Black Trade Union Leaders Speak Out on The Future of the Labor Movement in New Report
A new 35-page white paper, "A Future for Workers: A Contribution From Black Labor,"was released this week by the Black Labor Collaborative, a group of influential African American leaders from major labor organizations who offer a progressive critique and agenda to frame discussions about the direction of the American labor movement. This is a seismic development, because it is the first time representatives of 2.1 million black trade unionists have published a comprehensive outlook on organized labor.
The BLC report lands the same week that the AFL-CIO's Labor Commission on Racial and Economic Justice held its first meeting. It also comes amid an explosion of protests and activism in black communities and among low-wage black workers across the nation, demanding racial justice as well as economic justice. For example:
- For the past 50 years, the unemployment rate for African American workers has been at least double that of their white counterparts.
- At its lowest point, when white male median earnings dropped to $37,000 in 1981, it was still higher than the peak median earnings of $34,118 that black men reached in 2006 -- 25 years later.
In an executive summary that accompanies the report, the BLC calls for a “transformed labor movement,” noting that “the foe we face, in the political Right and global capitalism, demands a transformed and energized labor movement that can fight back with more than slogans of solidarity. No tinkering around the edges! A transformed movement must be authentically inclusive because diversity carries the strongest seeds of change, of untapped creativity.”
Rev. Terrence L. Melvin, one of the BLC conveners, said, “This is not about a ‘black agenda.’ This brief paper seeks to advance a broader discussion that is so badly needed: What is it that workers need and want, and how can it become the robust agenda that can truly rally the bottom 99% to collective action?”
Melvin, who is also president of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU), added, “We approach these questions in the voice of nearly 2.1 million African Americans in labor unions. We believe a frank and open conversation where diverse voices are heard can produce changes that will strengthen our movement and benefit all workers.”
A Future for Workers: A Contribution from Black Labor
E X E C U T I V E S U M M A R Y
A Future for Workers: A Contribution from Black Labor is a paper that offers a perspective that is timely and unique, blunt but hopeful, progressive yet tempered by the grotesque grip on wealth and power by global elites. It speaks in the voice of nearly 2.1 million African Americans in labor unions.
This document seeks to advance a discussion that is so badly needed. What is it that workers need and want? How can this then become not the “special interests” of an isolated labor movement, but a robust agenda that can rally the bottom 99% to collective action? These questions anchor the analyses, conclusions and recommendations presented in this paper from a black labor perspective.
A Future for Workers: A Contribution from Black Labor comprises three sections. The first one makes a strong case for a “transformed labor movement,” something capable of fighting and making the cause of workers also the cause of the 99%. Nothing less will be sufficient to challenge the juggernaut of global capitalism, whose only allegiance is to profits and more profits.
As the insecurities of the ruling elite have mounted, dangerous forms of authoritarian politics also have expanded – lethal police attacks on unarmed black people; suppression of the right to vote of African Americans, Latinos, youth and senior citizens; the narrowing of dissenting views in mainstream media. Clearly, there is a growing view on the political Right that the “wrong people” are participating in this democracy at this time.
A recurrent theme in A Future for Workers: A Contribution from Black Labor is the role of race in the tumble of the American labor movement and the centrality of racial justice in any revival of organized labor. As the paper notes, “Black workers have been, for the working class as a whole, the canary in the mine…What befalls the Black worker inevitably confronts the bulk of the working class.” But the Achilles’ heel of organized labor has been its failure to respond to attacks on black workers and its inability “to recognize that the Black working class is, indeed, a component of the larger working class and not some marginal category.”
Witness the silence by most of labor to racialized attacks on social safety net programs that protect the poor but were won initially as worker protections during the New Deal. That silence in not protecting the poor also meant silence in addressing the worsening plight of black workers.
For the past 50 years, the unemployment rate for African American workers has been at least double that of their white counterparts.
At its lowest point, when white male median earnings dropped to $37,000 in 1981, it was still higher than the peak median earnings of $34,118 that black men reached in 2006 -- 25 years later.
The wealth of white households was 13 times the median wealth of black households in 2013, compared to eight times black household wealth in 2010 – an astounding 50 percent jump in only three years.
Such entrenched disparities (even worse for black women) have given rise to divergent views of the economy. From the black perspective, the jobs crisis and persistent low-wages are the crux of the economic calamity strangling black communities. For millions of white workers, however, the rising economic tide, even if late and unsteady, did eventually lift their boats, though they still might not have recovered all the way.
