The South

Reproductive Justice Organizers Find New Ways To Help Incarcerated Moms

December 25, 2024 Anushka Dakshit, Waging Nonviolence. Organize! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Reproductive Rights, The South, Women's Rights

Reproductive justice advocates in the South can rarely depend on laws on the book to safeguard incarcerated pregnant people. Instead, they’ve learned to create their own aid. Motherhood Beyond Bars, a reproductive justice group in Georgia, was originally centered on helping pregnant people inside prisons. After finding it increasingly difficult to work internally at the Georgia Department of Corrections, the group decided to devote its resources towards helping inmates from the outside. “The number of problems and fires we’re trying to put out has kind of exceeded even our expectations of what folks would need our help with,” said Amy Ard, executive director of Motherhood Beyond Bars, or MBB.

The Black South’s Revolutionary Anti-Fascist Tradition

December 13, 2024 Julian Rose, Scalawag Magazine. Strategize! #StopCopCity, Atlanta, Black Liberation, Fascism, The South

The Black South has a rich history of antifascist organizing and militant strategy through direct struggle and conflict with fascistic forces. If we are going to study and promote an organizing lineage, it is this one that we should look to. What would it look like for our movement's rallying cry to evolve from "My ancestors died for the right to vote" to "My ancestors died fighting fascism"? This move does not intend to erase nor obscure historic political struggles of The South that center voting; such a reduction is counter-insurgency.

Southern Workers Prepare For An Uphill Battle Under Trump

December 4, 2024 Stephen Franklin, In These Times. Resist! Donald Trump, OSHA, The South, Trump Administration, Worker Rights and Jobs

The hours were long and the pay painfully little. But Naomi Harris kept her head down, pushed on, telling herself she had few options. She worked the first and sometimes the late-night shift at a Waffle House, in Columbia, S.C., sometimes putting in 17 hours. Exhausted by the sweltering heat and long hours in the restaurant, she often went home with a powerful headache. In July of last year, she felt she had to speak up. It was the morning rush, and she was the only server. The temperature was in the mid-90s. The air conditioning was out — as it had been for a while. The cooler wasn’t working. Another worker was outside vomiting. She felt faint and lost her balance, so she texted a manager for help, but nothing happened, she says.

Voter Suppression Makes The Racist, Anti-Worker Southern Model Possible

November 3, 2024 Daniel Perez, Economic Policy Institute. Educate! Elections, Racism, Southern Strategy, The South, Voting Rights

There is a long strand of history connecting the legacy of slavery to the political and economic landscape of the Southern United States today. As EPI’s Rooted in Racism1 series has shown, the Southern economic development model is characterized by low wages, regressive taxes, few regulations on businesses, few labor protections, a weak safety net, and fierce opposition to unions. Just like the antebellum South’s economy was built on the exploitation of enslaved labor, today’s Southern economy also relies on a disempowered and precarious workforce (Childers 2024b). This spotlight examines how political and economic suppression—dynamics in the South which are rooted in racism—have played a central role in creating and maintaining the Southern economic development model.

The UAW Is Bargaining For Better Conditions At Volkswagen

October 15, 2024 Sarah Jaffe, In These Times. Organize! Auto Workers, The South, UAW, Unions, United Auto Workers (UAW), Volkswagen, Worker Rights and Jobs

Turning onto Volkswagen Drive in Chattanooga, the first big shiny building you pass is actually an Amazon fulfillment center. It’s only a little up the road that you come upon the VW campus, the sleek silver buildings rising from the hills and trees, a series of windowless hulks, one of them proudly proclaiming its GoTo ZERO IMPACT FACTORY. As if a factory can have zero impact on the community, on the people who go to work there each day, let alone the environment, the climate. Factories shape towns. They always have. They shape the world. The workers at the VW plant are trying to do some shaping of their own, now that they’ve won their union.

Waffle House Workers Fight Back Against Wage Theft

September 20, 2024 People's Dispatch. Resist! Service Workers, The South, Waffle House, Wage Theft, Worker Rights and Jobs

A new survey by the Strategic Organizing Center found that 90% of Waffle House workers polled have experienced some form of wage theft in the past year. 77% reported experiencing more than one form of wage theft, and 49% reported experiencing more than two. 75% of Waffle House workers reported that they had “been required to perform job tasks before clocking in or after clocking out,” 72% had been “not been paid for all hours worked or all tasks performed,” 58% had been paid a much lower tipped wage for work they did not receive tips on, and 21% reported that they did not always receiving overtime pay despite working over 40 hours per week.

The Win For EV Workers In The South You Didn’t Hear About

August 17, 2024 Ella Fanger, Portside. Educate! Alabama, Electric Vehicles, Labor Movement, The South, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Organized labor is in the midst of a fierce campaign to make inroads at auto manufacturers in the South, most recently at the Mercedes plant in Vance, Alabama, where on May 17, 56% of workers voted narrowly against joining the United Auto Workers. But a few months before the unsuccessful vote at Mercedes, workers 100 miles away at an EV bus manufacturing plant in Anniston, Alabama, unionized and won a historic contract. In January 2024, the majority of the around 600 workers at a plant run since 2013 by New Flyer, the largest transit bus manufacturer in North America, signed a union card to join the International Union of Electrical Workers-Communications Workers of America (IUE-CWA).

