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Black Trade Unionists Call for Building Political Strength |
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| Sen. Barack Obama, shown here at an AFL-CIO forum in Trenton, N.J., spoke at the CBTU convention on Friday. | |
As the nearly 1,500 union members meet in Chicago this weekend for the annual convention of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU), they are focusing on how black workers have been especially hit hard by the economic policies of the Bush administration and are strategizing to ensure the next administration is accountable for improving the lives of all America’s working families.
All workers have suffered in the six years that George W. Bush has been president. But black workers, even those in unions, have been affected the most. According to a recent study, a whopping 55 percent of the union jobs lost in 2004 were held by black workers. More stunningly, African American women accounted for 70 percent of the union jobs lost by women in 2004.
At the same time, the percentage of African American workers who are union members is dropping substantially. The percentage of African Americans who are either members of or represented by unions fell from 31.7 percent of all black workers in 1983 to 16 percent in 2006, according to a report by the Center for Economic Policy and Research.
The report shows much of the decline is due to the loss of manufacturing jobs. Between 1979 and 2006, the share of all African American workers who worked in manufacturing declined from 23.9 percent to 10.1 percent.
In his address to the convention, CBTU President William Lucy said:
We must not only challenge policies that hurt workers, we also have a responsibility to break out of the box of status quo economics that traps workers in a cycle of playing catch-up, but never rising above a certain standard of living.
In an interview with Glen Ford of the Black Agenda Report, Lucy, who also is secretary-treasurer of AFSCME, said the one of the main causes of black economic distress is the “social, political and economic philosophy” shared by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, the rich and the administration that represents their interests.
He said the nation should adopt four core principles regarding work:
Anyone who wants to work should have a job;
Anyone who does work should be able to live in dignity with health care and retirement security for their family;
Every worker should have the opportunity to form a union and bargain collectively;
All workers should share equitably in the prosperity of a strong American economy.
Under the theme “Lessons Learned, New Vision for the Future,” the delegates discussed strategies to strengthen black representation in unions and put such working family issues as health care and rebuilding the nation’s economy at the top of the 2008 political agenda.
AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson told the delegates that passing the Employee Free Choice Act is the best way to build working families’ political strength and increase black union membership. She said the struggle to pass the legislation is “already one of the biggest moral struggles that you and I are ever going to have.”
And the only way we’re going to win is the way we’ve won all our victories by joining together, by working harder and smarter together, supporting each other, lifting each other up when we’re down.
Presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), a co-sponsor of the Employee Free Choice Act, spoke to the delegates on Friday. At an AFL-CIO presidential forum in New Jersey on May 14, Obama praised Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1968 trip to Memphis, Tenn., to help sanitation workers organize.
They stood up for themselves. In this country, we should value the labor of every single American worker.
Obama promised to “make the Employee Free Choice Act the law of the land.”
The delegates also showed strong solidarity with the community by donating more than $3,500 worth of food and supplies to a Chicago-area homeless shelter. They also joined in a rally for Resurrection Health Care workers who are trying to form a union.
Other convention speakers include AFSCME President Gerald McEntee; Communications Workers of America President Larry Cohen; the Rev. Jesse Jackson; Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee; as well as AFL-CIO Organizing Director Stewart Acuff and AFL-CIO Political Director Karen Ackerman.
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I think we still do not understand the power of our vote. It is trivialized by democrats and republicans alike and for a reason, they know the power of the black vote a lot better than we do. We have made the difference in a lot of important elections, we put Kennedy in office, Carter, Clinton, Governors, Mayors etc. That’s power that we have fail to use to our advantages, or have not recognized at all and fail to vote because many of use think it won’t help. It does help, when we can control who is elected and who isn’t, we can control the lost of jobs, appointments to positions that directly effects our communities. So I support building political power and think the best way to do it is educate black people of the power they have and how to use that power. We have to reverse how black people think about voting and show the reality of what happens when we don’t get involved and when we do.