Black Trade Unionists Call for Building Political Strength

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2007/05/26/black-trade-unionists-call-for-building-political-strength/

Black Trade Unionists Call for Building Political Strength

by James Parks, May 26, 2007

As the nearly 1,500 union members meet in Chicago this weekend for the annual convention of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU), they are focusing on how black workers have been especially hit hard by the economic policies of the Bush administration and are strategizing to ensure the next administration is accountable for improving the lives of all America’s working families.

All workers have suffered in the six years that George W. Bush has been president. But black workers, even those in unions, have been affected the most. According to a recent study, a whopping 55 percent of the union jobs lost in 2004 were held by black workers. More stunningly, African American women accounted for 70 percent of the union jobs lost by women in 2004.


Sen. Barack Obama, shown here at an AFL-CIO forum in Trenton, N.J., spoke at the CBTU convention on Friday.

At the same time, the percentage of African American workers who are union members is dropping substantially. The percentage of African Americans who are either members of or represented by unions fell from 31.7 percent of all black workers in 1983 to 16 percent in 2006, according to a report by the Center for Economic Policy and Research.

The report shows much of the decline is due to the loss of manufacturing jobs. Between 1979 and 2006, the share of all African American workers who worked in manufacturing declined from 23.9 percent to 10.1 percent.

In his address to the convention, CBTU President William Lucy said:

We must not only challenge policies that hurt workers, we also have a responsibility to break out of the box of status quo economics that traps workers in a cycle of playing catch-up, but never rising above a certain standard of living.

In an interview with Glen Ford of the Black Agenda Report, Lucy, who also is secretary-treasurer of AFSCME, said the one of the main causes of black economic distress is the “social, political and economic philosophy” shared by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, the rich and the administration that represents their interests.

FULL story at link.