Black Working Class

May Day 2026: Why Black Workers Must Mobilize

April 26, 2026 Cameron Harrison, People's World. Resist! Black Working Class, History, May Day, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

For most of Jay Ozier’s decades as a trade union activist in St. Louis, May Day came and went just like any other workday. A small fundraising breakfast for People’s World here, a few comrades and likeminded fellow workers gathered there—but nothing like the international working-class holiday celebrated in countries all over the world. But this year, that’s changing. Now, there are plans for over a thousand rallies in cities across the country—with many led by organized labor, including dozens of central labor councils, state labor federations, and now even the national AFL-CIO itself signing on.

American Inquisition: What McCarthyism Really Destroyed

July 12, 2025 Eugene Puryear, Liberation News. Educate! Black Working Class, Civil rights movement, McCarthyism, Racism

Taking down the “Soviet Menace” in America, was, as we saw in part 11, not a response to any real “national security threat,” but a very real threat to corporate profits and neocolonial domination by the U.S. ruling class. It was a shield to hide its real, and much less popular, mission to take down those bold enough to challenge racism, advocate aggressively for workers, for peace, rather than world war, or cold war, and a post-war world that would also be free of colonialism. Even decades later this was so successful most of those who were extirpated from public life remain forgotten.

How The Black South And Labor Can Unite To Create Good Jobs

April 17, 2025 Deborah Scott, Portside. Strategize! Black Working Class, Labor Movement, The South, Worker Rights and Jobs

In far too many places, the struggles for racial and economic justice have become disconnected. Back in 2020, David Leonhardt of The New York Times wrote that the Black-White wage gap nationwide was roughly the same as it was back in 1950. One reason for this outcome is the decline of unions. In other words, just as Black workers got stable union jobs, those stable union jobs started to disappear. The need to integrate racial and economic justice and pursue both objectives together is not a new idea. Speaking at the AFL-CIO’s Fourth Constitutional Convention in 1961, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. noted, “Our needs are identical with labor’s needs: decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old age security, health and welfare measures, conditions in which families can grow, have education for their children and respect in the community.”

How Black Workers Overcome Historic Obstacles To Labor Organizing

February 13, 2025 Natalia Marques, People's Dispatch. Organize! Black Working Class, History, Labor Movement, Racism, Right to Work, The South, United States, Worker Rights and Jobs

The struggle between Black organized labor and the political establishment has been historically waged with particular fierceness in the US South—a region with the highest proportion of Black workers but with the most hostile laws against workplace organizing. States in the US South have some of the lowest rates of union coverage in the country—meaning that they have a lower share of workers who are organized in a union. The national union coverage rate stood at 11.2% as of 2023, while the rate was as low as 3% in South Carolina, 3.3% in North Carolina, 5.2% in Louisiana, and 5.4% in Georgia.

The DC Bus Fare Evasion Crackdown

January 15, 2025 Pan-African Community Action PACA, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Black America, Black Working Class, Police, Racism, Transportation, Washington DC

To make good on the promise implicit in the "Secure DC Omnibus Crime Bill ,” to intensify its war on the Black working class, the DC government is now targeting anyone who can’t afford to pay for public transportation. In December 2024, a new enforcement campaign was launched called “Operation Fare Pays for Your Service” professing an intention to decrease fare evasion on DC’s Metrobus system. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) argues that increased fare enforcement is necessary after reporting that more than 70% of metrobus riders do not pay their fare, and claiming a $50 million dollar loss in annual revenue.

Organizing One Of The Largest Black Led Unions In The United States

May 28, 2024 Keith Kelleher, The Forge. Organize! Black Working Class, History, Labor Movement, The South, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

McMaid workers, led by Irma Sherman, Doris Gould, Juanita Hill, and Mary Williamson, transformed labor organizing by successfully unionizing homecare workers in Chicago in 1984, setting the groundwork for the largest union in the Midwest, and catalyzing the organizing of a field predominately staffed by working-class Black and brown women. In Part One, the McMaid homecare workers, with their union, United Labor Unions Local 880, a small, independent union founded by ACORN, the national community organization, overcame an intense anti-union campaign by management to win a solid union election victory in January, 1984. But even more obstacles lay ahead in their fight for Justice.

