(Photo by Cory Clark/NurPhoto via AP)
Union Politics & Power: Labor activists are organizing to impact the election
By KAREN JUANITA CARRILLO Amsterdam News Staff
“We get on the bus early in the morning, and put on our purple gear so everyone knows that we are 1199,” says Brookdale Hospital patient service associate Dianne Dixon. “We get in groups, and we go to neighborhoods and knock on doors and then speak to voters, reminding them of the importance of getting out there to make a difference.”
Dixon is a member of 1199SEIU’s Weekend Warriors –– union members who voluntarily canvass various neighborhoods, and sometimes other states, to help boost voter education and registration for the upcoming elections.
Local unions like 1199 recruit volunteers and bus them to battleground states in ongoing efforts to encourage voter participation. Union members say they are compelled to get information to voters about this year’s candidates and what the results of this presidential election could mean to union families.
Dixon addresses the person opening the door she just knocked on with “Hi! How are you today? We’re here reminding our community that it is important to vote and we’re speaking about Kamala Harris. Have you heard of her?”
She’ll get a few people who say they’ve never heard of current Vice President and presidential candidate Harris, so she and her fellow Weekend Warriors will try to talk about Harris and what she’s done for the community. “We usually get a good response — a few negative ones, but usually good.”
Most labor activists are out canvassing in support of the Democratic Party ticket. Once President Joe Biden ceded his presidential ambitions to a Harris candidacy, labor movement activists were quick to voice support for the new candidate and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. The United Auto Workers (UAW), AFL-CIO, United Federation of Teachers (UFT), and various other unions immediately announced they would back the ticket.
The only major union that does not support Harris is the Teamsters. According to an internal electronic poll, 60% of the Teamsters membership was eager to endorse Donald Trump. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters’ executive board, which has backed every Democratic presidential nominee since Bill Clinton, has refused to issue a presidential endorsement to its membership for the first time since 1996. Critics have blasted the executive board for forgoing an endorsement and not guiding its members with crucial
information about this year’s election.
At the regional level, some sub-councils have broken rank, announcing that they are supporting Vice President Harris, including the Teamsters National Black Caucus; councils in swing states like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Nevada; and here in New York City.
“Local 237 members are overwhelmingly Kamala Harris supporters,” said Gregory Floyd, president of the 25,000-member Local 237 Teamsters. “We just don’t agree with Teamsters throughout the nation who’ve decided to remain neutral. We stand for a fairer America. We stand with Vice President Kamala Harris for president.”
The economy, healthcare, Social Security Candis Tall, vice president and political director of SEIU 32BJ, told the AmNews that her unit has been talking to its members about this upcoming election for some time now.
“We actually started early in the summer, going out and talking to our members at their work sites about what issues were important to them in this election,” she said. “We surveyed over 12,000 of our members across all of our states about what they care about, and of course, it’s not a surprise to know that it’s the economy, it’s healthcare, it’s Social Security, it’s immigration, it’s cli-
mate safety. These are the issues that our members care about, which is very similar to the issues the rest of Americans and New Yorkers care about.”
Tall said that leaders use those insights to reiterate the importance of voter registration and relaying where candidates stand on those issues.
Unions in New York are also making it a point not to educate voters solely about the presidential ticket. They are also emphasizing that congressional races and the fact that the ability to win back the House of Representatives in D.C. are going to fall on New York and California.
“We’re running a multi-pronged approach,” said Deborah Wright, political director for RWDSU-UFCW. “We are clearly focused on the top of the ticket — the presidential race — but we are also really focused on the congressional seats right here in New York. And we’re also focused on some of the lower ballot races in the State Senate and the Assembly, so we’re trying to really make a difference in several different areas.”
Union canvassing has meant talking to union members and the larger public about the importance of electing pro-labor candidates. The push for the union vote during this year’s national elections has been a Continued on page S5
Brooklyn 1199 Members getting ready to knock doors in Long Island. (Photo courtesy from 1199SEIU)
The healthcare workers of 1199SEIU applaud the Amsterdam News on decades of outstanding labor journalism!
We congratulate this year’s Labor Award recipients:
Mario Cilento President
New York State AFL-CIO
Vincent Alvarez President
NY Central Labor Council AFL-CIO
welcome surprise for labor activists. Neither Republicans nor Democrats had prioritized prominent labor union concerns over the last few decades, but with one in every five voters –– some 20% in swing states –– being a union worker, both presidential and local candidates have been courting union support this year.
