Blacks and Labor in Print

End of the Road

If the Auto Industry is Dead What does that Mean for Workers?

By Mark Brenner and Jane Slaughter

What must it feel like?

To carry the hopes and dreams of an entire race of people on your shoulders?

As much as I hate to say it, I know beyond a doubt that the next four weeks are going to be nasty. He's leading, and there are people who simply cannot stomach the idea of his beautiful family living in the White House. There will be smears, all sorts of slander and lies, the likes of which you've probably rarely seen. So y'all, we got to pray for this man. And please . . . make sure you VOTE!!! Vote early if you can!

AFL-CIO Head Says White Workers Need to Look Beyond Race—The labor movement needs to educate its members that if they care about keeping their jobs, health care, pensions, and creating good jobs, they should support Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill), the presumptive Democratic candidate for president, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka said July 1. . . . Trumka said that "a lot of white folks...a lot of them good union people, just can't get past this idea that there is something wrong with voting for a black man." Trumka received a standing ovation from the 3,000 delegates when he said, "those of us who know better can't afford to look the other way." The labor movement has a responsibility to challenge "racism" because "we know, better than anyone else, how racism is used to divide working people," he said. Trumka [and the] AFL-CIO June 26 endorsed Obama and said it would launch its biggest ever grassroots mobilization effort to educate working families about Obama and the "anti-worker" polices of his opponent Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). . . . Obama has always been on labor's side and has voted with labor 98 percent of the time, Trumka said.BNA

The Crisis in Organized Labor

As Viewed from the Inside and Out

A Review by Steve Early

Union leader: Racism keeps Obama from building lead—A prominent union leader on Tuesday blamed racism for Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-Ill.) failure to build a big lead over GOP rival Sen. John McCain. Gerald McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), said many workers are considering voting for McCain (R-Ariz.) because of his military service and status as a hero of the Vietnam War. . . . “There are some local union presidents that are afraid — yes, that’s the word, afraid — to hand out literature for Barack Obama,” said McEntee. . . . McEntee said McCain is not a friend of unions and members must campaign for Obama and spread the message of his support for labor. He said unions will be in deep trouble if Obama is defeated for the presidency. TheHill

James Edward Jackson Jr.—born in Richmond, Va., on 29 November 1914, the son of James and Clara Kersey Jackson—died 1 September 2007 in Brooklyn. His father was a pharmacist. The family lived in Jackson Ward, a segregated section for Richmond blacks. In 1931 (at 16), Jackson entered Virginia Union University. He graduated three years later with a degree in chemistry. In 1937 (at 22), Jackson received a degree in pharmacy from Howard University. But in his last year at Howard, he helped start the Southern Negro Youth Congress, which organized strikes by tobacco workers, mostly black women, who were paid $5 a week. A union representing 5,000 tobacco workers soon gained recognition. . . . Jackson joined the Communist Party in 1947. He held important positions in the Party and was one of 21 Communist Party members who were indicted in 1951, at the height of the McCarthy era, for, among other things, teaching classes on violent revolution. The case was front-page news around the country. In 1952 Jackson became the Southern secretary for the Party and a staunch advocate of civil rights. NYTimes

Henry Nicholas on Social Justice in America

A Black Commentator Interview

Beth Shulman, author of The Betrayal of Work—this week's raise from $5.15 to $5.85. It was frozen in place by Congress for a decade. It will go to $6.55 next summer and to $7.25 the summer after that. But it will remain far short of the real value it had a half-century ago. In 1956, according to the Economic Policy Institute, the minimum wage was 56 percent of the national average wage. The value shriveled to 31 percent last year. But EPI analyst Liana Fox said that even with the increases, she projects the $7.25 will be only 41 percent of the national average wage of $17.86. The real value of the $7.25 an hour in 2009 will only be $6.42. Arloc Sherman, a senior researcher at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, concurred with somewhat different numbers, projecting a drop in value down to $6.93. . . .[Joe] Biden is worried about his net worth being as low as $70,000. At $5.85 an hour, it would take nearly 12,000 hours, or nearly six years, to earn that amount. Even six rolls of toilet paper requires a half-hour of work at minimum wages.—Derrick Z. Jackson An unlivable minimum boston globe

In-Dependence from Bondage The ABCs of Class Struggle Southern Needs Race Struggle is Class Struggle

We Need Political Climate Change

By Roger Toussaint

President Local 100

The Crisis in Organized Labor (Steve Early)

Running to the Right: Barack Obama. . . . (Bruce Dixon )