Building Workplace Power In The Communities

April 21, 2021 Matthew Cunningham-Cook, The American Prospect. Organize! Black Working Class, Worker Centers, Worker Rights

As organized labor grapples with the consequences of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union’s landslide defeat at the Amazon mega-warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, one potential direction for the labor movement lies in the types of power- and base-building activities of Black worker centers. That African American workers need to amass the power to better their conditions is beyond dispute. The American working class is in serious trouble, and Black workers most particularly. The median net wealth of Black families is just $24,100 (lower than any other racial group in America today), while that of white families stands at $188,200. Ongoing institutional and systemic racial discrimination against Black workers persists in housing, health care, education, and employment.

How The Pandemic Economy Could Wipe Out A Generation Of Black-Owned Businesses

March 8, 2021 Lydia DePillis, ProPublica. Educate! Black Working Class, COVID-19, Recession, Systemic Racism

Of all the products made at Danette Wilder’s small manufacturing plant near the University of Kentucky in Lexington, the products she depended on most for sales were the O-rings cranked out by her vintage presses. Each month, Wilder’s crew of six people, working at long tables as they listened to a soundtrack of funk and R&B, made thousands of the rubber loops, cut from spools into precise strips and spliced into uniform perfect circles. The work distinguished Wilder’s company, SealingLife Technology, as one of the vanishingly few rubber products suppliers owned by a female engineer — not to mention one who is also Black. It hasn’t been an easy path: Wilder has navigated state and federal set-aside programs, tight-fisted bankers and what she saw as obvious discrimination. But eventually, Wilder built SealingLife into a reliable vendor for all manner of aerospace, medical and other industrial businesses.

Building Black Working Class Power In Maryland

February 22, 2021 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. Podcast Black Working Class, Elections, Maryland, Politics

The state of Maryland and Baltimore City in particular have been dominated by Democratic Party politics for decades, yet many residents struggle under a repressive police force, a lack of affordable housing, gentrification, inadequate investment in schools and in majority black communities, environmental pollution, and more. Black workers in the state have spent the past ten years building their own political structure, the Ujima People's Progress Party, to challenge the Democrats and now having established a base of support, they are working to achieve ballot access. Clearing the FOG speaks with the state organizer, Nnamdi Lumumba, about building black worker power in the state by engaging with communities around the struggles they are facing, building self-sufficiency and providing political education. He explains why this is necessary at this moment in time and how it fits into the broader picture of building political power on the Left.

Fast Food Workers Went On Strike For $15 An Hour In 15 Cities

February 18, 2021 Kristin Toussaint, Fast Company. Resist! Black Working Class, Fight for 15, Low Wage Workers, Low wages

Fast food workers in 15 cities across the country went on a one-day strike on February 16, to demand that their employers—including McDonald’s, Burger King, and Wendy’s—pay them $15 an hour and give them union rights. The effort, which is part of the nationwide Fight for 15 movement, comes as lawmakers in Washington debate enacting a $15-an-hour federal minimum wage as part of President Biden’s first COVID-19 relief package. The strikes also honor Black History Month by emphasizing the generations of low pay and lacking workplace protections among Black workers, historical inequities that have been worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic, and which have left Black Americans particularly vulnerable to both the virus and its economic devastation.

Black Citizenship Forum: Black Citizenship And The Problem Of ‘Coloniality’

February 12, 2021 the Black Agenda Review, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Black Working Class, Capitalism, colonization, Racism

For this edition of The Black Agenda Review’s Black Citizenship Forum, political scientist Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni writes on the impact of the ongoing legacy of colonialism – through the idea and practice of “coloniality” – on present-day citizenship in Africa. Professor Ndlovu-Gatsheni argues that coloniality provides the basis and justification for European exploitation of the world and that this was done through colonial legal orders, territorial boundaries, racial hierarchies, ethnic and tribal categorizations, and class identifications. Meanwhile, formal decolonization enshrined a neocolonial African comprador class enthralled to global capital and more than willing to exploit Black labor.

