School bus drivers, sanitation workers and other public employees on the low end of the pay scale in DeKalb County are expressing frustration over years of budget cuts.
A group of them convened in a Monday night meeting at a banquet hall on Snapfinger Road to air concerns and to organize as a political force, said Valerie Brown, a backup bus driver for special needs students in south DeKalb who helped with the event.
There were varying accounts of the turnout, but Brown said a sign-in sheet had more than 400 names.
Their grievances included fallout from budget reductions, such as furlough days and cuts to health insurance subsidies.
“Enough is enough,” said Brown, 53.
School board member Donna Edler attended the meeting and said there were complaints of unpaid work and layoffs of bus monitors. She said they also repeated rumors, such as a claim that the system was planning to privatize bus driver jobs, which Edler said, to her knowledge, is false.
“This was a meeting for concerned individuals to discuss whether they would be interested in joining or forming a union,” Edler said.
Tyrone Lucas, 39, who has collected trash for DeKalb for eight years, said sanitation workers haven’t gotten a raise in at least half a decade. “We should get paid for overtime that we’re not getting paid for, and they need to compensate us for all the years we haven’t gotten a raise,” he said, adding that frustration was building. “It may go to a strike or something.”
Burke Brennan, spokesman for the DeKalb County government, which is separate from the school system, said wage freezes have occurred at all levels of the county workforce as a result of plummeting tax revenues.
“There’s nothing happening to sanitation employees that’s not happening to every other employee in county government,” he said.
David Schutten, president of the Organization of DeKalb Educators, an employee advocacy group, said teachers and other school system employees haven’t gotten raises in several years. The bus drivers are a relatively small but vocal part of his organization’s 3,500 members, he said.
Some of the drivers have complained about the results the educators group has gotten, but Schutten said they don’t have much bargaining clout given that Georgia is a right-to-work state.
“They want a real union,” Schutten said. “Well, hey, this is a red state, so you’re not getting a real union.”
He predicted little change anytime soon, given the school system’s budget woes.
“This is my question,” Schutten said, “Where’s the money going to come from?”
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