Georgia Commissioner of Labor Mark Butler opposed legislation to create a chief labor officer in the agency.
ATLANTA – Gov. Brian Kemp vetoed legislation Monday that would have created the position of chief labor officer within the Georgia Department of Labor.
In his veto message, Kemp wrote that the powers the bill would have given the new position would have put it in conflict with the constitutional authority of Georgia’s elected commissioner of labor.
Senate Bill 156, a bipartisan measure, arose from a backlog of unemployment claims that built up in the labor department during the coronavirus pandemic. For months, lawmakers were deluged with complaints from constituents reporting delays in receiving benefit checks and the lack of response from the agency when they call to ask about their cases.
The bill cleared the General Assembly on the last day of this year’s session, 142-22 in the Georgia House of Representatives and 29-20 in the state Senate.
Under the legislation, the chief labor officer was to report to the General Assembly and be given the same authority as the commissioner of labor.
Kemp argued the bill did not provide any mechanism for resolving conflicts between the two.
“Instead, this bill would allow the chief labor officer to seek a writ of mandamus against the commissioner when the two experienced an irreconcilable dispute,” the governor wrote. “This would put the state in a position of using taxpayers dollars to sue between two branches of the same government to enforce a remedy against a duly elected state official.”
Kemp wrote that he understood the frustration over the claims backlog. But he suggested that instead of creating a new position, the administration and legislature should work with Commissioner of Labor Mark Butler to ensure the agency reviews unemployment claims and delivers benefits payments in as timely a manner as possible.
Butler opposed the bill as it went through the legislature. He argued it would do more harm than good by putting an untrained person in a position of authority over the agency.
ATLANTA – Georgia’s business community is asking the state to suspend federal unemployment benefits Congress approved during the coronavirus pandemic to incentivize out-of-work Georgians to fill jobs that are going begging.
In an op-ed released Monday, 14 organizations including the Georgia Chamber of Commerce point to a shortage of workers willing to fill a growing number of job openings.
“Our economy has quickly rebounded thanks to a balanced pandemic strategy coupled with record-high consumer spending,” the business groups wrote. “[But] retailers cannot keep certain items in stock, and factory orders are piling up. Because they cannot find labor, businesses are starting to turn down orders, raise prices, and some are even considering closing permanently.”
Business leaders and their Republican allies have been complaining for months that federal unemployment benefits aimed at helping employees thrown out of work by COVID-19 – which began last year at $600 per week and have since been reduced to $300 – offer some unemployed workers more than they could earn by returning to work.
President Joe Biden said Monday he doesn’t believe Americans are shirking work on a widespread basis. However, he also reminded workers they must follow the rules for receiving unemployment checks.
“Anyone collecting unemployment, who was offered a suitable job, must take the job or lose their unemployment benefits,” Biden said.
The president spoke just days after the latest jobs report showed that 260,000 jobs were created last month, far fewer than the 1 million expected.
Georgia Commissioner of Labor Mark Butler raised the growing labor shortage last week when he issued the labor department’s weekly employment update.
Butler met with Gov. Brian Kemp on Monday to discuss the issue.
“The governor and commissioner both agreed changes are needed in order to support employers who continue to see worker shortages,” Kemp spokeswoman Mallory Blount said following the meeting. “We expect final decisions on timing and other specifics in the coming days.”
According to the business groups’ op-ed, Georgia businesses have reported at least 406,000 job openings during the last 90 days.
“Getting those men and women connected to employers and back to work is the first step,” the organizations wrote.
“Second, we must address long-term shortages in the agriculture, hospitality and high-tech sectors, while helping our students prepare for a very different job market when they graduate.”
Besides the Georgia Chamber, other groups represented on the op-ed include the Georgia Farm Bureau, the Georgia Association of Manufacturers, the Georgia Association of Convenience Stores and the Georgia Highway Contractors Association.