But the reality is that the pie is shrinking for workers in general. The reality is that the richest 1% of the population will soon own more wealth than the entire rest of the world’s population. The reality is that we are running out time to stop the poverty and inequality cycle and to restore hope among people flipping burgers or surviving on the margin in our big cities and small towns.
Put bluntly, U.S. workers urgently need a new and differently functioning labor movement. The foe we face, in the political Right and global capitalism, demands a transformed and energized labor movement that can fight back with more than slogans of solidarity. No tinkering around the edges! A transformed movement must be inclusive because diversity carries the seeds of change, of untapped creativity.
The second section of A Future for Workers: A Contribution from Black Labor outlines the contours of an agenda that focuses on power rather than on grievances. It is put forth here only as a progressive approach to shaping an agenda that would emerge later through discussions among workers, their unions and their communities about the needs of working people.
Here is a preview of some of the major recommendations:
Jobs and Economic Development
A firm societal commitment to creating a full-employment economy
Implement the Robin Hood Tax (a .5% tax on Wall Street transactions)
Elimination of discriminatory gaps in black and white unemployment rates
Income support for students to focus on their education not loan debt
Movement toward a progressive system of taxation based on wealth and income
Government support for worker cooperatives
Attack predatory lending
Provide more government-supported financing for home buyers
Attack vigorously housing segregation
Environment
Take immediate steps to cut fossil fuel emissions
Fully fund the transition of workers and worker organizations out of the fossil fuel industry
End fracking
Address the disproportionate burden on communities of color of the environmental crisis
Desist from dumping waste from developed economies in the global North into vulnerable countries in the global South
Support family farms instead of corporate agriculture
Criminal Justice
Educate Don’t Incarcerate!
Reduce incarceration levels by mediation, drug courts, etc.
Decriminalize drug use
Support job programs targeted to returning citizens
Address sentencing disparities
Increase accountability of police to communities through civilian review boards
Desegregate all levels of law enforcement, including prosecutor’s offices
Distribution of Wealth
Adopt progressive income tax rates that target wealth and income
Require banks and other lending entities to compensate victims of the 2007/2008 economic collapse, especially communities of color
Adopt a 21st century “Marshall Plan” with a new urban strategy to rebuild communities of color and prevent the mass displacement of low-income residents
Raise the wages of low-income workers to livable rates, especially in occupations dominated by women, like health support, caretaking, fast food, retail, child care, etc.
Expand affordable child care and after-school programs for working parents
Education
Guarantee the right to a free quality education (K-12), and through four years of undergraduate education
End the war against teachers
Reduce class sizes
Increase resources for public colleges, especially Historical Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU’s)
Provide bi-lingual education whenever requested or wherever needed
Tolerance and Equity
Support just immigration polices that reconnect families and provide equitable and fair means to migrate
Engage in a genuine national dialogue on race and racism
Support meaningful affirmative action measures to redress historic disparities based on race, gender ethnicity
Fully fund and empower government agencies that monitor discriminatory practices and enforce civil rights
Fully back the enforcement of statues that protect the rights of the LGBTQ community
Labor Movement
Commit to organizing service and low-wage jobs that are the fastest growing employment sector and overrepresented by women and people of color, who are more likely to join a union
Organize workers in the South and in right-to-work states
Ensure union leadership and staff reflect the demographics of the membership and the workers targeted in an organizing campaign
Inject organizers into community organizing campaigns
Endorse political candidates with a 90-100% labor voting record ONLY
The closing section of A Future for Workers: A Contribution from Black Labor is a plea to all trade unionists to seize the moment. We should not see our task as simply re-inflating a slow-leaking tire. We need a new tire.
A transformed, energized labor movement must be authentically inclusive, something that workers see as their instrument for justice and equity. Moreover, our trade union movement must align itself with a broader labor movement that is welcoming janitors as well as adjunct professors (Fight for 15).
Above all, it is totally not acceptable for our movement to debate and adopt an agenda and then adjourn. The final version of a workers agenda must be a living document. A blueprint that guides and is guided by the ongoing efforts of workers to create a humane, sustainable future worthy of their sacrifices and the hopes of the next generation.
August 2015
To read the full BLC report, visit www.cbtu.org