Contents:
This ignored more profound problems such as the way unions in the U.
He also felt the culture of the U. Individual or groups who raise unpopular opinions critical of leadership often find themselves isolated or undermined. Fletcher found it amazing that some unions were threatening to leave the AFL-CIO and others threatening to drive others out of the body with so little discussion-the latter applied disproportionately to Blacks.
Usually, no attempt was made by either side to bring the debate to the members. According to Fletcher, while the debate needed to take place, it should have been reframed in its entirety. He insisted it needed to be about a compelling vision for the future of workers in the US.
The split among and between labor unions actually affords Blacks and Latinos the opportunity together to craft reforms that unapologetically benefit their respective groups while also contributing to a stronger union movement.
Did they avail themselves of the opportunity? However, Black external labor groups like the A. Collectively, they represent critically needed pressure in support of BWC, Black unionists and Black workers generally. The current crisis facing the public sector in the USA along with the crisis facing organized labor should present a moment to reconsider old assumptions.
A multi-union effort to organize Southern public sector workers could be something close to a game-changer on several levels, not the least being the potential impact on Southern politics and Southern unionization. And, as the saying goes, as goes the South, so goes the USA. Organizing public sector workers, particularly non-federal workers, is quite different than organizing private sector workers.
In each state there are specific laws that permit or refuse to permit the right of workers to organize unions in the non-federal public sector. Some states, such as North Carolina, have been moving in an increasingly regressive direction. The long-term impact of this regressive tendency remains unclear but it is probably safe to suggest that anti-worker repression will make organizing and organization more difficult, and as a result, the forms of organizing and organization will necessarily change.
In organizing public sector workers one is organizing communities and is directly taking on, for better or for worse, elected leaders since the latter are the actual employers of public sector workers. Winning the right to unionization and collective bargaining, therefore, not to mention winning an honorable collective bargaining agreement, becomes far more than a matter of lobbying and negotiations but is nothing short of a long-term mass campaign. To win respect for the rights of public sector workers, communities need to be engaged and a large-scale alliance must be built.
This is a book for those who want to know what really happens when, in circumstances of enormous complexity and under the impetus of the New Deal. Black Workers And The New Unions [Horace Roscoe Cayton, George Sinclair Mitchell, Charles S. Johnson] on bahana-line.com *FREE* shipping on qualifying.
Martin Luther King was murdered, was an example of a public sector effort that took on the form of a mass, community campaign. The issues were not seen as restricted to the workplace, but were understood to be components of a larger scale struggle for social and economic justice.
As organized labor seeks locations for new growth, it needs to reconsider public sector workers in the South.
Here are some things to be understood:. New technologies have transformed the global economy in ways that were unimaginable in Often, the discussion of these global economic realities focuses on the hyper mobility of financial capital around the world, the movement of jobs away from the United States, and the increased migration of people from the global South to the United States.
While these features are present, it is important to also focus on the new global division of work: Some old jobs are leaving the United States; some old jobs in the United States are expanding; some jobs that are new to the United States are growing. This new global division of work means that there are large numbers of jobs, mainly in the service sector, that will necessarily be located in the United States for the foreseeable future.
These jobs are in industries such as logistics and transportation, hospitality hotels, resorts, and restaurants , retail, construction and building services, and the care industries health care, home care, child care. Today, many of these jobs are poorly paid, don't provide substantive retirement and health-care benefits, and offer few connections to better-paying jobs.
In these industries, the market power of firms relative to the power of their employees creates situations where basic working conditions are eroding. The health-care, leisure-and-hospitality, and retail-trade industries have three key things in common. They are less susceptible to offshoring due to the need for close proximity to customers; they employ large numbers of black workers; and they are possible to unionize.
In , the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that these three industries would account for In , black employment in these industries made up 32 percent of all black employment, and the vast majority of these workers received low wages health care: Given these projections of large job growth in industries with significant black employment at low wages, strategies that focus on education and training of individual workers are insufficient.
It is vital to find ways to improve the job quality for workers who hold or will hold these jobs. There are two basic strategies for accomplishing this job transformation and raising industry labor standards for workers: The importance of these key strategies for black workers cannot be overstated.
The traditional approach to the job crisis in the black community has focused on the unemployment dimension.
For decades, advocates have fought for better access to industries such as construction, where black workers are underrepresented, as one key solution to the problem of unemployment. There should surely be better access to construction jobs for black workers, and policy advocates should be unrelenting in this arena. However, what is not stated or is forgotten is that the blue-collar pathway into a middle-class lifestyle via construction jobs or jobs in the manufacturing sector such as the auto, steel, aircraft, and oil-tool industries was paved by workers who fought to form unions and who thus gained the power to demand better working conditions from their employers.
There is nothing inherent in a construction job that results in good pay, and pay eroded whenever construction work was turned back into casual labor. The spread of the nonunion construction firms has eroded the wages and benefits for all construction workers.
The reduction in the risk shift. Industries and occupations that generally fall in the public sector have high rates of unionization compared to those that are primarily within the private sector. For decades, advocates have fought for better access to industries such as construction, where black workers are underrepresented, as one key solution to the problem of unemployment. One of the central alliances will be with Black legislators in each state. Also, Black union workers with less than a high school degree have a wage advantage of about 20 percent, and are Levy and Temin have argued that "the declining bargaining power of the average worker has resulted in two observable changes: Black workers with the least years of formal education benefit the most from union representation Figure
This lesson -- that unionization is central to turning manufacturing and construction jobs into good-paying jobs -- needs to be remembered and applied as many advocates push green-collar jobs as a solution to a myriad of problems facing the black community. Green-collar jobs are not inherently good jobs.