David Hyde, United Campus Workers-Georgia State University chapter chair and organizing fellow, and Rachel Schrauben Yeates, member-leader at Kennesaw State University, joined the America's Work Force Union Podcast to lay out the mounting pressure on Georgia's public university staff following a sweeping return-to-office mandate issued by the University System of Georgia.
The two leaders, both affiliated with United Campus Workers of Georgia — CWA Local 3821 — described how the mandate has functioned as an effective pay cut for workers already earning poverty-level wages. It has also prompted a sharp increase in retirements and resignations at major Atlanta-area institutions and spurred a sustained campaign that has taken workers from petition drives to walkouts to the steps of the Georgia Capitol. Organizing without collective bargaining rights in a so-called “Right-To-Work” state, UCW-CWA Local 3821 is building worker power through direct action, legislative advocacy and a model of solidarity that stretches across the region.
In parts of the country, the path to union power runs through a recognition election, a bargaining table and eventually a contract. In Georgia, that path is legally blocked for public sector workers. United Campus Workers of Georgia — CWA Local 3821 — has had to build a different road entirely.
David Hyde, UCW-GSU chapter chair and organizing fellow, and Rachel Schrauben Yeates, a member-leader at Kennesaw State University, joined America's Work Force Union Podcast to describe what that road looks like in practice. They talked about wall-to-wall organizing that spans university staff, faculty and student workers across eight southeastern states, sustained pressure campaigns built on direct action and a legislative strategy aimed at changing the laws that prevent public workers from bargaining in the first place.
The foundation of the organizing effort is wages. When Schrauben Yeates started working at the Kennesaw State University library, her salary was under $30,000 a year. Many entry-level positions at Georgia's public universities sit at or near that threshold, she said. A UCW survey conducted around 2020 estimated that a living wage for a single person renting within a reasonable commuting distance of the university was approximately $41,000 — a gap of more than $10,000 that has only widened since.
The University System approved cost-of-living adjustments in 2022, 2023 and 2024, but Hyde noted that for most workers, those increases were largely offset by rising health insurance premiums. No adjustments have been issued for 2025 or 2026. Part-time workers have been entirely excluded from the increases. The result is a workforce that is falling further behind even as Georgia's public universities continue to operate and expand, Hyde said.
Into that already strained environment, the University System of Georgia introduced a sweeping return-to-office mandate — a blanket policy requiring all staff to report in person, regardless of whether they had been hired as remote or hybrid workers. For many employees, the practical effect was immediate and financial. Workers who had not been paying for campus parking, fuel or daily commuting expenses now faced those costs with no corresponding increase in compensation. The return-to-office order for workers earning poverty-level wages with no additional pay is a pay cut, Hyde and Schrauben Yeates said.
The mandate has also hit caregivers and parents particularly hard. Many staff workers had structured their family responsibilities around the flexibility of remote or hybrid arrangements — managing eldercare, childcare and household obligations in ways that made a low-paying job sustainable. The removal of that flexibility has pushed some workers out of the labor force entirely. Hyde noted that workers do not typically quit immediately; they look for alternatives, hold on as long as they can and then leave. The data is beginning to reflect that pattern.
According to Hyde, an open records request submitted by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution provided the information to document the early impact. Georgia Tech, which had a significant number of remote and hybrid employees before the mandate, saw a retirement rate increase of more than 100 percent in the months following the policy change, when compared with the same period the prior year – along with an increase in resignations between 40 percent to 50 percent. Georgia State University and Georgia Southern University recorded similar trends, Hyde said. Those figures covered roughly July through October of 2025. Hyde said the full impact is still playing out, as workers who have been searching for alternatives are now beginning to act on them.
As of early 2026, data from the same period showed approximately 35 more retirements than the comparable period in 2024 across all major universities in metro Atlanta. Hyde said the union expects those numbers to continue climbing as the logistical and personal toll of the mandate accumulates.
In response, UCW-CWA Local 3821 launched the Defend Remote Work campaign last summer, built around surveys, petitions, rallies and direct engagement with the Board of Regents — the appointed governing body that oversees the University System of Georgia. Composed primarily of bankers and real estate executives, a single member with an educational background and no worker representation, the board has consistently declined to engage with the union, in part because it is not legally obligated to recognize the union at all.
In February, the union synchronized its annual lobby day at the Georgia Capitol with a Board of Regents meeting held a block away. When the board again refused to engage, UCW staged a walkout and marched to the Capitol to press their case with legislative allies. In a touch of irony, several board members participated in the meeting by video call, joining remotely from their cars and other locations, while simultaneously refusing to restore remote work options for the staff they govern.
Hyde was candid about the political environment in Georgia. The House, Senate and governor's office are all controlled by Republicans, which limits the near-term prospects for passing any pro-worker legislation. But the union has legislative allies in both chambers and is working to get lawmakers to sign a letter directed at Chancellor Sonny Perdue, urging a reversal of the mandate.
Longer term, UCW is supporting candidates who back legislation to legalize collective bargaining for public employees in Georgia — a fight already advancing in Colorado and Virginia, where UCW locals are in the middle of active campaigns to change the law.
On the organizing front, Hyde described a pivot toward department-level campaigns designed to make the case for remote work in specific, concrete terms. The University System has established a process to apply for remote work exemptions, but Hyde described approval as rare. The union is identifying departments and roles — including cybersecurity staff who handle sensitive data in shared open-plan office spaces without secure dedicated workstations — where the operational case for remote work is difficult to deny.
Schrauben Yeates closed by highlighting a source of resilience that has kept the campaign going: the solidarity of union members, across campus, across Georgia and across the region. She encouraged anyone working in higher education who has not yet connected with a campus workers' union to find out where they can plug in.
More information on United Campus Workers of Georgia and the Defend Remote Work campaign is available at ucwga.com.
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