ninth-lowest percentage of unionized workers in the country, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. As Atlanta Civic Center recently put it, “About one in 10 U.S. workers is in a union. In Georgia, the rate is less than one in 20.”

To fully legalize collective bargaining rights in Georgia, we need pro-labor state legislators to introduce and pass a bill that repeals and amends the sections of Georgia law denying public sector workers collective bargaining powers, like HB 1576 which was introduced last year but not passed. Even better would be a bill granting public sector workers the right to strike. Right now, under Georgia law, public employees cannot promote, encourage, or participate in any strike and will in fact be terminated if they do. But the right to strike is hugely important because as workers, our power comes from our labor. Therefore, withholding that labor is one of our strongest and most effective methods of control over our employment conditions.

While all workers deserve a seat at the table, Georgia’s 680,000 public service workers have significant need for the power that would come with collective bargaining rights and the right to strike. The public sector in particular is largely made up of workers from historically marginalized and disadvantaged populations. According to a Georgia State University report, women have consistently made up a larger percentage of Georgia’s state and local government employees over the last four decades, and there are more women working in the public sector in Georgia than in the private sector. Recent data from Morehouse College shows that more than 6 out of ten public sector employees in Georgia are women. Black workers are also more likely to be employed in the public sector both in our state and across the U.S. As the Economic Policy Institute reports, “Public-sector jobs are rungs to the middle class for Black workers, who often face labor market discrimination, especially in the private sector where employers may be less likely to follow standardized hiring and promotion practices.”

Many public sector workers around the country are also underpaid. Nationally, 32.7% of state and local government employees are paid less than $20 an hour and 15.6% of the sector is paid less than $15 an hour, according to the Economic Policy Institute. In Georgia, that share is higher. Over 20% of Georgia’s state and local government employees make less than $15 an hour. The right to collective bargaining is a recourse for change in this area and many others. 

Collective bargaining provides an important fair wage premium for public sector workers. It ensures they earn as much as 20 percentage points higher than public workers in states where public collective bargaining is banned, per the Morehouse College report. And research published in the American Journal of Public Health has shown that workers represented by a collective bargaining agreement have higher living standards, and the benefits that workers reap from collective bargaining rights have been shown to spill over into their communities, improving public health and boosting civic engagement. For public sector work, which is based entirely in serving the public, those community benefits that come with collective bargaining rights are even more directly seen and widely felt. For example, One example of this is that higher wages for teachers can mean better school staffing, smaller classrooms, and thus better education for students. Similarly, better paid health care workers means quicker and improved care for patients and healthier communities. , which is, of course,  In summary, Georgians have a lot to gain from standing with workers fighting for workplace democracy and in turn stronger public services for all! s a whole better for the community as a whole. All Georgians have a lot to gain from passing public sector collective bargaining in our state.

Currently, 26 states across the country allow public sector collective bargaining, and we can play a role in getting Georgia to join them. In the coming weeks, Atlanta DSA will be working closely with the United Campus Workers (UCW) of Georgia to push Georgia State House members to sign onto a bill to legalize public sector bargaining rights during 2023’s fast-approaching legislative session, and we need your help! 

Sign our petition in support of public sector bargaining and the right to strike for public sector employees, and reach out to your State Representatives to let them know this is an urgent issue! Sign up to join phone banking, text banking, and outreach events to promote awareness throughout our community and build support for the issue. Be sure to also share the petition with friends and family members, especially if they happen to be public sector workers. Finally, if you are a public sector worker, reach out to Atlanta DSA about organizing your workplace or getting involved with a union. 

Note: Since the publishing of this article, SB 166 has officially been introduced to the Georgia State Senate! Write you legislators here and ask them to sponsor the bill.

The post Georgia’s Public Sector Workers Need Bargaining Rights Now appeared first on Red Clay Comrade.

The first thing I want to say about our December 10 defense of the Fall River Pride Committee’s drag story time is that we succeeded.

I wanted to start out that way because between all the various mediocre news stories and online commentaries, you might not realize it. But we succeeded. When neo-Nazi group NSC tried to rush the door, it was our team of volunteers from an ad hoc coalition of local organizations including Boston DSA, that kept them out. We, the team that I coordinated, did keep them out, and we were able to keep attendees safe. And through friendliness and creativity – singing, bells, colorful masks – our volunteers at the side door were able to provide an atmosphere of fun and normalcy for the children as they entered the event, even with NSC outside the front door and Proud Boys across the street. Volunteers were able to escort families to their cars as they left. We did all this not by being some kind of elite strike force, but by showing up, working together well, using our varied skills (tactical situational awareness, first aid, cheery child-friendly charisma, and more), and by keeping our cool.

Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t a pleasant experience for me, and I suspect there are other people on the team who feel similarly. It’s frightening to be rushed by neo-Nazis who have a lot more muscle mass than you and who outnumber you (because they arrived quite early, only some of our team was there at the time of the rush). I was hit multiple times in the solar plexus, slammed against the doors. I would rather not have been injured, and would rather none of my comrades had been injured either. I heard a whole lot of slurs that morning. I’ve been frustrated at attempts to credit the police for keeping people safe when the cops were not present during the rush on the doors, and who later claimed to not be able to tell the difference between us, in our varied clothing, and neo-Nazis in group merch and quasi-uniform dress). But none of that changes the first sentence in this essay. We succeeded in defending drag story time.