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I think Obama's candidacy is an extraordinary event, and I see it not mainly through the generational lens or even through the racial lens. I see it through the way that he frames conflict, political difference. He wants to transcend and not litigate some of these open questions from our culture wars and out past political wars. It's not as if he's saying we have to extirpate every remnant of the Reagan era, we have to go after every right-wing this or right-wing that. It's as if he wants to say, "It's a whole new day, let's redefine the questions and let's change the agenda." But the other thing that I wanted to say about Obama is with respect to blacks who are voting to Barack Obama in 90 percent levels in the primary season, and who constitute a very important element of his political coalition. I don't know that they recognize that they're voting for the end of race as we've known it in the country. I don't know that they recognize and I don't mean to belittle them. I'm just asking a question. I'm not sure they recognize that—Glenn Loury, PBS

Redressing Taft-Hartley—Sixty years ago this month, US labor law was dramatically altered in the interests of capital when the Republican-led 80th Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act over intense opposition from organized labor. The legislation survived a veto by President Harry Truman, who described the act as a "slave-labor bill “. . . Earlier this year, the new Democratic-led House passed the Employee Free Choice Act, designed to undo some of the worst aspects of Taft-Hartley. The Act would ensure that when a majority of employees in a workplace decide to form a union, they can do so without the debilitating obstacles employers now used to block their free choice. Union officials called it the most important piece of pro-labor legislation to pass a house of Congress in decades. . . . You can help too by letting your senators know you expect them to vote in favor of the Act, by joining the AFL-CIO's Employee Free Choice Action Team, and by helping spread the word about this critical piece of legislation. Peter Rothberg The Nation

Tera W. Hunter. To 'Joy My Freedom Southern Black Women's Lives and Labors after the Civil War

To 'Joy My Freedom / Vanishing Washerwoman / Washerwomen / Sons & Daughters / Amanda Smith Autobiography

Washerwomen in Brooklyn Washer-Woman Poem Washerwomen in Baltimore John Henrik Clarke / A'lelia Walker

Fifty Influential Figures

AFL-CIO Mobilizing for a Comprehensive Health Care Plan—Nearly forty-seven million U.S. citizens are uninsured. Tens of millions more worry about losing the coverage they have. Workers fear changing or losing jobs because they are at risk of losing their health care coverage. American businesses that provide adequate health benefits are at a significant disadvantage, competing in the global marketplace with foreign companies that do not carry health care costs on their balance sheets. The same is true for businesses in domestic competition against employers that provide little or no coverage. As a society, we all benefit from improvements in public health. We are a more creative, vibrant, productive and democratic nation because of it. We are all at risk of illness, injury or poor health, and we all suffer when individuals are denied needed care. The shortcomings of the American health care system-which ignores these fundamental realities-strain our nation's social and economic fabric. The time for talking about this crisis is past. All families deserve the security of a universal health care system that guarantees access based on need rather than income. Health care is a fundamental human right and an important measure of social justice. AFL-CIO Executive Council Statement on Health Care March 06, 2007

Obituary of Joe Walker

Muhammad Speaks International Correspondent

Codification of a New World Order—The working class has every right to be, to steal a line from Obama, bitter with liberal elites. I am bitter. I have seen what the loss of manufacturing jobs and the death of the labor movement did to my relatives in the former mill towns in Maine . Their story is the story of tens of millions of Americans who can no longer find a job that supports a family and provides basic benefits. Human beings are not commodities. They are not goods. They grieve and suffer and feel despair. They raise children and struggle to maintain communities. The growing class divide is not understood, despite the glibness of many in the media, by complicated sets of statistics or the absurd, utopian faith in unregulated globalization and complicated trade deals. It is understood in the eyes of a man or woman who is no longer making enough money to live with dignity and hope.—America's Democratic Collapse

Fred Punch & 1199 Workers

Hopkins Hospital Hit by Hour-Long Walkout

Latest Trend in Corporate America—On March 28th . . .3,400 workers at Circuit City stores across the country were greeted with the news that they had been fired . . . . Company spokesman Bob Cimino bluntly announced that the mass firings targeted the most experienced and highest paid in-store workers as part of a "wage management initiative" to replace them with low-wage new hires. "It had nothing to do with their skills or whether they were a good worker or not," Cimino said. Those who were fired made up roughly 8.5 percent of the 40,000 workers at the 650 retail outlets of the nation's second-largest electronics retailer, which trails only Best Buy. But these workers, the company explained, were being paid "well above the market-based salary range for their roles." According to Bloomberg News, however, Circuit City pay averages $10 to $11 an hour-precisely the market average. After twenty years, [Bobby] Young was earning $18.90 an hour, with healthcare benefits. His replacement will earn less than half that amount, without benefits. The company will graciously allow its allegedly overpaid former workers to reapply for their old jobs at starting wages after they endure 10 weeks of grueling unemployment. Fired Los Angeles worker Richard O'Neal was told he could eventually reapply for his job if he is willing to work for $7.50 per hour, California's minimum wage. Sharon Smith Circuit City's Guinea Pigs Counterpunch
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Invention of the White Race Allen begins Volume 1 by reviewing the many histories of American racism written in the 20th century. Dividing the arguments into the psycho-cultural school and the socio-economic school of thought, he teases out the strengths and flaws of their scholarship. Allen then posits racial oppression as a deliberate ruling-class decision (constantly undergoing renewal) to prevent property-less European Americans from allying themselves with enslaved and free African Americans by offering the European Americans privileges based on white skin. His solution is to study "racism" rather than "race" because studies of race always devolve onto discussions of the body--onto those who are perceived to possess race--and thus avoids the real issue. That issue is the institutionalization of racism, how it functions systemically. He argues that race(ism) should be treated like any other oppression such as those oppressions practiced on people of a certain class or gender. It is a strong, well researched, tightly argued work. He proves that the "white race" can be "gotten on a technicality" because it was and is indeed an invented rather than a natural category. Amazon Reviewer

