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Subject: Choices for Black Labor
Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2007 19:42:19 -0400
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Choices for Black Labor
By Bill Fletcher, Jr., BC Editorial Board
June 21, 2007, The Black Commentator, Issue 234
http://www.blackcommentator.com/234/234_cover_story_choices_for_black_labor_fletcher_ed_bd.html
I came of age politically in the middle of the Black Power
movement. Within the ranks of organized labor, both the Black
Power movement and the Anti-Vietnam War movement had a
significant impact through the mid-1970s. Caucuses were being
formed to challenge the bureaucratic leaderships of many
unions. Wild-cat strikes were taking place in workplaces
around the country. And in some locales, independent unions
were being established, where workers had concluded that the
established union movement was incapable of making any
significant changes to address the needs and demands of rank
and file workers. At the national level, the Coalition of
Black Trade Unionists emerged as a major voice, arguing that
organized labor needed to take a new and different look at the
Black worker, a look and engagement that was based on the need
for respect and equality.
As we enter the 21st century, Black labor is in disarray.
Within the ranks of organized labor, the various institutions
that have often spoken on its behalf, have ossified. Black
caucuses in various unions have stepped back from challenging
and pushing the union leaderships and, instead, have in all
too many cases, degenerated into social clubs or step-ladders
for individuals to get positions within the union structure.
While there are greater numbers of Black staff and, in some
cases, elected leaders, there is an emphasis on acceptability
- to the leadership of organized labor - within the ranks of
the movement, rather than an emphasis on challenge and
struggle.
How this situation evolved would be the material around which
a book could be written. Suffice to say that the economic
crisis affecting Black America, a crisis that became very
evident in the mid-1970s, cut the ground beneath a major
portion of the Black working class. Combined with political
attacks on Black America by the Right, we went on the
defensive. In organized labor, the declining percentage of
workers organized in unions, along with the brutal climate
built up during the Ronald Reagan years, worsened the
conditions under which struggle could take place.
Yet in my humble opinion, what was particularly lost by Black
labor leaders was vision. The vision that was articulated
beginning in the 1930s with the growth of the National Negro
Congress and the Congress of Industrial Organizations, and
advanced in the 1950s with the National Negro Labor Council
and, later, by the A. Philip Randolph-led Negro American Labor
Council, and in the 1970s with the Coalition of Black Trade
Unionists, justifiably emphasized the inclusion of Black
workers at all levels of the union movement. In some
quarters, particularly within the Black labor Left, there were
equal efforts to emphasize a broader approach by organized
labor toward issues facing all workers, as well as the need
for organized labor to be a clear and consistent ally of the
Black Freedom Movement.
By the early 1980s and with changes in the leadership of much
of organized labor, the hostility that had often been felt by
Black labor shifted. This did not mean that Black labor was
consistently embraced, but it meant that there was at least a
public recognition of the Black worker and his/her importance.
Attacks on the CBTU, for instance, diminished, if not
disappeared. By the early 1990s, some unions had even gone as
far as officially supporting or sponsoring Black caucuses.
Yet something was lost. The â??fire' that had been felt
throughout organizations such as the League of Revolutionary
Black Workers (and its affiliates), or the United Community
Construction Workers in Boston, MA, was largely absent. Yes,
Black labor could sit at the table, but still missing was what
Black labor represents as a movement. Thus, Black labor
became an appendage to organized labor, rather than the
catalyst for union transformation. Black labor has been among
labor's most important and dedicated shock troops; we remain
the most pro-union of any ethnic/racial group; and we are
disproportionately active in our unions. This, however, does
not translate into a coalescing, let alone a fusion, of
organized labor and the Black Freedom Movements.
In the absence of a 21st century vision from Black labor
leadership, both despair as well as counterproductive views
can and have emerged. The despair that exists can be felt in
the environment. Visit Detroit, which was once a major center
for Black labor - not to mention for organized labor as a
whole - and one feels as if one is looking at a post-
industrial scenario, a city with the equivalent of no
comprehensive economic development strategy and where the
Black working class is suffering as well as disintegrating as
an effective force. Nationally, the prevailing emphasis, even
among many younger activists, is on individual solutions to
problems that are mainly collective. Within the Black working
class there is less of a sense that unions are the instruments
to deal with the larger problems facing Black America. This
does not mean that unions are disregarded, but it does mean
that there is little sense that they can or do have an
expansive role.
Counterproductive views are the other challenge. Gaining
considerable attention over the last few years has been the
growth of anti-immigrant sentiment within Black America,
including within the Black working class. The fact that much
of this sentiment has been actively fueled by white, right-
wing anti-immigrant groups is secondary to the fact that the
fear of competition and displacement on the part of the Black
working class has made it susceptible to â??nativist' arguments.
Black labor leadership has, for the most part, failed to
engage and rigorously challenge this sentiment with much more
than platitudes. As the Black working class faces continued
battering, the immigrant - documented and/or undocumented -
becomes, for many, the target of convenience for our anger.
Rather than understanding the nature of the problem we face as
lying within capitalism itself and the search by business for
cheaper and more vulnerable workforces, the immigrant becomes
the safe and convenient enemy of the moment.