Union presidents were prominently featured at this year’s Democratic National Convention (DNC). AFSCME’s Lee Saunders, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) President April Verrett, Laborer’s International Union of North America (LIUNA) President Brent Booker, Ken Cooper of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), Claude Cummings Jr. of the Communication Workers of America (CWA), and Liz Shuler of the AFL-CIO joined together during the DNC to say they would support the Harris-Walz ticket because even before Biden walked the picket line with striking United Auto Workers (UAW) in 2023, Harris had marched alongside McDonald’s employees when they picketed for a $15 minimum wage in 2019.
As vice president, Harris supported crucial labor-friendly legislation like the American Rescue Plan of 2021; when she was a senator, she voted for the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act. Harris even led the White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment, which was designed to make it easier for workers to form unions.
Labor activists expect the pro-labor BidenHarris policies to extend to a Harris-Walz administration: fair pay for a hard day’s work, lowering unemployment rates, supporting project labor and collective bargaining agreements along with higher standards of living, health care, retirement security, and the free and fair ability to join a union.
The current climate for labor unions is promising. Activists want this political atmosphere to grow and not face the headwinds of another anti-union administration.
The link between labor and civil rights Biden used his economic agenda, Bidenomics, to empower workers and show himself as what he termed “the most pro-union president in American history.” The BidenHarris administration was the first in years to tackle the 40-year U.S. decline in unionization by embracing the labor movement and making workers’ interests once again a part of the daily discourse.
The previous Trump administration dismissed labor’s concerns by appointing an anti-union lawyer, Eugene Scalia (son of former right-wing Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia), to head and dismantle the Department of Labor. Under former President Barack Obama, labor unions were dismayed to watch the gig economy grow with few workers’ rights regulations.
In the past, pro-labor activism worked alongside civil rights activism to counter corporate power and push for the rights of
"Those will come together and in places where there's not common ground, we'll fight again. Because that's what we do, you know, we're a labor union. And we believe in fighting for the rights of our folk and we'll continue to do that.”
—Candis Tall , SEIU 32BJ Executive Vice President
the U.S. working class. As early as 1929, the AmNews was writing about the initial joining of A. Phillip Randolph’s historic Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) with the American Federation of Labor. Together, the two organizations had been exposing how African American railroad car porters and maids were being intimidated by the Pullman Company.
Once the BSCP was granted a federal charter to join the AFL, union members felt more empowered. Randolph told a meeting of Harlem union members that the morale of BSCP members across the country increased 100% with the new charter: “At the next convention of the American Federation of Labor,
office. The Act’s seventh amendment made it illegal for employers for the first time to not hire someone because of their race, religion, sexual orientation, or national origin.
Elections affect jobs and lives
Having a job is one thing, but reinforcing awareness of why union workers have and can keep a job –– particularly in guaranteed health and safety benefits, and which contracts dictate how salaries are paid — is all part of the worker education efforts labor activists put together.
In this political season, labor unions want their members to understand how political elections will affect their jobs.
According to RWDSU-UFCW’s Wright, “The international office, based in New York City, is working directly with the local presidents, creating programs for them to not only just make sure that their members are registered to vote. We have opportunities there for members to check their registration status, even if they believe they are registered to vote — sometimes they move and sometimes they forget to actually change their registration status, so we’re trying to make sure that we pick up any of those types of issues. But then, also for members who haven't registered to vote yet, we make sure that they have all the information and help they need to be able to do that so they actually can vote.”
Door-knocking, phone-banking by calling every listed union member and every registered voter, reminding folks about voting deadlines, making Facebook and Instagram posts, sending text messages and emails ––everything is being used to get the word out about the candidates labor unions have endorsed. Activists say they will be working up until Election Day to keep voters informed about the election.
No matter who wins, SEIU 32BJ’s Tall added, labor unions will move on after the election to the next phase of their work.
“Listen, we are working people,” Tall said.
a Negro will take the floor for the first time,” he said. “The Brotherhood will reorganize, establish locals, and fight for the Negro in every industry in an effort to break down union prejudice.
“All railroad employees are now unionized for the first time in railroad history. The Brotherhood is now affiliated with them all.”
By the 1960s, union power was strong enough to garner promises from presidential candidate John F. Kennedy. He promised concessions to both labor unions and Civil Rights Movement organizers during his presidency. JFK’s successor, Lyndon Baines Johnson, signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law during his first year in
“We are Black and Brown and immigrant. Our members speak many different languages. We know [that] no matter who wins this election, our fight is not over. It’s never over, right? So the question is, do you want to fight in an administration that is more prone to have the same belief system as you and want to do the right thing or do you want to fight against someone who is oppositional to all of the major issues that you hold dear?