William P. Quigley, Ending Poverty As We Know It: Guaranteeing a Right to a Job at a Living Wage. Temple University Press, 2003

In cities and counties across the country Americans are asserting their right to a job at a living wage. This campaign has been built around the idea that those who work full time are entitled to live above the real poverty line. Professor and public interest lawyer William Quigley, who helped lead the fight to give the workers of New Orleans a raise, presents the moral case for doing so, and argues that Americans should codify the right to a job at a living wage in the Constitution..—From the Publisher

Peter Rachleff, Lynching And Racial Violence: Histories & Legacies Report From A Conference / Black Labor in Richmond, Virginia, 1865-1890 ( 1989)

Hard-Pressed in the Heartland: The Hormel Strike and the Future of the Labor Movement (South End Press, 1993).

"Black Richmond and the Knights of Labor," in Jerry Lembcke, ed., Race, Class and Urban Change (JAI Press, 1989).

2006, 44 million workers were employed in low-wage jobs: A new report from The Mobility Agenda finds that over 40 million jobs in the United States - about 1 in 3 - pay low wages ($11.11 per hour or less) and often do not offer employment benefits like health insurance, retirement savings accounts, paid sick days, or family leave. Moreover, these jobs tend to have inflexible or unpredictable scheduling requirements and provide little opportunity for career advancement. . . . The authors define a low-wage job as one paying substantially less than the job held by a typical male worker. The trend since 2001 has been a sharp decline in wages for these jobs. Worse, reviewing the evidence on economic mobility, the authors conclude, "In the U.S. labor market, it is not possible for everyone to be middle class, no matter how hard they work. Moreover, it has been getting harder to do over time." March 2007, Heather Boushey, Shawn Fremstad, Rachel Gragg, Margy Waller, Understanding Low Wage Work in the United States

“The Shape Of Unions To Come” -- Do you have your dream job? If the answer is "yes," you are probably in a union. That's the finding of a nationwide marketing survey of over 37,000 workers released on January 25. The respondents most likely to report that they were in their dream jobs were police and firefighters (35 percent) followed by teachers (32 percent.) By coincidence, on that same date, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released a report showing yet another severe drop in U.S. union membership - from a steady 12.5 percent in 2004 and 2005 to 12 percent in 2006. The remaining stronghold of unionism, with a 41.9 percent membership rate, is local government workers. As the BLS points out, "This group includes several heavily unionized occupations, such as teachers, police officers and firefighters."

Anya Kamenetz TomPaine.com January 30, 2007 From Monsignor Sweeney to Reverend Andy Labor’s“New” Agenda Book Reviews by Steve Early

Labor's Problem: Real Wages

Walter Reuther

By Carroll Thompson

A pact with the devil -- Carmen Cecilia Santana Romaña, a 28-year-old mother of three and a national trade union officer, was shot dead in her home in Antioquia, Colombia, on Feb. 7. Her murder came as little surprise; the most dangerous country in the world for trade unionists is Colombia, which will become Washington's newest free trade partner unless Congress stops the deal. Some Democrats may be eager to show that they are not obstructionists on trade by cutting a deal with the Bush administration to "fix" the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement and passing the revised accord. But that's the wrong approach with Colombia. Congress should reject the pact outright. In Colombia, trade unionists who are not murdered are often threatened, attacked or kidnapped. The overwhelming majority of cases are unsolved; many are never investigated, and the perpetrators go unpunished, ready to strike again. The government says 58 unionists were murdered in Colombia in 2006, up from 40 the year before. Labor groups report even higher totals: 77 murdered in 2006, up from 70 in 2005. Carol Pier Baltimore Sun April 2, 2007

Labor's Problem: Real Wages

Samuel Gompers

By Carroll Thompson

The country has changed – It's more difficult to build a mass movement for social and economic change, to find large numbers of Americans who care about social solidarity. If popular entertainment is, by definition, mass entertainment, what happens when no mass exists, when an insufficient number of people occupy cultural common ground? In that case, for whom would you make Norma Rae? . . . The American labor movement is arguably in more trouble now than it was then. Where is the next movie that might hope to change the course of history? Of movies about ideas and social justice, Sam Goldwyn famously said, "If you want to send a message, call Western Union." In other words, moviemakers are in the movie business, not the social change business. . . .If we are to find a Roseanne or a Norma Rae again in popular entertainment, if we are to make movies that can affect the course of history, we need to find something else first, something difficult to see on the horizon. We need to find a belief in an ideal disappearing not only from our movies but also from our lives—the notion that we do, in fact, share common ground, and that if we ignore the lives of the least fortunate in our society we may well be ignoring the future of our society itself.

