School bus drivers and other seasonal workers would no longer qualify for unemployment during school breaks under legislation proposed in the state House.
House Bill 714, sponsored by Rep. Mark Hamilton, R-Cumming, seeks to close a loophole that cost the state millions last year. A House Industry and Labor subcommittee approved the bill Tuesday by a party-line 6-5 vote.
Labor Commissioner Mark Butler in 2011 attempted to block the benefits by agency rule, but the federal government threatened to pull additional millions in federal funding. The state had to pay qualified workers $8 million in back benefits.
Hamilton and Butler say the private companies that employ the affected workers often game the system.
“There are some companies using the process to allow (their employees) to also receive unemployment,” Hamilton said. “There are examples of that where employers know what they’re doing, coaching employees.”
But DeLane Adams, an Atlanta union activist, said the benefits are not a “handout or giveaway.”
“Well-trained and experienced bus drivers, food service workers and private school teachers will be forced to search for other employment that will be sustainable year-round,” Adams said.
Hamilton, the chairman of the Industry and Labor Committee that will consider the bill, said in an interview that “in most of these cases people take those jobs knowing they are seasonal jobs.”
Shirley Cowart drives a shuttle bus at Kennesaw State University and is employed by First Transit, a private firm. If she loses unemployment during the summer, she said it would make it nearly impossible to fill that gap in her income.
“And even if you got hired somewhere else, you’d probably not get paid for two to three weeks,” Cowart said in an interview. “That puts you behind in your bills.”
Butler said paying seasonal workers unemployment costs state businesses and rewards companies that don’t deserve it. Instead of paying their employees year-round, the firms encourage workers to apply for unemployment, he said.
“What we’re targeting is companies that are using the unemployment system basically for profit,” Butler told the subcommittee. “These companies, and it doesn’t matter which one it is, they have found a way, a work-around, a loophole in the law where they can take people off public payroll, put them on the private payroll and use the unemployment system to supplement their profits.”
Adams said the best answer would be for companies to pay their employees on a 12-month basis, “but that is not the reality.”
“This issue,” Adams said, “is not the workers’ fault.”
Jimmy McMillan, like Cowart, operates a bus for First Transit. He told lawmakers Tuesday that “we are barely making it now with the wages that we are receiving.”
“When we’re off we can’t find another job because nobody wants to give you a job because they know you’re not going to be there long,” he said.
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