Labor can't 'sit on the sidelines' of racial justice fight, AFL-CIO says

[Omaha Steve]

Source: Aljazeera

by Ned Resnikoff

Over the weekend, unionists from all over the country gathered in Atlanta, Georgia for the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Civil and Human Rights Conference, organized by the American labor federation AFL-CIO.

For a struggling labor movement, the event is a crucial opportunity to forge bonds with other burgeoning social movements.

The Martin Luther King conference has taken place over Martin Luther King weekend for around two decades, but this year’s event comes at an especially pivotal moment for the AFL-CIO and organized labor more generally. The percentage of American workers in a union is at a historic low, but labor groups have found some new energy by emphasizing social movement organizing. Now the question confronting the labor movement is whether it can translate that energy into a sustainable power base.

Carmen Berkley, the Civil, Human and Women’s Rights Director for the AFL-CIO, told Al Jazeera that it is critical for organized labor to collaborate with civil rights groups and the burgeoning Black Lives Matter movement that has emerged out of recent police killings of unarmed black men.

FULL story at link.



Read more: http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/1/19/labor-aims-to-strengthenbondswithothersocialmovements.html

[BumRushDaShow]

1. We need the unions to reach out to minorities

at the local trades levels. Blacks are well-represented in service, government, auto, and manufacturing... But when it comes to plumbers, pipe-fitters, general construction, painters, roofing, masonry, carpenters, etc., it became a hereditary/generational/in-the-family thing.

Here is a snapshot of the makeup of the union members in the building trades in Philadelphia as of the end of 2007: 99 percent were male, 74 percent were white and 70 percent lived in the suburbs.

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Now, let’s zoom ahead five years and offer this snapshot of union members in the building trades as of the end of 2012: 99 percent were male, 76 percent were white and 67 percent lived in the suburbs.

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For many years, Wigglesworth said, the building trades worked to exclude women and minorities. “As one business manager told me, our idea of diversity was hiring the second son of a member.”

Even today, the worker lists are replete with seniors and juniors who have the same first and last names. Various ethnic groups gravitated to certain professions — the Irish as electricians, the Italians as cement masons, Native Americans as ironworkers.

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http://axisphilly.org/article/despite-pledges-to-change-phillys-building-trades-still-dominated-by-white-males/

Since the state-controlled school system has been systematically reducing or eliminating the few high schools here that taught trades (Bok Vocational and Technical High School, Mastbaum Vocational and Technical High School, Saul Agricultural High School), then it's up to the unions to help set up apprenticeships in the city for students who might want to seek out a trade versus being forced into the rigors and cost of going to college when there is no desire to do so, leading to someone who "drops out" of upwardly mobile working society, and dead-ends with a McJob.

[jeff47]

3. Not just PA.

It's hard to find vocational programs in many places around the country. So aside from the kids who start in the family business, there's not a lot of easy ways to enter the trades.

I learned to be a general contractor from my grandfather and his sons (my dad & uncle). We usually hired one particular electrician or plumber or painter (and so on through the rest of the trades). Until they retired, and their sons took over the family business. Then we hired their sons.

There were no programs in the area to get more people into the trades. So it was all passed on in families. Which then leads to problems like me going a completely different career route, leaving one fewer contractor in the area. Happened enough that it was starting to get hard to hire subcontractors.

[Bluenorthwest]

2. Trumka's Speech on Ferguson and Labor Confronting Racism, Spetember 2014

[Yavin4]

4. Why was MLK in Memphis where he was skilled?

He was supporting the garbage workers strike.