“We are going to have to fight regardless. If Trump wins, we’re in a full-blown fight and we have to fight to protect our standards, our way of living. And we’re not a stranger to that; we’ve been fighting for equity and justice and fairness on the job and beyond since we’ve come together as a labor union. But if we have a Harris administration, we know there are a lot of places where there’s common ground. Those will come together and in places where there’s not common ground, we’ll fight again. Because that’s what we do, you know — we’re a labor union. And we believe in fighting for the rights of our folk and we’ll continue to do that.”
Dianne Dixon knocking doors in Long Island's Third Congressional District. (Photo courtesy from 1199SEIU)
YOU GET WHAT YOU CAN TAKE:
The Fight to Make the Skilled Trades Representative
“AT THE BANQUET TABLE OF NATURE, THERE ARE NO RESERVED SEATS. YOU GET WHAT YOU CAN TAKE, AND YOU KEEP WHAT YOU CAN HOLD. IF YOU CAN’T TAKE ANYTHING, YOU WON’T GET ANYTHING, AND IF YOU CAN’T HOLD ANYTHING, YOU WON’T KEEP ANYTHING. AND YOU CAN’T TAKE ANYTHING WITHOUT ORGANIZATION.” - A. PHILIP RANDOLPH
an Amsterdam News article told readers in the summer of 1963, when community and labor activists, as well as clergy, had had enough of discriminatory labor practices on local construction sites.
In Brooklyn, the structures that would become SUNY Downstate were rising from the ground, but Black and Latino construction workers were nowhere to be found. Demonstrations co-sponored by the Negro American Labor Council, Urban League, NACCP, Congress of Racial Equality, and Southern Christian Leadership Council began picketing and eventually blocking access to the worksite, leading to the arrest of more than 40 activists, in-
form 35 [percent] of [the] New York City population.”
The protests continued throughout June and July with increasing numbers of protesters and hundreds of arrests, and even attracted a young leader named Malcolm X. They were demanding something simple: that the workforce building the hospital look like the community in which it was being built. Eventually the protest leaders came to an agreement with then-Governor Nelson Rockerfeller and construction resumed. But the protest at SUNY Downstate wasn’t the first of its kind nor would it be the last. But why was it needed at all? Why, in one
lowed and of the hard work by Americans of color and their allies to force our nation to live up to its own ideals.
This series will explore the roots of discrimination that led to the summer of ’63 protests in Brooklyn and many others like it around the nation, and how activists, community, and union members worked over decades to force change. It will also explore how high schools and apprenticeship programs are, in the 21st century, helping to ensure that everyone who wants one has an opportunity to access jobs that are often called the “ladder to the middle class.”
Before emancipation, enslaved Blacks were often trained in skilled construction, especially
tinued to be pretty important in the skilled construction industry in the South until the
certed effort by white workers to drive Black workers out of the skilled trades and unions often included racial bars on membership. And that persisted into the 1960s,” Jones said
The end of Reconstruction coincided with the ”Long Depression” of the 1870s, as well as the rise of organized labor, both of which helped to put pressure on African American skilled laborers. While some of the new labor unions became more inclusive, according to Jones, the backlash was not long in coming.
By the late 1880s and 1890s, “a lot of unions, particularly the very skilled trade unions, turned inward and make the decision that the the best way to maintain themselves [was] to focus narrowly on the interests of white male workers,” said Jones. “This is the period in which a lot of unions adopt[ed] in their constitution, race and Continued on page S3
Continued on page S10
Mitchell Ayers, 2 1/2, carries a sign protesting employment practices at the Downstate Medical Center construction site in Brooklyn on August 8, 1963. His mother, Eunice Ayers, 27, also took part in the demonstrations. (AP Photo/Dave Pickoff)
10 th Labor Awards Breakfast “Union Politics & Power”
U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer NY
U.S. Senator KIRsten Gillibrand NY
U.S. Congresswoman Yvette d. Clarke NY-9
1199SEIU Secretary-Treasurer Milly Silva
Teamsters Local 237 President Greg Floyd
10th Labor Awards Breakfast
1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 237, New York State AFL-CIO, Carpenters Contractors
Alliance Metropolitan New York (CCA), New York City Central Labor Council
AFL-CIO, Coalition of Black Trade Unionists | AFGE, CSEA Metropolitan Region 2, Utility Workers Union of America UWUA Local 1-2, IUOE International Union of Operating Engineers Local 94, Laborers Local 79, IBEW District 3, Teamsters Local 294, and SEIU Local 246
National Coalition of Labor Union Women CLUW, 32BJ SEIU, UFA Uniformed Firefighters
Association IAFF International Association of Fire Fighters Local 94, CUNY AFT Local 2334, ATU American Transit Union Local 1181, UA-NY Pipe Trades Association Local 13, Colleran, O’Hara & Mills, LLP, Transport Workers Union 100, RWDSU Local 338 UFCW, AFGE Local 2440 American Federation of Government Employees, AND CWA 1180
gender exclusionary language, [and] they restricted their membership to white men.
