Henderson Tells Convention: Employee Choice Is Civil Rights Issue   by James Parks, Sep 14, 2009

Share

As the AFL-CIO Convention prepared to vote on Resolution 1 on organizing, Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), told the delegates that the freedom to form unions is a civil rights issue.

He called for Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act and pledged that the civil rights community will work “shoulder to shoulder” with workers to pass the bill.

Union participation can begin to lift the dead weight of decades of discrimination. For African Americans, women and Latinos the best way to build a better life is to join together with others to form a union.

He reminded the delegates of the admonition by legendary labor leader A. Philip Randolph that the best tickets to freedom are a voter registration card and a union card. The advantage of being in a union is obvious, he said, with African American union members earning 28 percent more than their nonunion counterparts, Latinos 23 percent more and women 30 percent more.

[Freedom to form unions] is an issue not just of workers’ rights, it’s a human rights and civil rights issue.

Saying it is time to remember the “timeless values that brought us here,” Henderson pointed out that Randolph was one of the founders of the LCCR. With visionary leaders like Randolph and [former UAW President] Walter Reuther, the labor and civil rights communities achieved common goals together and scored great gains such as Social Security, the Family and Medical Leave Act and extended rights on every front for women, people with disabilities and immigrant workers.

The beliefs that unite us are greater than the barriers that separate us. The enemy is not each other. It is those who attack us.

Print This Article | E-Mail This Article |Comments (1)