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July 8, 2024 - Doug Collins Podcast
29:03
Georgia Labor
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You want to listen to a podcast?
By who?
Georgia GOP Congressman Doug Collins.
How is it?
The greatest thing I have ever heard in my whole life.
I could not believe my ears.
In this house, wherever the rules are disregarded, chaos and mob rule.
It has been said today, where is bravery?
I'll tell you where bravery is found and courage is found.
It's found in this minority who has lived through the last year of nothing but rules being broken, people being put down, questions not being answered, and this majority say, be damned with anything else.
We're going to impeach and do whatever we want to do.
Why?
Because we won an election.
I guarantee you, one day you'll be back in the minority and it ain't gonna be that fun.
Hey everybody, it's Doug Collins.
Welcome back to the Doug Collins Podcast.
We are glad you're with us.
Thanks for all that you do.
Go to DougCollinsPodcast.com, click on that subscribe button, or you can send me an email right there.
Those emails come directly to me, and I would love to hear from you as you go forward about anything about the episodes, about our guests, anything about the books and everything that's been offered here recently.
We want you to know about that as we go forward.
Today, we've got an old friend of the program, a good friend of mine, Bruce Thompson.
He's our labor commissioner here in Georgia.
He has got a lot of personal story.
Many of you have heard this, but I've actually mentioned it before.
He's going through some treatments for cancer right now, but at the same point, he's still kicking rear and doing what he needs to do in the state office and also being a good voice for our election cycle coming up as well.
So I wanted to get a good update from Bruce, let you hear from him and just what all is going on here in Georgia.
So with that, we will be right back after the commercial break.
Come back and we'll hit it up with our friend, Bruce Thompson.
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All right, Bruce.
Hey, buddy.
How we doing?
We're doing good.
We really are.
Well, good.
Well, I'm glad you're out.
Give everybody an update because we have sort of kept it up to date.
We've talked about it a little bit on our social media.
We've talked about it on the program before with you and your situation right now with the health.
If you don't mind, if you would, give some folks an update on that.
As you know, back in March, surprisingly diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer.
When you hear that, it's not good.
70,000 people in the United States every year get it, and about 55% of those never make it.
So when you hear that, it's not good news.
But I will tell you, Doug, we serve a Lord and Savior up above.
Man, he is the healer.
He is the guy that makes all those decisions.
I have taken seven treatments of chemo.
It's the strongest chemo they can give.
It was approved in February.
And this last Monday, we did an updated CT scan.
Normally, they first want to just stop the growth, the rapid growth.
That's first and foremost.
Then they want to try and focus on how do you shrink it.
In my case, it stopped growing.
The liver has already cleaned itself up.
The pancreas has already shrunk as much as they're trying to get the exact numbers.
Could be as much as half just in seven treatments.
That's correct.
We don't know how many total treatments, but we'll do a PET scan after 10 to be a little more in depth, but it's a butt kicker, so shout out to everybody that's taken chemo, but I know one thing, you gotta fight, and when you fight, the man upstairs hears the prayers, good things happen.
Amen.
Amen.
That's what we want to hear, and we'll keep praying for that, Bruce, and see this thing through.
Now, turning to things that are a little bit more, we've had you on the show a few times, but this is really a two-year update.
I want to give you, because we talked a lot in your campaign, and we've talked since then as well, but you're now about two years into the term, and you had a lot of things going on in the Labor Department.
Georgia Department of Labor was, I'll be generous and say a mess, not necessarily because of the workers, but because of a lack of leadership.
There was a definite lack of leadership and trust, not only from the former commissioner, but also for the former administrations and everything as well.
How are we coming?
I know you had a lot of ideas, some changes to be made, and give everybody an update because I always love to hear how people get elected and then they actually do what they talk about.
So you're right, Doug.
When we came in, it was a dumpster fire.
We had all kinds of issues going on.
It took us about six weeks to identify $104 million that was hidden in there.
So we had to figure out how to get that to the General Assembly without having the feds come down on us too heavy.
So that was a tightrope to walk.
Then we started working on a culture.
Get your arms around your culture to be able to really execute on your initiatives.
That's really where we have really shined.
