Bus drivers, cafeteria workers and other people who work for private firms in public schools would lose access to unemployment benefits when school is out under legislation approved in the state House.
House Bill 714, by Rep. Mark Hamilton, R-Cumming, passed 111-60, largely along party lines.
In the first real partisan fight of the 2014 session, Republicans said a handful of firms are abusing a loophole that allows them to underpay employees and then coach them on how to apply for unemployment. Democrats said the bill punishes employees but does nothing to force employers to change.
These companies, Hamilton said, go into local communities and persuade school boards to contract with them to provide employees. As a result, the state pays those workers $8 million to $10 million a year in unemployment during summer vacation and other breaks in the school year.
Hamilton said the free-market system will force those companies to increase employee pay.
“If those companies don’t improve their pay scale so they can get employees to do the job properly, they’ll not be able to meet the standards in the contract,” he said.
Under questioning from House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams, D-Atlanta, Hamilton said he had not seen any of the contracts and did not know whether local school boards could cancel them.
“Why we are requiring employees to bear the burden, hoping the free-market system kicks in in a state that has a fairly high unemployment rate?” Abrams said. “The only people impacted by this decision and this bill will be the very workers we asked to take our children home two weeks ago in the snowstorm.”
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