“If you can prevent people from getting access to these skills, you can…corner the market on the number of people who are car penters, or who are skilled masons. [Then] you can drive up wages and improve work ing conditions for those few workers by ex cluding the majority,” he added.
The cruelty of Jim Crow and lack of eco nomic opportunity for Black Americans in the former slave states helped prompt the Great Migration, which brought millions of African Americans northward. Skilled workers, or those seeking to join those pro fessions, often found the same kinds of roadblocks in places like New York and Chi cago, and during the early decades of the 20th century, the organized push for rep resentation and access to the skilled trades began in earnest.
The Great Depression and World War II provided fertile ground for the passage of federal labor legislation and Black labor lead ers like A. Philip Randolph began to push for the implementation of these laws without regard to race.
In the summer of 1941, Randolph, along with leaders from the NAACP, Urban League, and many others, threatened a “March on Washington” to protest the discrimination that federal contractors had been allowed to get away with in seeming impunity. In response to these demands, which threatened military production as the nation was preparing to potentially enter World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order that prohibited discrimination in the defense industry.
The wartime order was weakly enforced and expired soon after the end of the conflict, but it began a drive that, in some ways, laid the groundwork of the Civil Rights Movement that followed, with leaders demanding that a permanent non-discrimination law be passed.
“There was this constant push to pass an equal employment law, and that was finally realized with the inclusion of Title Seven, in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That actually applied not just to federal contractors, but to any employer and any union, it made it illegal for them to discriminate on the basis of race,” said Jones.
THE STRUGGLE FOR ENFORCEMENT
There is a false belief among some Americans that we live in a “post-racial” era that began soon after the passage of the Civil Rights Act and culminated with the inauguration of President Barack Obama. But for those struggling to gain access to the skilled trades and construction jobs, nothing could be further from the truth.
In 2022, just 6.7% of American construction workers were African American, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, while making up 13.6% of the population. In New York City, the numbers tell a similar story, with Black residents making up just 13.6% of
construction workers while being over 23% of the population, according to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.
In the immediate aftermath of the passage of the Civil Rights Act, little changed on the ground. Yes, explicit racial roadblocks to entry to unions and employment on worksites was eliminated, but the social nature of employment in the skilled trades meant that barriers still existed.
Post-World War II investment in America’s cities also meant the growing require ment of union labor, according to Dr. Trevor Griffey, a lecturer at the University of California, Irvine. But these construction
and skilled trades unions were still largely excluding members of color.
This made the skilled trades “a flashpoint for protests in the sixties. And it had been long, long simmering because especially as African Americans gained increased access to the military, they gained the trades that they would not be able to get through racially restrictive apprenticeship programs. Then they would go apply to be dispatched and they couldn’t get jobs either through the
delphia Plan,” which began to force companies seeking federal contracts to take what was called “affirmative action” to ensure that these companies employed at least some Black Americans.
But laws and executive orders only went so far. When it came to ensuring that these new regulations were implemented, activists and community members, and even the media, were critical.
“What was really important was the ability to keep the mobilization going, so in places like New York, or Chicago or Detroit, [and] in some cases, in southern cities like Atlanta or Birmingham, where Black workers were sort of well-organized and ready to mobilize, they could force the issue and draw attention to it,” Jones said. “The Black press played a really important role in writing about and publicizing these issues,” he added.
It was this history of decades of mobilizations that set the stage for protests at SUNY Downstate in 1963 in Brooklyn and others that would continue through to the present day. Activists then and now deeply understand that enforcement is everything and ironically, it is those who do not make up the majority who bear the burden of ensuring America lives up to not only its lofty ideals but also its actual laws.
“The beneficiaries of a system cannot be expected to destroy it,” Randolph said decades ago. His wisdom would guide activists in the second half of the 20th century and beyond as they continued the fight to make sure that those working at construction sites looked more like the communities where those structures were being built.