New ‘Battery Belt’ Opens Organizing Front In The South

August 3, 2024 Ben Carroll, Labor Notes. Organize! Electric Vehicles, Labor Movement, The South, Unions

Towering cranes pierce the sky, contrasting with the rural surroundings. It’s an early morning in June, the air already gauzy and thick, and construction is humming at the Toyota Battery mega-site in Liberty, North Carolina. Trucks and other heavy machines dart in and out of the complex. A line of food trucks is tucked around the corner, alongside a dozen tour buses used to move workers. Production is slated to begin in 2025. By 2030, when the 7 million-square-foot complex is fully operational, it will have 14 production lines—10 dedicated to batteries for electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electrics, and four for hybrid electric vehicles—operated by 5,100 workers. The total population of Liberty is 2,655.

Tipping Is A Racist Relic

July 12, 2024 Nina Mast, Economic Policy Institute. Educate! Racism, Service Workers, Slavery, The South, Tipping, Worker Rights

In most of the country, workers in restaurants, bars, nail salons, barber shops, and various other service jobs are paid differently than workers in virtually all other occupations. For these workers, a large portion (in many cases all) of their take-home pay comes from gratuity or “tips” provided directly from the customer. While employers of workers in nearly all other occupations must pay at least the minimum wage, federal and most states’ laws establish a lower “subminimum wage” for tipped workers that effectively passes the responsibility for compensating these workers from their employers to their clientele.

Southern Worker School Charts Course For Power

June 4, 2024 Southern Workers Assembly. Organize! Labor Movement, Popular Assemblies, The South, Worker Rights and Jobs

Southern politicians have gone out of their way in word and action to make clear they stand on the side of big business and racism as they’ve recently lamented that the “Alabama [ie – Southern] model for success is under attack” and vowing to “fight unions to the gates of hell.” Nearly two hundred rank and filers who are developing a movement of workers in the South that can build power to make these politicians’ fears a reality gathered in Charlotte, NC on May 17 – 19 for the 2024 Southern Worker School. These convenings are the annual organizing conference of the Southern Workers Assembly network, which includes local workers assemblies, worker organizations, and other workers from various sectors and states throughout the region.

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.

UAW Admits Digital Heavy, Organizing Committee Light Approach Failed Them

May 27, 2024 Mike Elk, Payday Report. Organize! Alabama, Mercedes-Benz, The South, union busting, Unions, United Auto Workers (UAW), Worker Rights and Jobs

Rather than using traditional organizing committee structures, the UAW relied heavily on digital meetings, a light staff approach from the international union, and getting workers to sign union cards via QR codes. Given the positive media coverage of the UAW in the “Stand Up Strike,” many UAW leaders were confident they could win using this approach. After filing with 70%, the UAW believed they would maintain their margin and win at similar margins to the 73% victory of UAW workers in Chattanooga. However, the UAW lost 44%-56% in Alabama amid charges that the company used backroom manipulation tactics against workers.

Operation Dixie Failed 78 Years Ago

May 26, 2024 Chandra Childers, Dave Kamper and Jennifer Sherer, Economic Policy Institute. Strategize! History, Labor Movement, Operation Dixie, The South, Worker Rights and Jobs

Volkswagen workers’ decisive recent union election victory in Chattanooga, Tennessee, makes them the first Southern U.S. auto workers to unionize a foreign-owned auto factory. Their success could also mark a historic turning point for generations of Southern workers seeking to improve their jobs and transform their states’ economies. There are also signs that vigorous enforcement of federal labor law and other pro-worker federal policies, bolstered by the Biden administration, are contributing to a more level playing field for workers attempting to organize in the South. But a long history of exploitation will take a strong, national labor movement to overcome.

How Workers Are Revolutionizing The South

May 25, 2024 David McCall, ZNetwork. Organize! Labor Movement, The South, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Donneta Williams, president of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 1025 and a longtime optical fiber maker at the Corning plant in Wilmington, North Carolina, knows how important it is for workers intent on forming a union to speak directly with peers who walk in the same shoes. So Williams agreed to send three of her colleagues to Corning’s Tarboro facility, about 145 miles away, when workers at that site approached the union with questions about organizing. Local 1025 members shared firsthand accounts of how the union boosted their wages, gave them a voice, and kept them safe on the job. And in May 2024, the workers at Tarboro filed for an election to join the USW.

Segregation Academies Still Operate Across The South

May 21, 2024 Jennifer Berry Hawes, ProPublica. Educate! Alabama, Education, Racism, Segregation, The South

A mile of Alabama country road, and a history of racism, separate the two schools. At the stop sign between them, even the road’s name changes. Threadgill Road, christened for a civil rights hero, becomes Whiskey Run. Black students take Threadgill to one campus; white students turn off Whiskey Run toward the other. Both schools are shrinking. Wilcox County, a notch in the swath of old plantation country known as the Black Belt, struggles with declining population — a common scenario across this part of the South. In such places, the existence of two separate school systems can isolate entire communities by race.

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