Employment and Labor
Overview
Racial inequity in the economic sphere is persistent and widespread. People of color on average still have higher unemployment rates and lower wealth and incomes than white people on average, even controlling for educational status and job qualifications. The recent recession and slow recovery has lowered effective wage rates in ways particularly devastating for people with little or no inherited cushion of wealth or access to family economic support. It has thus exacerbated the accumulated advantages of some racial/ethnic groups and the accumulated disadvantages of others. The recent recession and slow recovery has also shown the success of “divide and conquer” strategies that pit workers from different groups (including racial/ethnic groups) against each other. For example, it has become perfectly acceptable for public officials to use terms like “jobless recovery,” which suggests that the country no longer assumes as a matter of course that a recovery means most people are back at work in living wage jobs. In addition, people complain when public sector employees want to hold on to their pensions (rather than organizing to ensure pensions for all workers). Worker rights and wages have been eroding in the U.S. for some time, and there has been increased legislation in some states to eliminate labor unions. Though the U. S. Labor movement has its own racist history, the current attacks on trade unions, in which Blacks and Latinos are more likely to be union members, functions as another “divide and conquer” strategy that eliminates a working class network advocating for decent wages and benefits. Thus, there is racial equity work to do on the issue of employment at every level – structural, cultural, institutional and individual.
Research
- Working With Labor: A Primer, A History, A Guide
- Uneven Pain Unemployment by metropolitan area and race
- Restoring the Rights of Workers to Form Unions: A National Priority and Human Rights Imperative
- A Broken Bargain for LGBT Workers of Color
- Barriers to Employment Opportunities in the Baltimore Region
- Public Sector Jobs: Job Opportunities for Advancing Racial Equity
- State of the Dream 2017: Mourning in America
- Public Sector Jobs: Opportunities for Advancing Racial Equity
- Community Wealth Building External Review: Reflections on Advancing Worker Ownership in the Washington DC Metropolitan Region
Practices
- From Jim Crow Jobs To Employment Equity How To Create Quality Jobs For Everyone
- Community Organizing As Job Creator: An Investment That Works For All
- Hidden in Plain Sight: Workers at Baltimore's Inner Harbor and the Struggle for Fair Development
- Immigrant Worker Owned Cooperative: A User's Manual
- All the Issues in Workers' Lives: Labor Confronts Race in Stamford
- Working Beyond Unions
- Railroaded out of Their Rights: How a Labor Law Loophole Prevents FedEx Express Employees from Being Represented by a Union
Key sites
- New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice
- Domestic Workers United
- Tenants and Workers United
- National Day Laborer Organizing Network
