The South Carolina State Employees Association (SCSEA) is
doing the best it can.
Its local chapters lobby State politicians for better labour laws. It runs a retirement benefit program for ex-employees. What it cannot do however, is strike or bargain collectively.
In South Carolina collective bargaining for public employees is against the law.
It is not surprising therefore, that South Carolina is one of the oldest Right to Work (RTW) states in the United States. A Right to Work law, like the one Conservative Leader Tim Hudak is vowing to bring to Ontario, was enacted in 1954. Since then other laws designed to weaken unions and give Corporations a freer hand to run the economy – also part of Tim Hudak’s American style vision for Ontario – were passed.
So if a Right to Work law really does bring prosperity, as Mr. Hudak claims it will, by this time it should be working in South Carolina. After all, the state has had Right to Work for 59 years.
How’s it going?
Carleton Washington is the executive director of the South Carolina State Employees Association. He says anti-union laws such as Right Work have saddled state employees in South Carolina with some of the lowest wages and poorest working conditions in the U.S.
Annual wages for the vast majority of South Carolina State employees he says, range from $15,000 for highway workers and school support staff to $35,000 for middle managers. Employees with professional qualifications are paid more. Even so, they earn 20% to 40% less than professionals in the private sector.
Many have left their jobs in the public service but these days it isn’t that easy to leave. Sixty-six years after passing a Right to Work law, South Carolina has the 46th highest unemployment rate in the U.S.
In addition, during the past 20 years successive state
Governments have slashed the number of public employees from 80,000 to 56,000
today. The result says Washington, is that public employees are now saddled
with crushing workloads. Take social workers for example.
The national average caseload for a U.S. Social Worker is 270 cases. The average caseload for a social worker in South Carolina is 920! That means burnout and after several punishing years on the job many state employees quit. The state lose the benefit of their experience and taxpayers have to pay the extra costs of training replacements.
Washington and the Association are doing the best they can
but in four of the last five years South Carolina state employees received a
zero pay increase.
The Association lobbies state legislators for better
labour laws but Washington says the Republican Government has ceded control
over much of the economy to Corporations and that is where real power now lies.
Today less than five percent of workers in South Carolina
are union members. And Washington says over-worked public employees are paying
a high price in their personal lives and South Carolinians are experiencing a
sharp decline in public service standards.
Tomorrow we’ll interview one of the last bona fide union
leaders. Occupy supporter and longshoreman, Ken Riley.