The next part of this series will explore how activists began to force equal access to skilled and construction jobs.
This series was made possible by a grant from the Solutions Journalism Network. Brian Palmer contributed research and reporting to
Legendary labor leader A. Philip Randolph stands in front of the Lincoln Memorial at the March On Washington demonstration in Washington, D.C. (AP Photo)
A protest march by demonstrators at the Rochdale Village housing construction site in the Queens borough of New York City, July of 1963. Demonstrators carried on a city-wide series of protests against alleged discrimination in construction worker hiring. (AP Photo/John Rooney)
MAKING SURE THAT THE FIRST IS NOT THE LAST:
MAKING SURE THAT THE FIRST IS NOT THE LAST:
This story was first printed on Vol. 114 No.17 April 27, 2023 - May 3, 2023
DIRECT ACTION BEGINS TO DIVERSIFY CONSTRUCTION SITES
By DAMASO REYES AmNews Investigative Editor
In the oppressive summer heat of August 1963, the New York Amsterdam News ran a short story on page 7 of its August 10th edition: “Plumber To Be First In Union.”
Just a few hundred words long, the story highlighted “Edward Curry, the 25-year-old Negro plumber on the verge of entering the all-white Plumbers Union, Local 1 admittedly knows little of the reasons for the long well-publicized demonstrations at the Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn.”
For weeks, hundreds of clergy and activists had been arrested while blockading the site that our newspaper in other stories called “near lily white,” demanding that at least 25% of workers be “Negro or Puerto Rican.”
“It doesn’t mean too much to me,” Curry is quoted as saying of the demonstrations, but the timing of the announcement of his barrier breaking hiring was likely a direct result of the demonstrations that had, and would continue on and off for years, to
utive orders and laws were put into place, through the hard work of activists and or ganizers for civil rights, to ensure that the American workplace, including construc tion sites and union halls, became inte grated. But the laws and regulations were meaningless without enforcement and it
century, many of the unions that represented the skilled and highest paid trades like plumbers, electricians, pipe fitters and steel workers still marginalized Black
“A number of those unions were very militant, but also very racially exclusive. And then they fought against the inclusion of racial discrimination prohibitions in labor law,” Dr. Griffey added. With the passage of the Civil Rights Act, racial discrimination in hiring and employment was banned but construction sites continued to be bastions of de facto segregation.
“When an employer needs people, they often tell the people who are working there, ‘we need to hire some more people, go tell your friends, and tell your family’. And so if you have an all white workforce, that’s going to mean that the people who hear about those job openings are all going to be white,” said historian Dr. William Jones of the University of Minnesota, explaining why it was so difficult to diversify worksites despite the passage of Federal nondiscrimination laws.
While he believes that the building trades have made enormous improvements, Jeff Grabelsky, the Co-Director of the National Labor Leadership Institute at AmNews in an interview that “there was a time in New York City when some major unions, in a city that
was becoming majority minority... where there were local unions without a single
During this era, construction unions largely mirrored private industry which also excluded workers of color from the -
ing these construction sites in the sixties. It started in Philadelphia, quickly moved to New York, and then was nationwide. People occupied the arch in St. Louis as it was being constructed,” Dr. Griffey noted.
The threat of action during World War II led to the creation of an executive order which prohibited discrimination in the defense industry. Direct action also led to both the inclusion of Title Seven, in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and President Nixon implementing the “Philadelphia Plan” which began to force companies seeking federal contracts to ensure that they employed Black Americans.
But these hard fights for laws and regulations had their limits Mr. Grabelsky noted.
“Through legal action and community organizing, building trades unions were forced to bring in Black community members. And in some cases, six months later, they were all gone because nothing else changed in the union and they entered this hostile environment that made it exceedingly difficult for them to succeed.”
THEY SAY GET BACK, WE SAY FIGHT BACK
There was an intense backlash to what would become known as “affirmative action” that pushed back on what little progress was being made at the time.
