MAKE THE ANCESTORS PROUD

Several weeks ago, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the results of its most survey on the extent of unionization in the US. BLS found that a little less than 11% (10.8%) of all wage and salary workers belonged to a union. Over the long haul, we'eve witnessed a dramatic decline in the percentage of workers belonging to a union: Fifty years ago, about a third of U.S. workers belonged to a union; as of 2020, as the BLS reports reveals, that's now down to about 1.1 out of every ten wage and salary workers.

So, who cares? Who gives a flip about the steep drop in unionization? Why not just keep it moving, especially given the fact that we're still knee deep in the midst of a pandemic that has claimed over 500,000 lives, with Black and Brown bodies being disproportionately bruised and buried?

Well, there's quite a few reasons why we ought to care, particularly if you profess to be concerned about economic and racial justice. For starters, consider this: unions play a critical role in increasing worker pay, ensuring safe working conditions, securing paid time off for employees and, in the midst of a pandemic, providing workers with an effective voice in furlough decisions, possible work-sharing arrangements as an alternative to outright layoffs, and the provision of personal protection equipment. Once we jettison the fiction that workers and capitalists are equally empowered "agents"cutting deals that benefit both, we can see that the worksite is anything but. Unions are absolutely critical to the empowering and protection of workers. Absolutely critical to counterbalancing and curbing the unchecked power of employers to do as they will in the workplace. Unionization is central to worker justice.

BLACK WORKERS AND UNIONS

What's more, unionization is central to the overall struggle for racial justice. Black workers have long fought to be included--on equal terms-- in union representation. That fight has included, among other things, challenging racism within unions, cooperating with and supporting those dedicated to interracial unity and even forming independent unions when the doors of labor remained shut tight by the racism and sexism. Against incredible odds, we have shaped--and continue to shape--the labor movement.

No two ways about it, being part of a union has the potential to appreciably increase the economic status of Black workers. The economics literature has repeatedly found that, everything else being equal, Black union members earning earn significantly more than their non-union counterparts, and that deunionization is correlated with a widening in the racial wage gap.

TAKING ON AMAZON

All of this, and more, is coming to a head in the effort of workers to unionize workers at Amazon's Bessemer, Alabama plant. Spearheaded by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU)-- a progessive union with a history of Black participation in leadership-- the Amazon workers are figting for better pay, safety precautions, and dignity on the job. By the way, the Bessemer plant workforce is largely Black and women. An immediate connection between unionization and economic dignity for Black workers, if ever there was one.

Not surprisingly, Amazon has gone out of its way to defeat the unionization drive. And it's been a no-holds bar approach. Requiring workers on the clock to "attend classes" where they can "learn" about the myriad ways in which unions putatively end up punishing workers. Hiring a contractor whose speciality is defeating union drives. Spying on workers. Trying to prevent mail-in ballots. Posting anti-union placards in bathrooms. An all out assault.

Over the last year, Amazon and its CEO--Jeff Bezos-- has made out like bandits. Case in point: Bezos' wealth has grown by about $70 billion and Amazon's stock price has risen about 70%. Not a bad year. All of which makes it Amazon's resistance that much more morally odious. Nothing like plutoctrats profiting from a pandemic and then turning around to punch workers seeking to protect and promote human dignity.

CALLING ON THE ANCESTORS

Given all this, one of the things we ought to do is to recall the witness of the ancestors. Recall the determination of those who came before us. A determination to resist any and everything that sought to snuff out the dignity of humabn beings, A determination to fight the good fight, the fight to build something other than that which is. A determination to side with, to express solidarity with, those engaged in a battle where their very livelihoods were at stake. A determination to link the struggles for economic and racial justice. A determination to refuse any effort to divorce human struggles that, in the final analysis, are joined at that proverbial hip. A determination to see that all workers, and especially Black workers, received living wages and secured working conditions that were safe and congruent with human dignity.

We know the names of some of these ancestors well. We know the name of Martin Luther King, Jr. We know the name of A. Philip Randolph. We know the name of Bayard Rustin. But there are other names. Names of folk who, despite their mighty contributions to economic and social justice, are too often overlooked.

Of Black women. Women who fought tirelessly for worker rights. Women who founded and contributed to unions and worker solidarity. Names like:

Rosina Tucker, who aided in the development of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP), the first Black-led union to sign a contract with a major U.S. corporation.

Names like:

Lucy Parsons, who participated in the founding of the industrial Workers of the World, and dedicated her life fighting for the rights of the poor and those who had been marginalized by industrialization.

Names like:

Slyvia Woods, a union activist who participated in one of the first sit down strikes of the Depression era.

Names like:

Dora Lee Jones, a domestic worker who helped to found the Domestic Workers Union in Harlem in 1943.

Largely Black and predominantly women. That's the demographic of the Amazon workers at the Bessemer plant. It is extremly appropriate to call on those women ancestors who fought tirelessy for workers and whose fight continues today. In the name of the ancestors, let's raise the struggle of the Amazon workers in every space that we operate within. The ancestors would be pleased.

Catch you on the flip side,

Doc Greene