ATLANTA – Gasoline prices could be headed up at the start of the summer driving season following the shutdown of a major pipeline hit by a cyberattack.
Alpharetta-based Colonial Pipeline reported Friday it was the victim of an attack involving ransomware that forced one of the largest fuel transport systems in the nation to halt most of its operations. Colonial’s 5,500-mile pipeline system runs from Texas to New Jersey.
“Maintaining the operational security of our pipeline, in addition to safely bringing our systems back online, remain our highest priorities,” Colonial wrote in a news release Sunday.
Colonial has hired independent cybersecurity experts to determine the nature and scope of the ransomware attack and put an operations team to work developing a system restart plan. The goal is “substantially restoring operational service” by the end of this week, the company wrote in an update Monday.
While four main lines remain out of service, some smaller lines connecting terminals with delivery points are now operational.
The full system will not be restored until Colonial officials believe it is safe to do so and in full compliance with federal regulations, the company stated. The U.S. Department of Energy is leading the federal response.
Ransomware attacks have become a growing problem for both government and private sector computer systems. In ransomware attacks, hackers block access to an organization’s computers and threaten to keep them blocked and/or publish sensitive private information unless a ransom is paid.
In one example, a ransomware attack in 2018 affected nearly 3,800 city of Atlanta computers, forcing the city to shut down its court system and delay many other services.
The perpetrators demanded a ransom of $51,000 in Bitcoin to restore access to the computer systems they had encrypted, which the city refused to pay. A federal grand jury indicted two Iranian nationals in the attack later that year.
ATLANTA – Amazon will build a fulfillment center in Savannah that will create 1,000 full-time jobs, Gov. Brian Kemp announced Friday.
The 640,000-square-foot facility, expected to open next year, will use innovative robotics technology to pick, pack, and ship smaller customer orders, such as books, toys, and small household goods.
“I appreciate Amazon’s continued commitment to creating well-paying e-commerce jobs for hardworking Georgians and look forward to the positive impact it will bring to the coastal region,” Kemp said.
“Georgia’s connectivity, combined with smart planning and investment, has helped our state secure its spot as the No.-1 state for logistics and infrastructure and enhances our ability to attract major investments from world-renowned companies like Amazon.”
Amazon currently employs more than 21,000 workers in Georgia at operations across the state, including a robotics fulfillment center in Stone Mountain that opened last year. The company contributed $3.2 billion to the state’s economy from 2010 to 2019.
“Amazon has found an outstanding workforce, strong local support, and incredible customers in the state,” said Melissa Nick, vice president of customer fulfillment at Amazon. “We look forward to creating these new, full-time jobs starting at $15 an hour with benefits on day one.”
Individuals interested in career opportunities with Amazon are encouraged to visit www.Amazon.jobs for more information.
Chief Operating Officer Brittany Young represented the Georgia Department of Economic Development’s Global Commerce Division in landing the Amazon project, working in partnership with the state Department of Transportation, Savannah Economic Development Authority, Georgia Ports Authority and Georgia Power.
Weekend visits to Savannah began picking up in June of last year.
ATLANTA – When the coronavirus pandemic struck Georgia in March of last year, no industry shut down harder or faster than hospitality.
The leisure and hospitality sector lost 223,000 jobs statewide between February and April 2020.
In Atlanta, hotel occupancy plummeted from 74% in February of last year to just 9% in April.
“We’re a convention city,” said William Pate, president and CEO of the Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau. “All of a sudden, the conventions canceled.”
“We lost half of March, all of April and most of May,” added Joe Marinelli, president of Visit Savannah, that city’s tourism promotion agency. “Losing those months was hard on us.”
But as the second Memorial Day of the COVID-19 era approaches, and with it the start of the summer vacation season, the signs point to a tourism recovery.
“We’re picking back up,” said Mark Jaronski, the deputy commissioner at the Georgia Department of Economic Development in charge of the agency’s tourism division. “The vaccine rollout has had the most positive effect on our visitation.”