“There are counter protests against affirmative action in ‘69, that look a little like hate marches,” said Dr. Griffey. In 1970, “a group of construction workers in New
Continued on page S5
Continued on page S14
York, descend on a peace rally and beat the shit out of the protestors, then march
A chain binds together the upraised arms of 14 picketers sitting in entrance to a hospital construction site in Brooklyn on July 25, 1963. A squad of New York City policemen moved in to remove the chain with wire clippers and arrest the demonstrators. (AP Photo/Anthony Camerano)
Three policemen secure themselves as they reach two civil rights protestors, Andy Young, 32, second from right, and Frank Anderson, 22, who chained themselves halfway up the boom of a construction crane at Rochdale Village construction site in Queens on Sept. 5, 1963. (AP Photo/Anthony Camerano)
GREGORY FLOYD
PRESIDENT, TEAMSTERS LOCAL 237 AND VICE PRESIDENT-AT LARGE ON THE GENERAL
EXECUTIVE BOARD OF THE IBT
L OCAL 237’S EXECUTIVE BOARD
RUBEN TORRES-VICE PRESIDENT
DONALD ARNOLD-SECRETARY/TREASURER
JEANETTE I. TAVERAS-RECORDING SECRETARY
CURTIS SCOTT-TRUSTEE
BENEDICT CARENZA, JR.-TRUSTEE
CATHERINE RICE-TRUSTEE
Continued from page S12
to City Hall and protest affirmative action in the construction trades, [on the] same day,” he added.
Some organized labor officials also found ways to oppose the integration of their unions; and in one case, was rewarded with a cabinet position.
“These are long time Democrats. Many had never voted for a Republican in their lives. They're campaigning for Republicans on a law and order platform. And when they help with the landslide election of Nixon, [Peter Brennan], the head of New York City building trades is rewarded by being made head of the Department of Labor where he guts what remains of affirmative action in the construction industry,” said Dr. Griffey.
But right wing construction workers and their leaders weren’t the only ones taking to the streets in the 1960’s and ‘70’s. As large, publicly funded construction projects went up in New York and other cities, activists and organizers of color began to demand their fair share.
“There's these big public construction sites in Black communities, where Black workers aren't being employed. And so these protests are around the construction sites to get people employed in those jobs and to open up those jobs,” said Dr. Jones.
“The argument was: ‘Our tax dollars are paying for this construction. We should be able to get these jobs as well.’ And in that case, it was largely the construction, the skilled trades unions that shut Black workers out of these jobs,” he added.
Across the country in Los Angeles, Black workers have also been fighting for their share of the pie.
Janel Bailey, Co-executive Director of Organizing & Programs at the Los Angeles Black Worker Center, spoke to the AmNews about efforts her organization has undertaken to ensure that Black workers are represented on job sites. As L.A.’s mass transit system expanded into Crenshaw, the organization in partnership with other labor organizations negotiated an employment agreement with the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority which they say increased the number of Black workers on the project from zero to 20% in 2015.
“Folks at our organization came together, with allies of course, to really step to Metro and asked them: ‘how you have all this money
coming through our neighborhood, but [its] not going to the workers and the families that are actually here? You need to hire more Black workers’.” Bailey said in an interview.
During their negotiations she said they encountered “the usual things of like, ‘Oh, well, we can't just say Black [workers] and we don't know any Black workers’. Which to be perfectly honest, I believe them when they say, ‘I don't know any Black workers.’ I believe them because the culture of exclusion that they've built set up their network such that it doesn't include Black people.”
Bailey is also critical of labor unions and the apprenticeship system in Los Angeles.
“This culture of exclusion didn't come up overnight and so I'm naming all these policies that broadly create a culture of exclusion,” she said. Apprenticeship programs are “wonderful for workers because it created a control of the market on labor, such that if you wanted to hire, to bring folks in to do that work, then you had to go through the union and you could set standards. Safety standards and wage standards for workers. Which is beautiful.”
But she went on to say that “the values of the folks who created and maintained that program were anti-Black. And so when they chose to create this wonderful pathway for workers, it was not inclusive of Black workers. And so what we're seeing today is the fruits of that legacy.
“That honestly, I think if you take it straight up on paper, the apprenticeship program actually is not problematic. I think it's actually quite brilliant.... However, applied with the values of the people who had the power to build that, it was anti-Black and it was built in a way that for some was deliberately exclusive. And so we arrive at this moment now where we have this incredible program that only benefits some workers and we're trying to figure out how to open it up, how to expand it so that it includes workers of color.”
"There is a history of exclusion,” said Grabelsky of the National Labor Leadership Institute at Cornell. “I don't think race and racism explains everything in our society, but I personally think nothing of any significance can be fully explained without looking at it through that lens.”
This series was made possible by a grant from the Solutions Journalism Network. Brian Palmer contributed research and reporting to this article.
A group of African American pickets outside the construction site for the Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn on August 2, 1963. Picketing at the site continued in the effort to halt what they called discriminatory hiring practices at the construction site. (AP Photo)
