By Steven Pitts
Even though the
Great Recession officially ended in June 2009, the subsequent jobless recovery
continues to inflict great pain on working families. This is especially true in
the black community, where the unemployment rate of 15.7 percent in January was
higher than at the end of the recession (14.9 percent). Conservatives ignore
this misery and call for fiscal austerity. And as events in Wisconsin and across the country are
showing, the demand for austerity is a subterfuge for a frontal assault on
public employees and their freedom to bargain for a middle class life.
This attack
casts a particularly sharp blow to the black community. Before the recession,
18 percent of black men and 23.3 percent of black women were public employees,
making this sector the leading employer of black men and the second leading
employer of black women. In contrast, 14.2 percent of white men, 19.8 percent
of white women, 7.5 percent of Latinos and 14.9 percent of Latinas were public
employees. It is important to note that these are national figures. In urban
areas with large black populations, the role of the public sector in providing
good jobs and creating a middle class for the black community is undoubtedly
greater.
As we fight for
a genuine economic recovery, we must not forget that the economy did not serve
workers well before the Great Recession. There was rising income inequality and
flat wage growth. This was especially evident in the black community, where
unemployment levels routinely doubled that of whites and 42.7 percent of
fulltime black workers earned less than $30,000, compared with 27.3 percent for
white workers.
The persistent
reality of racial inequities regardless of the state of the economy reminds us
that in our quest for a just society, economic justice and racial justice are
intertwined. The union movement cannot limit its battles to fights for
family-sustaining wages and a voice at work. The fight for dignity at work
includes a fight against all forms of racism in the labor market.
Advocates for
racial justice cannot limit their economic demands to calls for job creation
and anti-discrimination enforcement in the workplace. Without the collective
power that unions can exert in the labor markets and at the ballot box,
employers will drive wages to the lowest possible levels and subject workers to
arbitrary whims. They also will discriminate against people of color and sow
divisiveness among workers.
Fifty years ago,
when Martin Luther King Jr. spoke before the AFL-CIO convention, he said the
interests of blacks and labor were identical as they both faced a twin-headed
monster spewing forth anti-labor and anti-black epithets. We justly praise
those remarks.
King’s favorite
unions were those that saw their mission as fighting the twin evils of racial
and economic exploitation in the community, the workplace and the union. We
would do well to follow their examples, not just during Black History Month,
but all year long.
Steven Pitts is a labor policy specialist
at the University of California, Berkeley
Center for Labor Research
and Education.
February 24, 2011
