The South

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.”

Lessons On Trans Liberation From The US South

March 8, 2025 Nick Fulton, Waging Nonviolence. Strategize! Donald Trump, Health Care, The South, Transgender Rights

In a recent exchange between President Donald Trump and Maine Gov. Janet Mills, she publicly declined to comply with Trump’s executive order banning transgender athletic participation. The governor’s act of defiance made headlines as electeds, advocates and organizers grapple with how they might respond to the president’s anti-trans agenda. This practice of defiance and dedication to trans lives is nothing new to reformers in the U.S. South who have a message to national organizers: the fight may look different but the endgame remains the same. We have to protect our trans neighbors fearlessly and without exception.

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 Stone Is In Our Hands, Now We Take The Shot

February 11, 2025 Rev. Ryan Brown, Facing South. Organize! Amazon, The South, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

The Philistine warrior Goliath stood over nine feet tall, clad in bronze armor, armed with a spear, sword, and javelin. For forty days, he mocked the Israelites, daring anyone to challenge him. No one would — until a shepherd boy named David stepped forward. He had no armor, no sword, only a sling and five smooth stones. The world saw a young boy facing certain defeat. But David had something Goliath did not: faith, conviction, and the knowledge that justice was on his side. David let his stone fly, and the giant fell. Amazon is our Goliath. It is one of the largest corporations in human history, worth over two trillion dollars.

New Co-op Financial Association For Southern Small Farmers

January 14, 2025 Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Create! Agriculture, Cooperatives, Small Farmers, The South

East Point, Georgia - This past October, the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund ("the Federation") joined the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and other partners for the announcement of the historic launch of the Southern Farmers Financial Association (SFFA). This new cooperatively-owned institution was created to increase access to capital for its member-owners to begin farming or strengthen existing small farming operations and agriculture-based businesses in high-poverty areas across the Southeast.

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.

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