Black labor has historically played an interesting role,
something akin to the irritant in the oyster that brings
forward a pearl. Whether we organized independent unions when
we were refused entry into the American Federation of Labor,
or when we and Chicanos became decisive supporters of a new
labor movement, as in the formation of the Congress of
Industrial Organizations in the 1930s and 1940s, Black labor
has little history of passivity. The time has come for Black
labor to step back into that role of irritant to the oyster,
but with a 21st century frame of reference.
The choices facing Black labor begin with vision and they are
linked to organization. The Black Freedom Movement has always
had at its core the struggle to expand the terms of democracy
beyond statutes and formalities, and instead, in the direction
of social transformation. This was true whether the battle
was against slavery, against Jim Crow segregation, or against
de facto segregation. To this should be added that the Black
Freedom Movement has nearly always been an essential ally for
other efforts to expand democracy and oppose injustice and
inequality. This core - the fight for consistent
democracy/opposition to injustice and inequality - must remain
the guiding principles for Black labor and its challenge to
organized labor today. The implications are quite profound in
that what is being asked of Black labor, as a contingent of
both organized labor and the Black Freedom Movement, is to
push for a reconstructed and redefined labor movement that is
emphasizing social transformation.
What does this mean concretely? Among other things, it begins
with taking great risks. Too many white labor leaders believe
that they have been sufficiently inoculated such that they can
speak for Black labor. Let us flip the script. Black labor
must not only speak for the Black worker, but Black labor must
be the voice speaking on behalf of all workers. This means
not restricting ourselves to arguments about the percentage of
Blacks on staff in unions, but rather challenging the basic
program of organized labor including, but not limited to, the
failure of organized labor to have a plan for organizing Black
workers.
Let me offer a few suggestions:
If the saying 'as goes the South, so goes the nation'
remains correct - and I would suggest that it is - then
organized labor must unionize the South. To do that, the
Black worker, and the Black community more generally, are
essential. Workers are more likely to vote in a progressive
direction if they are unionized, thus, insofar as the South
has limited unionization, the chance for developing
progressive politics in the USA as a whole is encumbered.
To organize the South, the Black community must be central.
This does not mean that the African American is the only
constituency. Whites, along with the rising numbers of Latino
and African immigrants in the South are critical. But the
historically rooted African American community becomes
essential if unionization is to win. That means unionization
must be a community affair. One need only remember the 1968
sanitation workers struggle in Memphis, TN, or the 1969
Charleston, South Carolina hospital workers struggle to get a
sense of possibilities. Yet, such struggles were nearly 40
years ago, and neither organized labor nor the Black Freedom
Movement have built upon such examples in terms of continuing
activity (note: the current struggle of the Smithfield workers
in North Carolina as well as the alliance of Black Workers for
Justice and the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, also in North
Carolina, are examples of more recent attempts to create a new
framework that builds upon the possibilities that were evident
in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Whether these will set a
pattern for a new practice or instead be anomalies, only time
and struggle will determine).
My decades-old friend, Dr. Steven Pitts from UC-Berkeley Labor
Center, has made a mission of emphasizing the fight for good
jobs as key for Black America. His fundamental point is that
jobs can be transformed through unionization. Jobs, such as
longshore, which had been among the most oppressive and
underpaid, underwent a conversion of sorts through
unionization. Jobs do not necessarily begin high-wage. They
can, however, become high wage through worker organization.
This means that organized labor must have a program to
organize economically depressed regions - such as our central
cities - to transform the jobs. This, again, becomes a
community affair. This point must be emphasized, particularly
in light of the Black neo-conservative view that holds, in
essence, that any job that is created, no matter how poorly it
pays, is a good job for a depressed community. Thus, we are
told, the Black community should be grateful for whatever it
can get. Rather than accepting poverty level employment, the
self-organization of workers through unions can transform such
jobs into respectable, higher-wage employment. This was true
of longshore and trucking in the past. One is witnessing a
similar renovation in the janitorial industry after years of
re-unionizing the workers, after employers had restructured
the industry, destroyed the unions and workers that had been
in place, and brought in lower waged workers. The fact that
this situation could and was turned around, spoke volumes to
the need for unionization and activism. Struggle and
organization, in other words, are an alternative to begging
and acceptance.
With structural unemployment seeming to grow each day with
workers dropping off the rolls finding no work, an effort to
organize the unemployed becomes paramount. This means
building institutions that both help to support, economically
and psychologically, unemployed workers, and that also
provides them with a vehicle through which to place demands on
the government and corporations for jobs or income. At a
point where worker productivity continues to rise, but is
disconnected from wages, we need to insist that business owes
a social payback to our communities. Among other things, this
means developing tax policies that lift the burden from the
middle income and place them on those who are running away
with profits.
A final point, at least for now, is this: none of this happens
in the absence of Black labor organization that is prepared to
shake the table. This is a mission that befalls the younger
generation of Black labor leaders, but it is a mission that
must be supported by veteran leaders. Each caucus and
organization of Black workers must ask itself how it is
concretely addressing the crisis facing the Black working
class. Each grouping of Black workers must ask how our unions
are concretely addressing the crisis facing the Black working
class. Together we must be bold enough to suggest that by
addressing the crisis of the Black working class, we are
indeed challenging not only the structure, mission and
direction of organized labor, but we are challenging the
current neo-liberal direction of the USA.
[BC Editorial Board member, Bill Fletcher, Jr. is a labor and
international writer and activist, and the immediate past
president of TransAfrica Forum. Click here to contact Mr.
Fletcher.]
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