Robert Nathan and Jo-Ann Mort, Hollywood Flicks Stiff the Working Class. The Nation

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MARSHALL & THE AFL-CIO

AFL-CIO Report of Convention Proceedings (1956)

BLACKS, UNIONS, & ORGANIZING in the South (1956-1996):A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY

Compiled by Rudolph Lewis

South African Union Site selected as Labour Website of the Year -- London, UK: LabourStart, the news and campaigning website of the international trade union movement, today announced the results of the 10th annual competition for the Labour Website of the Year. The winning site belongs to the South African trade union Solidarity. In second place was Britain's largest union, UNISON. Among the top ten websites in the competition were three British unions, three from developing countries (two from South Africa and one from the Philippines), and sites from Australia, the USA, and Canada. . . . For full details . . . go here: LabourStart

Black Male Oppression in USA Deepens --The share of young black men without jobs has climbed relentlessly, with only a slight pause during the economic peak of the late 1990's. In 2000, 65 percent of black male high school dropouts in their 20's were jobless — that is, unable to find work, not seeking it or incarcerated. By 2004, the share had grown to 72 percent, compared with 34 percent of white and 19 percent of Hispanic dropouts. Even when high school graduates were included, half of black men in their 20's were jobless in 2004, up from 46 percent in 2000. Incarceration rates climbed in the 1990's and reached historic highs in the past few years. In 1995, 16 percent of black men in their 20's who did not attend college were in jail or prison; by 2004, 21 percent were incarcerated. By their mid-30's, 6 in 10 black men who had dropped out of school had spent time in prison.In the inner cities, more than half of all black men do not finish high school.

Erik Eckholm, Plight Deepens for Black Men, Studies Warn. NYTimes

In today's labor movement, it's hard to find a leader who doesn't stress the need to organize new members. Judging by the size of their paychecks, however, some of labor's top brass aren't ready to put their money where their mouth is. According to data filed under the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA), the number of union officials and staff earning high salaries has skyrocketed in recent years. For example, the number of individuals earning over $100,000 a year more than doubled between 2000 and 2004—the latest year with complete data. Over the same period the number of officers and staff earning more than $150,000 increased 84 percent. Mark Brenner Bloated Salaries Limit Organizing

The Negro and Industrial Unionism

By Reginald T. Kennedy

William Green

Send contributions to: ChickenBones: A Journal / 13219 Kientz Road / Jarratt, VA 23867 -- I became aware of Rudy Lewis’ labor of love a few short months ago during a visit to Kalamu ya Salaam’s e-drum listserv. As soon as I saw the title of the journal I knew it was about Black folks, and the power of the written word. A quick click took me into a journal that’s long on creativity, highlighting well-known, little known, and a little known writers, and commitment to the empowerment of Black folks. I contacted Rudy to ask if he’d consider publishing some of my work. His response was immediate, and a couple of days after I’d forwarded some poems to him—they were part of ChickenBones. What I didn’t know was that this journal has been surviving for the last five years with very little outside financial support. . . If we want journals like this to “thrive” we need to support them with more than our website hits, praise, and submissions for publication consideration.

—Peace, Mary E. Weems (January 2007)

Profiteering From Crime -- "Today we are changing the course of our country," said Nanci Pelosi, the new speaker of the US House of Representatives at her swearing-in ceremony. The Democrats are committed to act against a commercial sector that specializes in prisons with assets estimated at nine billion dollars. US Private prisons take advantage of the labor force of convicts. The industry leader in private prisons is the Correction Corporation of America (CCA) that has become a genuine empire. It holds half of the market and is one of the top five companies on the rise at the New York Stock Exchange. -- In the United States there are some two million inmates, the largest prison population in the world. Although the crime rate has not increased, the number of prisoners is ten times greater than in 1970. Many of the prisoners are held in one of the 120 private centers that are part of the Prison Industrial Complex, which takes advantage of a correctional policy outlined by "the war on drugs" started by Ronald Reagan in 1981 that is founded on repression and minimizes education and efforts at reinsertion.

Jose A. Fernandez Carrasco Radio Habana Cuba