Unions Invoking Civil Rights More Often

[Thom Little]

Some names mentioned during the past week's transit strike might have seemed out of place in the context of contract negotiations: Rosa Parks. Martin Luther King Jr. Eugene "Bull" Connor.

The Transport Workers Union and its supporters linked their labor woes to the civil rights struggle, an approach that people who study the labor movement say is being used more often as some unions see increasing minority membership. More than 70 percent of the TWU's 33,000 members are people of color, including its president.

"In organizing itself I see a tremendous increase in the reinventing of the labor movement as the heir of the civil rights movement," said Gary Chaison, professor of labor relations at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. "I think it's the recasting of the labor movement in a way that I haven't seen in many years."

"Unions have got to find a language that justifies the actions that they are taking, they're going to have to use the language of civil rights," said Robert Korstad, associate professor of public policy studies and history at Duke University. "They have to make that connection that they're fighting for the same things."


http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/T/TRANSIT_CIVIL_RIGHTS?SITE=VARIT&SECTION=US

[no_hypocrisy]

1. The Supreme Court deemed corporations to be designated as "persons"

under the Constitutions. I wish unions were granted the same letgal standing.