I will tell you, I outlined a business plan.
We're a year ahead of plan.
I'll give you some of those.
So we got a $700,000 grant to do a mobile unit in our state, meaning when we have a catastrophe somewhere, especially in South Georgia, many times you can't help those people immediately.
So we have a mobile unit.
The feds gave us some money.
It's one of the few in the country that will be able to deploy within four hours.
Full operational shot.
Second is walking the last mile.
It was a deer Tenet of what I was campaigned on and said, we need to be going in and taking those incarcerated and making sure they reintegrate and they get these jobs.
And we got a lot of, well, you can't and so on, Doug.
I'm one of those guys that don't believe and can't.
I'll tell you, we got our first class that went through.
We had 100% placement of the, I'll call them students, of the reentry.
And we just got a $4 million grant First of its kind in the United States for a state entity for them to allow us to expand that.
Our modernization is already underway.
We're taking the antiquated system that's 28 years old.
It's already being done in your process.
We got the funding for that.
We've done some consolidation with career centers, five of them that we only had One of them only had 40 people a week walk in, but you and I as taxpayers were paying a million dollars a year on rent.
So a lot of things being done.
A lot of people said you can't do it, but I said we're gonna do it.
We're gonna operate it like a private sector business, and that's what we're doing.
Well, Bruce, I mean, look, that's the thing that makes people trust government again.
And we'll get into this maybe a little bit later, this issue of trusting.
Because I believe that it is a trust.
And I think that government has a place, a limited place, but it has a place.
We don't operate without it.
But I think one of the things is, have you found As we talked about early on, there had been this erosion of trust in the department.
I mean, I think federally and everything else with this.
First year, they're just going to accept you that, hey, okay, I hear what Bruce is saying.
Let's just see if he does it.
Well, you're two years in now.
You had two General Assemblies to deal with.
Have you noticed a Especially in this year's assembly with Speaker Burns, with the Lieutenant Governor, Governor, and others, did you notice a more receptiveness to your budget ideas, to your any legislation ideas that you have, because you had built up what you said you were going to do?
Time really helps build trust.
But the reality is I came out of the General Assembly.
Many of them are the ones that wanted me to run.
Both the Appropriation Chairman were two of the first people who wrote checks to me to do it.
So all I had to do was say, all right, you know what I'm capable of doing based on my history?
Give me a year to prove that we can do this.
And so you're right.
We got a year under our belt.
And I mean, I don't mind saying it, the last day of session, The two appropriations in the House and Senate, of course, you need our speaker, John Burns, and our lieutenant governor, Bert Jones, to be able to do it.
But they issued $4 million at my discretion saying, go do what you need to do because you've proven yourself.
To me, nothing speaks louder than that, going, they trust me with that.
I'm not going to waste taxpayer money.
We're going to be lean, but we're going to get some stuff done.
Well, that is true.
Now, one of the things that happened at Labor that nobody really talked about in Georgia, I mean, the political press, it wasn't a thing that they wanted to talk about.
But there was removal of some of the things that were under the Department of Labor by previous administrations, some of the focuses that they had.
I know...
There's probably not been a lot of change in that, but what exactly is your core function now, and have you been able to maybe make inroads into some of the things that were taken away that do still need that labor interest in it?
Yeah, so you're right.
$50 million, so about almost half of our budget Attached to a thing called Wagner-Peyser, which is where his development was taken away and put with the Technical College of Georgia.
It's the only time in the history there's no other state that has attempted that.
I've got a great relationship with Commissioner Dozier over there, but I still have the belief that it belongs at Department of Labor so that you don't have the separation.
The handoff, we're doing the best we can.
We work together.
But I call it the great experiment.
I think one day down the road it will either migrate back or it will morph into something else.
But it has made it very, very difficult.
And frankly, as a private sector conservative, I don't like duplicity.
It's a waste of money.
And when you take these programs that are designed to be a part of and you separate them out, you create duplicity.
Well, duplicity is a waste of taxpayer money in my opinion.
We don't have a contentious relationship with the college or with Greg Dozier.
We have a good working relationship.
We're going to do the best we can.
The legislature and the governor spoke when they took it away and we do the best we can with it.
