The New York Times features a piece on the front page of the today’s Week In Review entitled “Labor’s Lost: For Blacks, A Dream In Decline.” You might have a sense of the statistics that show that blacks are hurt even more by the unfair economic trends that run through the economy. But, this piece–surprising in its appearance on the front page of the Times–ties the hurt to union membership.
Fifty-five percent of the drop in union membership last year (304,000 total overall) came among black union members. Part of the reason is pretty obvious: unionized jobs in the auto industry and other manufacturing sectors that have been hit hard provided decent employment for many blacks beginning in the 1960s and 1970s.
Which underscores the intersection of race and class and why the future of the labor movement–and the urgent need to organize mass numbers–is tied up with the larger questions of social justice in America beyond what people will take home in their paychecks.
Here’s the beginning of the article:
By LOUIS UCHITELLE
THE Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. set forth the goal. Civil rights and union membership were to be intertwined. The labor movement, Dr. King wrote in 1958, “must concentrate its powerful forces on bringing economic emancipation to white and Negro by organizing them together in social equality.”
That happened in the 1960’s and 1970’s. But then unions lost bargaining power and members. And while labor leaders called attention to the overall decline, few took notice that blacks were losing much more ground than whites.
In the last five years, that trend accelerated. Despite a growing economy, the number of African-Americans in unions has fallen by 14.4 percent since 2000, while white membership is down 5.4 percent.
For a while in the 1980’s, one out of every four black workers was a union member; now it is closer to one in seven. This loss of better-paying jobs helps to explain why blacks are doing worse than any other group in the current recovery. Labor leaders have acknowledged the disproportionate damage to African-Americans, but they decline to make special efforts to organize blacks and offset the decrease, saying that all groups need help. That lack of priority angers one prominent black scholar.
“The future of black workers is very bleak indeed if they lose their place in the union movement,” said William Julius Wilson, a professor of sociology and social policy at Harvard. “I would hope there would be an effort on the part of union leaders, white and black, to address this very important issue. They haven’t done so as yet.”
The decline was particularly sharp last year. Overall union membership fell by 304,000, and blacks accounted for 55 percent of that drop, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports, even though whites outnumber blacks six to one in unions (12.4 million to 2.1 million). The trend seems likely to continue and perhaps accelerate as General Motors and its principal parts supplier, Delphi, cut costs in their struggle to be profitable.”
Check out the rest.
