Unions threaten work stoppages amid calls for racial justice
NEW YORK (AP) — Ahead of Labor Day, unions representing millions across several working-class sectors are threatening to authorize work stoppages in support of the Black Lives Matter movement amid calls for concrete measures that address racial injustice.
In a statement first shared with The Associated Press, labor leaders who represent teachers, autoworkers, truck drivers and clerical staff, among others, signaled a willingness Friday to escalate protest tactics to force local and federal lawmakers to take action on policing reform and systemic racism. They said the walkouts, if they were to move forward with them, would last for as long as needed.
“The status quo — of police killing Black people, of armed white nationalists killing demonstrators, of millions sick and increasingly desperate — is clearly unjust, and it cannot continue,” the statement says. It was signed by several branches of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the Service Employees International Union, and affiliates of the National Education Association.
The broader labor movement has
been vocal since the May 25 killing of George Floyd, a handcuffed Black
man who died after a white police officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s
neck for nearly eight minutes during an arrest over counterfeit money.
The death of Floyd in Minneapolis set off an unprecedented surge of
protests and unrest from coast to coast this summer. In July, organized
labor staged a daylong strike
with workers from the service industry, fast-food chains and the gig
economy to call out the lack of coronavirus pandemic protections for
essential workers, who are disproportionately Black and Hispanic.
Now,
in the wake of the August shooting of Jacob Blake, who was critically
wounded by a white police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the union
leaders say they are following the lead of professional athletes who
last week staged walkouts over the shooting. Basketball, baseball and
tennis league games had to be postponed. Some athletes resumed game play
only after having talks with league officials over ways to support the
push for policing reforms and to honor victims of police and vigilante
violence.
“They remind us that when we strike to withhold our
labor, we have the power to bring an unjust status quo to a grinding
halt,” the union leaders said in the statement.
“We echo the call
to local and federal government to divest from the police, to
redistribute the stolen wealth of the billionaire class, and to invest
in what our people need to live in peace, dignity, and abundance:
universal health care and housing, public jobs programs and cash
assistance, and safe working conditions,” the statement reads.
Among
the supportive unions are ones representing Wisconsin public school
teachers who, ahead of the mid-September start of the regular school
year, urged state legislators to take on policing reforms and systemic
racism.
“We stand in solidarity with Jacob Blake and his family,
and all communities fighting to defend Black lives from police and
vigilante violence,” Milwaukee Teacher’s Association president Amy
Mizialko told the AP.
“Are we striking tomorrow? No,” said Racine
Educator United president Angelina Cruz, who represents teachers in a
community that abuts Kenosha. “Are we in conversation with our members
and the national labor movement about how we escalate our tactics to
stop fascism and win justice? Yes.”
The Nonprofit Professional
Employees Union, which represents several hundreds of professionals
working at more than 25 civil rights groups and think tank
organizations, told the AP it signed onto the union statement because
“the fights for workers’ rights, civil rights, and racial justice are
inextricably linked.”
At the federal level, the
Democrat-controlled House of Representatives has already passed the
George Floyd Justice In Policing Act, which would ban police use of
stranglehold maneuvers and end qualified immunity for officers, among
other reforms. The measure awaits action in the Senate.
A
Republican-authored police reform bill, introduced in June by South
Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, failed a procedural vote in the Senate because
Democrats felt the measure didn’t go far enough to address officer
accountability.
Meanwhile, officials who serve on governing
bodies in more than a dozen major U.S. cities, including Seattle, San
Francisco, New York City and Austin, Texas, have voted to defund their
police departments and reallocate the money to mental health,
homelessness and education services.
Although some unions have a
history of excluding workers on the basis of gender and race, the
marriage between the racial justice and labor movements goes back
decades. That alliance was most prominently on display during the 1963
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which featured the visions of
the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rep. John Lewis and was organized by
A. Philip Randolph, a Black icon of the labor movement.
Today,
Black workers are more likely to be unionized than any other segment of
the workforce as a result of decades of collaboration between labor and
civil rights activists, said New York University professor and civil
rights historian Thomas Sugrue.
“That connection has only
intensified because of the importance of workers of color, particularly
African Americans, in the labor movement,” Sugrue said.
Public and
private employers are faced with a “Which side are you on?” moment due
to growing support for the BLM movement, said Maurice Mitchell, national
director of the Working Families Party and a leading organizer in the
Movement for Black Lives, a national coalition of 150 Black-led
organizations.
“If I was a decision-maker that was considering
whether or not to meet the demands of the unions, I would be scared,”
Mitchell said. “This movement is spreading. We’ve been on the streets
consistently, we’re building on the electoral front, and now we’re
seeing this conversation at the highest levels of labor.”