Now within that, Walking the last mile is part of a workforce development that we were not doing.
It wasn't part of Wagner-Peyser, so we stood that up.
We believe we're going to be able to take a thousand people a year, and instead of 50% of those being back in prison within two years, we're going to have a success rate that's going to be far greater.
And we're putting families back together.
We're not just teaching them The hard skills, that's being done.
We're taking soft skills.
We're teaching them how to interact, how to handle a confrontation, all the things that were necessary when you hire somebody.
It's one thing to have a skill.
It's another to know how to deal with people.
And that's really what we're focused on.
That's perfect.
Look, you know my heart and what I've done in criminal justice reform and stuff, it has nothing to do with taking away from public safety, taking away from police, but it has everything to do with the fact that 95% of the people who go to jail at some point come home.
And the question is, what do you do when they come home?
If they have nothing to come home and we isolate them as if they were, you know, useless is a word to look at, then the only thing they can do is re-offend.
That's just really where it's going to be.
And I don't believe God intends us to look at anybody.
They hold us accountable.
But it's something that we offer.
They have to accept.
They have to offer hope.
Another issue that...
And I'm not sure.
Just forgive my little bit of an ignorance here.
I have a special place in my heart for the...
Vocational Rehab down at Warm Springs.
And I know there was some discussion about that at some point, moving developmental services or others sort of in and out of Department of Labor.
How does that sit now?
I have a daughter who went through it a couple of times and she's a full-time employee at Northeast Georgia Medical Center now.
It's really a valuable program.
And just want to curious, what's the take on that now?
So the GVRA was one of the first programs they took away from the previous administration as a You know, you can lead with a heart or lead with a stick.
And General Assembly and former Governor Deal and Governor Kemp felt like they needed a stick because they just was not getting a response from the leadership.
So that rests GVRA as a standalone right now.
There's a lot of discussion about if we can get our house completely in order and we're well on our way, maybe there's an opportunity for us to be able to do the same thing.
They're not functioning like they should.
I will tell you, it's not very efficient, and I have a special place in my heart for people that have special needs.
My son was diagnosed with severe ADHD and a touch of Asperger's.
He does very, very well, but it's just a little harder for some individuals.
And if we can give that focus, we need the workforce, Doug.
And this is one of those times we can't turn a blind eye Whether it be people that are re-entering or people that have special needs, we need all hands on deck if we want a roaring economy to continue.
Exactly.
Well, to separate them from DOL, and again, I understood why.
Don't get me wrong.
I understood why they did it.
It was between the poor leadership and the previous commissioner and others.
I get it.
But it's hard to train some people to be self-sufficient and separate them from the very department that would be to help them get a job.
I'm publicly on the podcast here.
You need my help testifying in the General Assembly.
Anything to help with that, call me.
I'll be there.
I just think it's something that just needs to be done.
And with right leadership under a man like you, I see that happening going forward.
How do you see the state of Georgia's employment right now?
And I want you to classify that not as just in Georgia, but in the nation as well.
One of the things, and just a little while ago there was the debate, and we're still in the presidential campaign and all this going on, but people have a perception, reality I call it, perception is reality, about the job market, our inflations, issues like that.
How are you seeing Georgia as in comparison to your colleagues in other states, and where do you see it going?
Well, I mean, we've all heard this before, but I think George is playing it out.
Leadership matters.
And under Governor Deal and Governor Kemp and the General Assembly, the investments that were made in our state, I think, are playing out right now.
And that's why we have a 3.1 to 3.2 unemployment rate, which is much, much better than many, many other states.
Unfortunately, we have so many opportunities, we just don't have the people to fill it.
Our Achilles heel, in my opinion, is going to be traffic and transportation.
At some point, Doug, if we don't get this solved, companies are not going to be willing to come here because they can't leave their goods or their people.
And that's not a quick fix, as you know, because you've served not only just in Congress, but in General Assembly.
We've got to get our arms around that.
Our economy right now is robust, but it's also vulnerable in some areas that it could quickly turn.
We've invested heavily in EV. I have my personal opinions on whether or not we should have gone all in with EV or not.
I think some of the comments I made that got me a little in trouble are now coming to fruition.