Even during its worst days, the pandemic didn’t damage Georgia’s tourism industry as much as it hurt other states.
Jaronski credited the comparatively soft impact to Gov. Brian Kemp’s decision not to completely shut down the Georgia’s economy when he issued a shelter in place order in April 2020.
“Because we remained open, we were able to do better than the national average and many states,” he said.
While conventions, concerts and sporting events were shut down, Georgians began venturing out to the North Georgia mountains and the state’s beaches within weeks of Kemp’s order.
“People wanted to stay away from crowds and large group gatherings,” Jaronski said. “They were told by health experts and opinion leaders to stay away from groups, but maybe it’s OK to go to the beaches or mountains.”
There have even been some success stories during the pandemic. As the isolation afforded by camping sent sales of recreational vehicles soaring, visitation to state parks went up.
During fiscal year 2020, which ran through the end of June of last year, visits to state parks grew to 11.8 million, an increase of 562,000 over the previous year. Camping occupancy improved from 13% to 46%.
“Last year was quite a busy year,” said Kim Hatcher, spokeswoman for the Georgia Department of Natural Resources’ Parks, Recreation & Historic Sites Division. “Occupancy is definitely up, mostly for camping.”
With the continuing popularity of the beaches and mountains, the state’s leisure and hospitality industry had gained back 144,000 of the 223,000 jobs lost to the pandemic by March of this year, 65% of the total, according to the Georgia Department of Labor.
Even more convention-dependent cities have begun to bounce back from the pandemic.
Marinelli said weekend visits by leisure travelers began heading back up by mid-June of last year and are going strong heading into the summer.
“Leisure travel is a big winner right now,” he said. “With Savannah being a leisure destination, we’re fortunate.”
Pate said Atlanta is forecasting a similar increase in leisure travel this summer.
To help complete the recovery, the state has launched a new marketing campaign aimed at the pent-up demand for travel on the part of pandemic-weary Americans.
The campaign conjures up the image of a sprinter coiled at the starting line. Instead of “Ready. Set. Go,” the slogan is “Ready. Set. Georgia.”
Jaronski said the new campaign targets the growing number of Americans eager to travel longer distances than last year, either by driving or flying.
“Last year, we focused almost exclusively on in-state travelers,” he said. “Now, we’re expanding beyond Georgia to bordering states and places like New York, Chicago and Miami.”
Along with the yearly update of the Georgia travel guide, the state tourism division has at its disposal $1 million in grant funding earmarked in Kemp’s mid-year budget for tourism marketing.
Jaronski said half of that money will go to tourism promotion agencies across Georgia that depend on hotel-motel tax revenue, a source of funding severely depleted by the pandemic.
Pate said the Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau’s revenue is down 65% this year.
“It’s had a significant impact on the revenues of CVBs across the state,” he said.
Jaronski said the other half of the state grant money will go to individual businesses in the hospitality industry that have been hurt by the pandemic, including hotels, restaurants and tourist attractions.
Tourism projections show Georgia’s convention business will be the last to recover.
Pate said Atlanta has a “very strong” convention calendar booked for the last half of this year.
Marinelli said many of the conventions originally slated for Savannah last year or early this year have been postponed until late this year or early in 2022.
“People have to start going back to their home offices before [businesses] start sending them out to travel,” Jaronski said.
Similarly, sporting events are backloaded into this year’s calendar, including two Chick-fil-A Kickoff games over the Labor Day weekend at Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium to begin the college football season and the SEC Championship game in December.
Cobb County recently lost Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game due to be played in July at Truist Park as part of a protest over a controversial election overhaul Kemp signed in March. But Pate said no other scheduled events have threatened to pull out.
Pate expects the tourism recovery will build on itself. As more and more people get outside, it will restore confidence that traveling is safe again, he said.
“Now that vaccines are pretty much available, people are out and about,” he said. “They want a vacation. They didn’t get one last year.”