This Saturday, January 14, is the next drag story time in Fall River, and this time it will be a little different – with a community support rally outside to provide fun and safety for all, to celebrate queerness and perseverance and courage. If it isn’t obvious, I’m writing this not simply to share my own experiences or perspective, but to encourage you to attend in support.

I have never been, to use a good friend’s phrase, a “woofing tough.” I have disabilities that impact my ability to build strength or coordinate my own movements. I have chronic pain issues. I avoid militant rhetoric and aesthetic in this kind of work because I don’t believe in raising stakes for nothing, and I don’t believe in making implied promises that I can’t back up. Every time fascists yell in my general direction about how they’d win in a fight, I shrug internally, because I’ve never thought otherwise. And yet over the last few years I’ve worked more action frontlines than I care to recall. A lot of people have been beside me on those lines who didn’t think of themselves before as the kind of people who could do this work. No matter how much groups like NSC want it to be so, we antifascists aren’t their mirror image and we don’t operate on the same terms with only the politics changed. If I have stood for anything in my time organizing against the far right, it is that this work does not belong only to the strong and the powerful.

Why am I telling you all this? Because I want good people to participate in supporting our communities and opposing the intimidation and the organizing of the far right. I don’t want people to think they can’t or shouldn’t do it, or that their contributions aren’t real, because in some way they aren’t the “right” type of person.

So come one, come all, to Fall River this Saturday – whether you’re an old hand or this would be your first action, whether you’re a ninja or regularly trip over your own feet. Dress for the weather (wearing comfortable shoes, wearing hats and masks, minimizing the amount of cotton against your body). Keep your cool, act collectively, and follow the lead of organizers (because this all has a goal and it’s not individualized catharsis). Be aware of what’s happening around you, make sure you have safe ways to enter and exit, and enjoy the performances! Numbers will make us all safer, make it more possible for people who are afraid or uncomfortable or unsure to participate. The numbers we turn out could mean the difference in whether a family feels safe enough to attend the drag story time.

Together we can preserve this queer space, and send a much-needed message to any queer kids (or adults) who may be watching: tomorrow need not be as bleak as neo-Nazis and bro-fascists want them to believe.

New York State Assembly Members and Senators headed back to Albany last week for the start of the 2023 legislative session. We caught up with Queens Assembly Member and socialist Zohran Mamdani the night before the session began to learn how he’s feeling about this year's prospects to pass legislation that will help the working class and the addition of two new socialist legislators. We also talked to him about why his office joined as an intervening party to stop Con Edison from raising gas and electric bills and his platform of legislation to fix the MTA. We’re also joined live tonight by Lizzy Oh and Brandon West to talk about one of New York City DSA’s priority campaigns this year - taxing the rich.  

To submit a public comment against ConEd's proposed rate hike visit: bit.ly/NoConEdRateHike

For more information on the Fix the MTA platform, visit: www.fixthemta.org

For more information on the Tax the Rich campaign, visit: www.taxtherichny.com

By Jamie Partridge, secretary PDX DSA Labor

For years now, the Portland DSA Labor group has sponsored Socialist Job Fairs, about every six months. Up to fifty socialists, half DSA members and half we are just meeting for the first time, show up to connect with about fifteen workplace organizers, looking for the right job. A job organizing with other socialists: to form a union or energize an existing union.

We manage to place about ten participants each time. At organized companies like UPS, Hyatt Hotel, City of Portland, Maletus Beverage, US Postal Service, Burgerville. etc. At unionizing companies like Starbucks and Amazon. And of those ten, some don’t stick around.

Now we are launching a Socialist Workers Support Group, to provide regular mentoring, group support and workplace organizer training and political education about socialists in unions.

In previous eras socialists were often respected workplace leaders. These radicals helped organize workers into a collective force that went beyond workplace fights and into the political arena. That is much less common today. The left often finds itself on the outside looking in when workplace struggle erupts. Socialists are more likely to be organizing strike support than leading strikes.

This divide has weakened both workers’ movements and the left. The socialist movement is stronger when tied to workers’ movements, and vice versa. Rebuilding the link between them is key to revitalizing both, and to keeping our movement grounded in the reality of workers’ lives.

Socialists should root themselves in the labor union movement. Not as supporters from afar or paid staff, but as rank-and-file workers. Not as saviors with all the answers, but as organizers for what Marx called the “self-emancipation of the working class.”

Consider the advantages of a union job that matches your talents, and of choosing one together with fellow DSAers. The pay is decent, and the work itself may be fulfilling, too. All our political work isn’t shunted off to nights and weekends; you can be talking with your co-workers every day. There’s no mismatch between your political life and what you do to keep body and soul together.

Find us at https://tinyurl.com/pdxdsalabor

Do you know what it means to be a Marxist? Do you want to learn a new way to analyze the world around you? Can you explain class relations to a non-socialist?

In this course we will explore the answers to those questions and more by delving into two major concepts in the philosophy of Karl Marx, and that is dialectical and historical materialism and the economic concepts of commodification and class relations. Gaining a better understanding of the world around us makes us better organizers, so let’s get started!

More info can be found on our course page.

Course Schedule

January 22 at 12pm – Part 1: Dialectical and Historical Materialism (2 hours)

January 29 at 12pm – Part 2: Class Struggle (2 hours)

Sign up now!