There is no better path to prosperity than labor organizing

News admin September 6, 2026 0 Comments

There is no better path to prosperity than labor organizing | Opinion

The Big Bend region and Tallahassee have been used and abused. The state of Florida, the region’s largest employer, has yet again withheld cost of living adjustments and pay increases. This compounds years of neglect that according to the Department of Management Service’s Workforce Report lists Florida as having the least amount of state workers by population (read: overworked) and the lowest expenditure on employees (read: underpaid).

According to the U.S. Census, Tallahassee has a poverty rate of 23.6%, well above the state rate of 12% and U.S. rate of 10.6%. We’ve seen millions of taxpayer dollars go the wealthiest institution in the city (FSU), to sprawl, and to a “public safety campus,” all just to see mass surveillance Flock cameras invade our privacy. We’ve sold off public resources like Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare and the Capital City Country Club, yet we might wait an hour for public transportation.

Stagnating wages, high poverty rates, developer extortion, surveillance, and bad public transportation may seem disconnected, but they are all related. Locally and statewide, business interests dominate our communities.

A string of news reports, opinion columns, and Facebook posts in the past month have made the same tired claims that the Chamber of Commerce and other market ideologues have made for 40 years. They want you to believe that we can cut the right deal (read: tax cuts and special treatment) to attract major employers to the Big Bend.

Besides the fact that this strategy has largely failed over and over, why should the everyday North Floridian care? The main reason companies would consider moving to Tallahassee is for the tax cuts, lower wages, and weaker environmental regulations to pad their profit margins on the backs of hard-working, tax-paying people. The benefits would be sparse.

If companies come here, that is fine, perhaps even good, but we should be fully aware that the benefits will not be automatic. The only way that private businesses have ever benefited everyday workers is through good, old fashioned labor organizing. When Volkswagen moved to Chattanooga, they believed workers there would be easily exploited. Instead, the workers were unionized and won a 20% wage increase, 20% reduction in healthcare premiums and a $6,550 bonus.

Through a series of strikes and protests, Waffle House workers organizing with the Union of Southern Service Workers won wage increases and improved working conditions across the South.

Workers across the South are organizing against the historic exploitation and wealth extraction brought on by years of sharecropping conditions, Jim Crow laws, and union suppression southerners have suffered.

It doesn’t have to be this way, and North Florida is ready to rise with a labor organizing wave of our own. It won’t be easy, and we will need to have the fervor of early labor organizers, and the willingness to go on strike if the owners do not capitulate.

We can simultaneously win reforms in our local governments. For instance, ordinances that help workers go after employers who commit wage theft. Another proposed ordinance would require employers to provide predictive schedules and enough hours to survive.

Business interests have never and will never save us. Only workers joining together for the common good have improved the livelihoods of the majority.

Jordan Scott is president of the Big Bend Chapter, AFL-CIO and a member of the Tallahassee Workers Assembly. Workers interested in organizing should reach out at [email protected]. The Big Bend Chapter of the AFL-CIO is holding a Labor Day Forum at the American Legion Hall from 11-12:30 p.m. on Sept. 7th.

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This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: There is no better path to prosperity than labor organizing | Opinion

Reporting by Jordan Scott, Your Turn / Tallahassee Democrat

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This story was originally published September 6, 2026 at 5:02 AM.