We're ahead of the game.
The question is really going to be, can we sustain continuing to invest in a vertical that really could be another 7 to 10 years away from getting to a point where it's normalized?
Because you're building the plants, you're building this, but if people are not buying the goods and the infrastructure is not there, what do you do with those plants when nobody's buying their goods?
Exactly.
Well, look, you're not off, and I'll take a little bit more heat here.
I mean, you have a plant that the state has invested millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars into, in which we have no out on, and we have a company that's never really sold a product.
And again, I think the economy is what people are going to buy.
EVs, we have a hybrid.
My wife and I have a hybrid.
She loves it.
She just goes around town, so it fits for her.
I don't.
I have my F-250 diesel, and that's what I use.
But the market always determines this.
It always does.
I don't care what market you're in.
So again, you're training people for jobs that may or may not exist in some of those areas.
I want to go back to something you and I have talked about briefly before, but I think we've expanded on it.
Labor and education to me are, you know, they're just the same.
I mean, you can't get one without the other.
I know you talked about the college and career academies.
I think it came out of previous administration as well.
I'd love to, you know, give me a little bit more about what's happening there.
That was a good thing.
I'm not sure how much it's doing now.
But also, has there been more of maybe a co-development between The school systems in Georgia, which most people don't understand, are basically separate.
They have a superintendent of education, but they don't control the individual school districts.
Getting back to the, because Georgia's an economy, you talk about transportation and building.
We're just, I mean, right now, some of our best played employees in the state of Georgia are not white collar people.
They're plumbers and electricians and other places because they're in such high demand.
How do you see that playing out, Bruce?
Well, one of the things right now happening in Georgia is the National Skills Contest that's happening right here down at the World Congress Center where you're taking high schoolers and allowing them to compete for the trades.
The more that these schools will refocus on taking these individuals at a young age and helping them understand that your hands and feet and your mind is really a gift that needs to be utilized.
Plumbing, electrical, carpentry, welding.
Doug, some of these take a certification, it's less than six months, and you start at 65 to 80 grand.
Now, I don't know why we would push people towards food and hospitality, When, frankly, we know that that vacuum right now is not going away.
It's only expanding.
So, I think some schools have really bought into it.
In North Georgia, you've got some superintendents that have bought into reintroducing the shop class into some of the schools.
I think that's a great thing to do.
You've got some other schools and superintendents that just haven't bought into it, and they They believe that they need to still be teaching you basket weaving and all that other kind of stuff that, frankly, you're not equipping these people when they get out to be able to go and provide for themselves, let alone their family.
And that's a great disservice because from a labor standpoint, you can see a disproportionate Number of minorities that just aren't able to take care of their families because we haven't invested in it.
And many of those are going to school in these school districts where you don't have leadership that's willing to invest in what really the future is.
I couldn't agree.
As you know, you've got multiple kids.
I have three kids as well.
I'm so proud of each and every one of them.
They're all different.
My daughter has spina bifida.
She works at a hospital.
She works in our graduate medical.
She's a receptionist.
I have one son who you know works in politics and he does computers.
And then I have another son who I'm extremely proud of because he can do stuff that I can't do and still smarter than I am.
And he works on HVAC. He's actually down in Florida.
And he works on HVAC stuff, and he came out of an international baccalaureate kind of program.
He picked this stuff up on his own.
I'm proud of Copeland and Cameron and Jordan, but they all have different skills.
And I think if we're not, if in just my little family world, Can't see that we need a variety of educational options.
It's frustrating to me that professional educators are still stuck to that model that everybody's sort of the same.
And it's concerning because now we've taken away even those who say, well, they're not, quote, going to college.
Well, you took away their shop class.
You took away their ag class.
You took away their electrical class.
I mean, I had a superintendent one time say, well, we can graduate high school with an LPN. Great.
Why can't we graduate with a journeyman electrical license?
I mean, why not?
There is no reason we can't.
It just takes leadership.
I mean, obviously, we're in an election year.
And frankly, if we want to diplomatize more and more and turn Georgia into California, well, then the elections have consequences.
