The
status of minorities in the American labor movement became clear to Bill
Fletcher Jr. while he was riding a Boston bus in 1985.
Fletcher,
a graduate of Harvard who went to work on the shipyards in Quincy,
Massachusetts, had become a union organizer in the Beantown area. But his
experience was spoiled by institutional racism and elitism.
He
found himself riding that bus and reading a local AFL-CIO newsletter
celebrating the 50th anniversary of America’s most well-known union. As he
read, he detected a distinct lack of diversity in the story being presented by
the newsletter. It was an omission with which he had become all too familiar.
“I
knew there was a story that was different from what the AFL-CIO was telling
us,” he told a group of Rochester labor leaders during a visit in late
February.
That
awareness had been building in him for some time and eventually led to what he
calls his purging from the Boston labor movement. “I hit a glass ceiling,” he
said during his talk at the Rochester United Teachers Building. He was purged,
he said, “for asking too many questions.”
The
experience helped motivate him to write The
Indispensable Ally: Black Workers and the Formation of the Congress of
Industrial Organizations, 1934-1941, a pictorial booklet published in 1987.
It
also formed a crucial underpinning for his Rochester talk, “Race, Class and the
Future of the Labor Movement,” sponsored by the Coalition of Black Trade
Unionists and Cornell Labor Programs.
Despite his
troubles in Boston, Fletcher managed to rise through the ranks of the AFL-CIO, serving
as education director and assistant to the union’s president. He now serves as
the president and CEO of the Trans Africa Forum, a non-profit created to
educate the public about the impact of US foreign policy on Africa and the
African Diaspora.
Such
cumulative experience added weight to his Rochester lecture, especially when he
described how the concepts of race and socioeconomics continue to splinter the
American labor movement.
Too
frequently, he said, the largely white leadership of modern unions is separated
from its base of support — a base often made up of lower- to middle-class
African Americans, Latinos, and other minorities. While union leaders enjoy the
social and financial perks of their positions, he said, they often ignore the
needs of the rank-and-file membership they were elected to represent.
Fletcher’s
solution: to change the goals of the labor movement. The ultimate objective —
and one long absent from union agendas — should be reclaiming labor’s
rightful place in society.
“How
do we gain power?” he asked. “I don’t hear that [being discussed] in the
AFL-CIO. I don’t hear it from any union in the United States. Until we have
that discussion, everything else is a joke. The reason many of our members
disengage is because they know it’s a joke. They know we’re bullshitting them.”
Disenchantment
among the rank and file has deeper implications. Throughout history, Fletcher
said, capitalists have used race and gender to splinter labor movements by
turning workers against each other. He said globalization is only the most
recent example of such tactics.
“Capital
wants the annihilation of the union movement,” he said. “The rich are engaging
in a class war in the United States, and our leaders don’t want to engage it.
Instead, they want us to roll over and play dead.”
Union
members need to look beyond details like overtime grievances and contract
campaigns to create a vision for all working people, Fletcher said. “We must
look at power for all workers, not just one bargaining unit,” he said, adding
that unions “are part of the equation, but not the only part.”
The
rank and file, he said, must not place their fate in the hands of complacent
leaders, and they must find ways to incorporate the rest of society into the
movement: “We have to change the way we look at community organizations and the
community as a whole. That’s when you start talking about real, achievable power.”
Fletcher
touched a nerve with local labor leaders, many of whom responded with
pointed thoughts of their own. Jim Bertolone, president of the Rochester &
Genesee Valley Labor Federation, said the labor movement still has the power to
make concrete changes in workers’ lives; he pointed to the successful
living-wage campaign in Rochester as proof. “The social agenda,” he said, “is
there.”
But
those efforts are barely portrayed by corporate-dominated media, Bertolone
said, and therefore go largely unseen. He also said unions sometimes “are
victims of our own success” because union leaders often make so much money that
“they identify more with… doctors and lawyers” more than their membership.
Gloria
Lawton, a caseworker for the International Federation of Social Workers, echoed
that thought, noting union leadership often leads to collusion with employers.
“Half of [union leaders] are in bed with employers anyway,” she said.
Meanwhile,
Dan Thomas, a long-time member of the United Auto Workers, agreed with
Fletcher, saying that race plays a crucial and negative role within unions.
White members and leaders, he said, like having authority and aren’t too keen
on giving it up.
“They’re
in a state of bliss,” he said. “As long as the situation continues, they’ll
keep going along with it.”
Racial
division must be overcome if labor has any chance of regaining power, Fletcher
said. “Can we ignore race,” he posed, “and appeal to our common economic
interests?”
He
added that minority workers must be proactive, “step forward and initiate
change” instead of playing supporting roles. Karen Spotford, a council leader
for the Public Employees Federation, urged union members to learn all they can
about their union and its efforts. “Revolution,” she said, “involves knowledge.”
With
such education and effort, Fletcher said, it would be possible to create a
united, inclusive, and potent force of workers. In his words: “a total labor
movement.”
This article appears in Mar 9-15, 2005.
