Bill Fletcher: Choices for Black labor

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=19&ItemID=13132

Choices for Black labor
by Bill Fletcher

June 23, 2007
Black Commentator

I came of age politically in the middle of the Black Power movement. Within the ranks of organized labor, both the Black Power movement and the Anti-Vietnam War movement had a significant impact through the mid1970s. Caucuses were being formed to challenge the bureaucratic leaderships of many unions. Wild-cat strikes were taking place in workplaces around the country. And in some locales, independent unions were being established where workers had concluded that the established union movement was incapable of making any significant changes to address the needs and demands of rank and file workers. At the national level, the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists emerged as a major voice arguing that organized labor needed to take a new and different look at the Black worker, a look and engagement that was based on the need for respect and equality.

As we enter the 21st century, Black labor is in disarray. Within the ranks of organized labor, the various institutions that have often spoken on its behalf have ossified. Black caucuses in various unions have stepped back from challenging and pushing the union leaderships and instead have in all too many cases degenerated into social clubs or step-ladders for individuals to get positions in the union structure. While there are greater numbers of Black staff and, in some cases, elected leaders, there is an emphasis on acceptability—to the leadership of organized labor—within the ranks of the movement, rather than an emphasis on challenge and struggle.



How this situation evolved would be the material around which a book could be written. Suffice to say that the economic crisis affecting Black America, a crisis that became very evident in the mid1970s, cut the ground underneath a major portion of the Black working class. Combined with political attacks on Black America by the Right, we went on the defensive. In organized labor, the declining percentage of workers organized in unions, along with the brutal climate built up during the Ronald Reagan years, worsened the conditions under which struggle could take place.



Yet in my humble opinion what was particularly lost by Black labor leaders was vision. The vision that was articulated beginning in the 1930s with the growth of the National Negro Congress and the Congress of Industrial Organizations, and advanced in the 1950s with the National Negro Labor Council and, later, by the A. Philip Randolph-led Negro American Labor Council, and in the 1970s with the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, justifiably emphasized the inclusion of Black workers at all levels of the union movement. In some quarters, particularly within the Black labor Left, there were equally efforts to emphasize a broader approach by organized labor towards issues facing all workers as well as the need for organized labor to be a clear and consistent ally of the Black Freedom Movement.



By the early 1980s and with changes in the leadership of much of organized labor, the hostility that had often been felt by Black labor shifted. This did not mean that Black labor was consistently embraced, but it meant that there was at least a public recognition of the Black worker and his/her importance. Attacks on the CBTU, for instance, diminished, if not disappeared. By the early 1990s, some unions had even gone as far as officially supporting or sponsoring Black caucuses.



Yet something was lost. The ‘fire’ that had been felt through organizations such as the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (and its affiliates), or the United Community Construction Workers in Boston, MA, was largely absent. Yes, Black labor could sit at the table, but still missing was what Black labor represents as a movement. Thus, Black labor became an appendage to organized labor rather than the catalyst for union transformation. Black labor has been among labor’s most important and dedicated shock troops; we remain the most pro-union of any ethnic/racial group; and we are disproportionately active in our unions. This, however, does not translate into a coalescing, let alone fusion, of the organized labor and the Black Freedom Movements.

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