And the reality of it is, We need no entrepreneurial spirit and it needs to go clear into the schools, not institutionalized through some book that's trying to teach these kids or young people skills that frankly will not be beneficial to them, will not put food on the table, When you start paying college, when a kid gets a debt in college and now we just write that off.
That doesn't teach them anything about responsibility and how to handle money.
Instead, we should be teaching that in school alongside these soft skills and hard skills, but also how to be responsible.
The parents haven't done it.
Where are they going to pick it up at, Doug?
We can't keep taking the government making that be the answer.
The government can't even deliver freaking mail for goodness sakes.
Oh my God.
Hey, I've joked about this.
I am an attorney, but I've sort of racked my brain here recently.
I want to start a class action lawsuit against the U.S. Post Office because like my dad and others- Send me up.
Yeah, I'll sign you up because, I mean, how many times is some people like my dad, he still uses the mail.
We've not transitioned.
He don't want to transition.
He likes to still go put his mail in the mailbox.
He's 80 something years old.
And, you know, we've had late fees, bills that didn't come in.
And the post office could care less.
It's like, no, you're costing the economy right now.
And it's sad.
Bruce, if you have...
If you were a private sector company doing that, they'd shut you down.
Oh, in a heartbeat, in a heartbeat.
All right, you're halfway in, into the side.
We're gonna have you on more as the election comes, I want your knowledge on what we got elections coming up.
But tell me, what's the next big thing?
What are y'all working in?
In Georgia, for those who don't know, we have a legislative session, it's very short.
It's 40 days, technical, legal days.
So it typically runs from January to about the first of April.
The rest of the time is the government just sort of operates on its own with some oversight with the budget committee.
But this is the time when you prepare your next big thing.
What you're working on now?
What's that next big push after you solidified some stuff here?
Where do you think the next push is, Bruce?
So I'm working on something right now that's crazy.
I keep sounding like I'm picking on my predecessor, but I am.
We own a compound.
Basically, it's a one square block.
It's the Department of Labor.
We have our career center there.
We have our there.
We got about 600 employees.
And then we have another building.
And after I got elected and went in, I'm like, so tell me about this building.
Well, it seems that we did a land lease With someone that built a nightclub on our property.
Now think about this, Doug.
It's a nightclub.
It's a nightclub that's on a government piece of property.
Now, I don't think it's a nightclub.
It's not for me.
So we found out that the landlord And their tenant are in a major lawsuit because, surprise, surprise, the club owner has not been paying the landlord.
Fortunately, we're still getting our money in the land lease.
When we dig into it and went to see the property and get in there last week, and for your viewers, I won't describe too much, but the light will come on.
We came in the front door, and to the right, it's very dark.
They have eight shower stalls that are independent.
Now, why do you need shower stalls in a nightclub?
You go upstairs and they have private rooms.
Why do you have a nightclub?
Now this is, they got full kitchens and so on.
That's happening on that property.
What my main priority is right now, and I've told my chief legal officer, figure out how to acquire that property and let's turn it into a re-entry facility where we're taking incarcerated individuals and we're taking all these other government agencies that strung all over the state, put them in with one desk, Representative, bring them in and we can get them signed up for all of the things that they qualify for with accountability and then we can monitor the progress.
That would be a good utilization of a building versus having a nightclub where frankly girls and things are happening should not be happening.
Bruce, I can't be more proud.
That's one of the best things I've ever heard.
In fact, I'm gonna be on the phone later today talking to some of my friends in the national criminal justice groups that actually help and anything I can push this way, you just know that we're gonna do it.
I can't, again, Times you get behind people and people you become friends with that support you and I support you and you support me.
And political campaign goes beyond friendship.
We're praying for you to get better.
But also, I couldn't be more proud of my Commissioner of Labor here in the state of Georgia, who's actually taking an interest in the real people.
And that's such a refreshing thing here.
Folks, if you're listening to this all over the country, one, you can't have him.
He's ours.
But you can always call him and get some ideas about how y'all can help in your own states.
Bruce, thanks for joining us today.
We appreciate you a bunch.
Doug, love you and your family and can't wait to be with you soon.
Look forward to it, my friend.
Take care.
Folks, that's it for the Doug Collins Podcast.
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