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Georgia 2020 Legislative Campaign

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During the 2020 Georgia Legislative Session UCW members collected and shared data to support demands for legislative action to support a $15/hour minimum wage, fee waivers for graduate workers, and annual cost-of-living increases for all USG employees.

The Problem

In spite of a healthy economy and a formula that assumes the state will provide the majority of operating funds to public institutions, Georgia has slashed funding to higher education and off-loaded responsibility to students and employees. In 2008 75% of USG’s revenue came from the state and 25% from tuition. Today the state's share has shrunk by nearly half and tuition makes up over 50% of revenue. As a result, students face a mounting debt burden. As of 2019, Georgia has the second highest student debt per capita in the country. Meanwhile, employees receive unfairly low wages, experience inequitable raises, and pay unreasonably high fees. While Kemp’s 2021 budget includes much-needed $1,000 raises to a few thousand employees, he’s also mandated extensive cuts and instituted the “critical hire process,” designed to eliminate jobs across public agencies. These cuts undermine Georgia’s ability to offer quality education, provide good jobs, and improve the welfare of the state.

Support United Campus Worker priorities in 2020 and start Georgia on the path towards fairness.

  • So that graduate employees can work more productively while living in dignity as they engage in critical teaching and research work, support House Bill 1023 and Senate Bill 457 to lower grad fees.

  • To stimulate the economy, create business activity and job growth, and improve the lives of over 10,000 full-time and part-time USG employees, support HB 116 to raise the state minimum wage to $15/hour.

  • To begin the process of reversing wage stagnation and inequity, urge the Senate higher education committee to pass SR 291, which calls for consistent cost-of-living raises, and educate members of the appropriations committee on the need to amend the USG budget accordingly.

Raise the Statewide Minimum Wage to $15/hour

6,300 full-time USG employees make less than $15/hr or $31,200 annually, 64% are women and 51% are people of color.

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At the University of West Georgia, minimum salaries are as low as $19,000 a year or roughly $9/hour. At Georgia State University over 500 full-time Service and Clerical workers are kept in poverty, despite GSU’s stated mission to assist non-traditional students, like head-of-household working parents.

A single parent working full-time at GSU for the institution’s minimum salary of $24,999 has a hard time living week to week, let alone saving money for their child’s education. 

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An additional estimated 8,000 USG part-time employees make less than $31,200 annually; many have to get additional jobs and rely on public assistance to get by.

A $15 hour minimum wage would not only stimulate the economy, it would improve the lives of over ten thousand USG employees. Support HB 116 for a statewide minimum wage of at least $15/hour.

Provide Graduate Employees with Fee Waivers

The University System of Georgia employs over 20,000 graduate workers who teach and/or conduct research. 

A Graduate Assistant engaged in full-time coursework pays an average of nearly $3,000 in fees and makes an average of around $17,000, far less than a living wage of $31,200. Fees are paid after-tax and out-of-pocket.

Fees are particularly high at Georgia Tech and UGA, where 78% of all USG doctoral students are enrolled. Among a set of 70 comparable large research institutions in the U.S., UGA has the fourth highest fees and Tech the 5th. 

As the chart below illustrates, fees at Tech and UGA are significantly higher than at comparable institutions. 

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On average, a Graduate Assistant pays 12-17% of their salary back to the university in order to work. Fees are effectively an employer-levied tax on income and constitute a "pay-to-work" system in which employees are being charged for the maintenance of the workplace.

As higher education funding has declined, fees have increased as a mechanism to compensate for loss of funding. 

For graduate students, for whom a $15 minimum wage would not apply, fee waivers would be an immediate way to substantially relieve economic pressure on some of Georgia's hardest workers. Please support HB1234 to ease graduate student financial stress, increase productivity, and improve educational and research outcomes across USG and the state.

Give Annual Cost-of-Living Raises to all Employees

Wages aren’t keeping pace with the cost of living

USG salaries have not kept pace with inflation. Between 2001 and 2019 the cost of living rose by an average of 2.1% a year while faculty salaries at KSU went up by an average of only 1% each year. As a result, salary compression—recent hires paid nearly the same as long-term employees—is rampant, and negatively affects morale and retention.

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Pay Gaps by Race and Gender are Large and Persistent

The average USG salary for White employees is $65,000 and the average for Black employees is $45,600. The average salary for men is $71,400 and for women it is $52,600.

While much of this gap is due to job segregation, our research indicates that racial and gender gaps exist even when only similar positions are compared and controls for key factors are in place. For instance, at KSU women faculty make about 8% less than men.

USG lacks strong policies to ensure racial and gender diversity and this has serious consequences. For instance, at Georgia State full Professors are five times more likely to be White men than Black women

To take a first step towards greater equity, Georgia must provide annual cost-of-living raises. Please urge the Senate higher education committee to pass SR 291 and educate members of the appropriations committee on the need to amend the USG budget accordingly.