The Freedom Struggle Is A Labor Struggle, Then And Now

January 14, 2021 Robin D. G. Kelley, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Black Working Class, Capitalism, Communism, Labor Unions

As we think, again, about the role of organized labor in the long Black freedom struggle, it is worth noting that in India at this very moment 250 million farmers, workers, students and allies have joined in what had been a three-month long protest against the Modi government’s neoliberal agricultural policies. The new parliamentary bills essentially eliminate state-run regulated agricultural markets, and allow direct transactions between farmers and private corporate interests — namely international commodity traders and conglomerates such as Walmart and Cargill. The new arrangements will destroy small farmers and force those who survive to enter into contracts with corporate global seed and agrochemical suppliers, traders, distributors and retail concerns.

Strike For Black Lives In 25 Cities On July 20 Wins Union Support

July 11, 2020 Mike Elk, Payday Report. Resist! Black Working Class, Rebellion2020, Strikes, Worker Rights and Jobs

The growing Black Lives Matters Strike Wave has reached over 600 strikes since June 1 got a massive boost of momentum today. A coalition of 150 organizations, including major unions like SEIU, AFT, and Teamsters, all put out a call for #Strike4BlackLives on July 20. Other organizations supporting the strike include the National Domestic Workers Alliance, the Movement for Black Lives, and the Center for Popular Democracy. The coalition is calling on workers everywhere to stop work for 8 minutes and 46 seconds in honor of George Floyd. In some cities, workers intend to strike all day. Many workers may aways start organizing to plan for a short work stoppage, may choose to then extend it into a larger work stoppage as momentum for #StrikeforBlackLives builds.

How Black And Brown Workers Are Redefining Strikes

July 9, 2020 Mike Elk, Payday Report. Resist! Black Lives Matter (BLM), Black Working Class, Labor Unions, Strikes

During George Floyd’s funeral on June 9th, Black dockworkers in Charleston, S.C., shut down the nation’s 4th busiest port and gathered to show their solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. “All operations stopped, the terminals were shut down, no machines were working, trucks were backed up for miles along the interstate because we weren’t moving anything on the terminal,” said Ken Riley, a Black dockworker and President of ILA Local 1422. The actions were part of a nationwide effort in which the International Longshore Association, which is 65% Black, shut down all the ports on the East and Gulf Shore Coasts. “It was a moving event because we were able to show as workers our ability to stop global commerce,” said Riley. “Any responsible manager is gonna look at that and say ‘Look, we are gonna have to deal with these people, or we are gonna have a problem.’ ”

Black Workers Protest Union-Busting Boston Gentrifier

July 1, 2020 Boston Bureau, Workers World. Resist! Black Working Class, Boston, Gentrification, Recession

A June 16 action for eight laid-off workers — organized just four days after the announcement they had been fired — drew about 100 people. They were protesting at their place of work, College Bound Dorchester/Boston Uncornered, on a quiet residential street on Tuesday morning. With these latest layoffs, CEO Mark Culliton targeted one-third of the remaining youth services employees working for his company, College Bound, after workers declared their intention to unionize as Uncornered United-Service Employees (SEIU) Local 888 on June 2. College Bound is a “further education” preparation program, while Boston Uncornered hires neighborhood leaders impacted by violence to be mentors in the program. The company website advertises the programs as “opportunities to turn away from the ‘street corners’ for good.” The UU mentors are Black and Brown neighborhood leaders who have demonstrated social influence and skill at developing young people by drawing on their own challenges and experiences. These workers are demanding that Culliton recognize the union and that he reinstate those illegally fired.

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