Date: Fri, 30 Aug 1996 10:27:25 -0400 (EDT)
From: Jeffrey Booth <booth2-AT-husc.harvard.edu>
Subject: Re: Labor & Racism: Construction Trades



Louis,
	I really like your post below.  Have you heard of the reform
movement in the Laborers?  Do you read Labor Notes?  I don't like their
politics much but they sometimes give info. on union reform movements.
I wonder if the reform movement in the Laborers is at all fighting racism.

				-- Jeff Booth

On Thu, 29 Aug 1996, Louis R Godena wrote:

> 
> One area of organized labor that has remained all but untouched by the
> feminist and civil rights struggles of the past decades is the building
> trades.    At least this was true til the other day,  but even now
> ameliorative programs designed,  ostensibly,  to correct years of
> discrimination remain poorly conceived and ineffective.
> 
> A personal reminiscence;  when I returned from Vietnam and was separated
> from the Air Force in the early '70s,  there was a freeze on signing new
> members into the carpenters' union (in my case,  Local 94 in Providence).
> Several African Americans from the area who had served with me were told to
> come back in "about two years" and their applications would be "considered".
> My family,  however,  had a long tradition as Rhode Island carpenters; my
> father had been a shop steward at Quonset Point Naval Air Station for Local
> 94 for several years before WWII.   My great-grandfather was a founding
> member of Local 342 in Central Falls late in the last century.    Four days
> after my separation from the armed services,  I was on the job laying
> sub-flooring at the Providence Civic Center,  and two days later the
> Business Agent dropped off my "book" all fiiled out and paid up.    
> 
> That's how it was and is done today.    There are virtually no black members
> in the carpenters' union anywhere in New England,  except Bridgeport and
> Boston,  and there they are used primarily for "hazardous duty" (e.g.
> asbestos removal) in jobs that are usually--at least in good times--shunned
> by whites.    The same is largely true of the allied trades--painters,
> bricklayers,  sheet metal workers,  operating engineers,  iron workers,
> etc.    The laborers is somewhat better--they have paid out quite a bit in
> successful discrimination lawsuits.     But the rest of the industry remains
> mired in racism and cronyism.     
> 
> Affirmative action has had some effect,  primarily in bringing white
> women--mostly the wives,  daughters,  and girlfriends of long-time union
> members or affiliated contractors into the ranks of organized labor.    In
> Chicago,  some enterprising community activists tried to block access to a
> major redevelopment project near the Cabrini-Green housing project.    They
> were bought off by the city and the contractor who provided a few jobs
> (which went to politically--connected "poverty pimps" and social service
> lackeys) and a substantial sum to the activist themselves for "development
> training".    When the project was completed,  there were several dozen
> inner city youths with welding certificates and...no jobs.    This scenario
> was reenacted last year in Los Angeles and Baltimore and,  in early 1996,
> in Hartford and Cincinatti.    I imagine it is fairly common.    
> 
> An important task of Marxists and progressives in the labor movement is to
> squarely face this phenomenon--which has its echo throughout much of the
> labor movement.     There is much truth,  unfortunately,  to the
> charge--leveled by MIM,  Rakesh,  and others,  that the labor movement in
> America is,  indeed,  permeated with the privileges and the perogatives of a
> "labor aristocracy",  acting hand in hand with the employers and against the
> interests of the world's (largely impoverished) workers. 
> 
> The question is:  where do we go from here?
> 
> 
> Louis Godena
> 
> 
> 
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