The Lost Constituency

...Corruption is rife, and the union has affixed its once respected label to a new generation of sweatshops...

...Organized labor's repeated attempts to destroy court-ordered plans for modified seniority are intended to preserve the superior job status of white males at the expense of nonwhites and women...

...These expectations have become the norm...

...The unions' standard response, in the face of repeated charges of institutional racism leveled by public and private agencies, was first to deny the existence of such practices and then to mount an intensive public relations campaign to demonstrate labor's devotion to civil rights on some issue far removed from union discrimination...

...Organized labor resisted compliance with Title VII by refusing to conciliate valid charges of unlawful discrimination, violating conciliation agreements, rejecting requests for disclosure of information, repeatedly defending discriminatory practices that the Federal courts had declared illegal, and violating court orders...

...The story concluded, "The white men's unions of 1970 remain the white men's unions of 1981...

...As it turned out, some unions with substantial black membership, such as the United Auto Workers, did take active part...

...Appropriately, the first contempt citation obtained under Title VII involved a construction union, Local 189 of the Plumbers Union in Columbus, Ohio...

...The attacks on affirmative action must be understood, therefore, as efforts to perpetuate traditional racist and sexist employment practices...

...Organized labor and management have jointly created a severely exploited class of black workers unions retain their basic commitment to the diminishing proportion of white male workers, and they repeatedly trade off the interest of nonwhites and women to perpetuate the traditional benefits enjoyed by white males...

...Black workers in many unionized industries have learned that what outright exclusion is to the craft unions, job segregation is to the industrial unions...

...This was no accident or oversight...

...The black "train porter" who does the braking work at the rear of railroad trains receives a substantially lower wage than the white "brakeman conductor" who does the same work at the front...

...In Chance v. Board of Examiners, for example, the AFT's New York affiliate, the United Federation of Teachers, filed a brief against black and Puerto Rican plaintiffs...

...He is the former national labor director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the author of "Black Labor and the American Legal System...

...The high point of that consensus was the historic March on Washington of August 28, 1963...

...The ILGWU's failure to respond to the new workforce is perhaps the most dramatic instance of organized labor's bureaucratic and conservative leadership...

...Although union membership today is lower as a percentage of the labor force than it was at the time of the 1955 merger between the AFL and the CIO, the federation's leadership seems incapable of understanding that its potential for growth is with racial minorities and women, the least-favored members of the work force and the least organized...

...Among the many rank-and-file movements are Teamsters for a Democratic Union, a nationwide organization challenging mob control of the nation's largest and richest union, as well as women's, black, and Hispanic caucuses and Asian-American associations trying to displace entrenched racist and sexist leaders in many unions...

...Since the March on Washington, organized labor has resisted efforts aimed at Herbert Hill is professor of industrial relations and Afro-American studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison...

...Fundamental and sweeping reform is obviously necessary if the union decline is to MARK FISHER be reversed and organized labor is once again to serve the cause of justice in the workplace...

...If organized labor has a future, this is where it is to be found...

...In certain desirable jobs in industrial plants, white workers are also exempted from competition with blacks...

...But exclusionary racial practices by such labor organizations as the building trades and other craft unions are only one aspect of discrimination by organized labor...

...This process is repeated in many industries...

...The matter was left to "individual union determination...

...These workers carry the hope of reviving a genuine labor movement in the United States...

...The company it keeps in such cases reveals much about organized labor's own policies and practices...

...The National Education Association was the only union to submit a brief in support of affirmative action in this case...

...they are assigned to classifications which have a higher wage base (supported by the payment of lower wages to blacks) and have access to better-paying, higher-skilled jobs that are denied to blacks and other minorities...

...v. Evans, the labor federation joined with the employer against female workers seeking their rights...

...In effect, job discrimination is a kind of subsidy to white workers and their unions...

...when racial practices that have historically put blacks at a disadvantage are removed to eliminate the present effects of past discrimination, whites tend to believe blacks are being given preferential treatment...

...In U.S...

...In Washington, D.C., with a predominantly black population, results of a job survey were reported by The Washington Post under the headline, 10-Year Effort Fails to Alter Ratio in the Trades...

...Historically, these expectations have been based on the systematic subordination of black labor...

...After much discussion and debate, the executive council of the AFL-CIO had deliberately withheld its support, and had even refused to encourage affiliated unions to endorse the March...

...sistant to change, have been among the worst offenders...

...Labor unions in many sectors of the economy have provided the institutional framework for expressing white male job expectations...

...Discriminatory hiring practices and segregated seniority and promotional lines have contributed to the relatively privileged position of white workers and the permanently depressed condition of the black working class...

...Mary Jean Tully, president of the National Organization for Women/Legal Defense and Education Fund, said, "The brief amicus curiae of the AFL-CIO in Evans is not only an attack on women workers and blacks locked into segregated seniority structures, it is also a repudiation of the fundamental premises of Title VII...

...Last year, the First Circuit Court of Appeals rejected arguments by the Boston Teachers Union, another AFT affiliate, that a U.S...

...The American Federation of Teachers has been among the most militant opponents of affirmative action, intervening as a friend of the court in Bakke and other cases before appellate courts...

...In an earlier case involving sex discrimination, United Airlines, Inc...

...The union membership has steadily declined from 445,000 in 1965 to 340,951 in 1980 to fewer than 250,000 in 1983, and it continues to fall...

...Union-negotiated wages are among the lowest of any organized industry...

...The national leadership of the ILGWU has little in common with that membership...

...AFL-CIO unions in virtually every jurisdiction have been found guilty by the Federal courts of engaging in unlawful racial discrimination...

...These evasive tactics, pursued over almost two decades, have delayed, narrowed, and denied the protection of the law to blacks and other minority workers...

...In this suit, the labor federation and its affiliates have joined with some of the nation's most reactionary forces to attack the principle of affirmative action...

...The International Ladies Garment Workers Union offers an instructive case study in how racism and sexism erode the power of organized labor...

...In another case now pending before the Supreme Court of the United States, Boston Firefighters Union v. Boston Chapter, NAACP, the friend-of-the-court brief filed by the AFL-CIO argues for the elimination of affirmative action as a remedy for job discrimination...

...Union-controlled "apprenticeship outreach programs" and unkept promises of "good-faith efforts" in voluntary "hometown plans," together with dilatory tactics in the courts, enabled the construction unions to perpetuate their pattern of excluding all but whites from the skilled crafts...

...The leadership perpetuates itself through rigid organizational control, ignoring the requirements of internal union democracy...

...It has much more in common, socially and culturally, with garment industry employers than with rank-and-file workers...

...Local 46 of the Lathers Union in New York City was also held in contempt by a Federal court after violating an agreement to end its discriminatory practices...

...Though the labor federation gave its official support to the principal legislative achievement resulting from the March— the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its fair-employment section, Title VII—George Meany, then the head of the AFL-CIO, told a Congressional committee the federation would impose no sanctions on affiliates that chose to defy the law...

...A quarter of a million demonstrators converged on the nation's capital that day, bearing the endorsement and support of a multitude of organizations from virtually every sector of American life...

...The appellate court said, "Black children have a right to an education in a school system free of racial discrimination in the employment of teachers and staff...

...The building trades unions, always reJob discrimination is, in effect, a kind of subsidy to white workers and their unions...

...As a result, white workers have expectations of promotion and higher earnings that are based in varying degrees on the denial of equal opportunity to blacks...

...Although no unions were involved in this case, the AFL-CIO went out of its way to undermine the position of black workers seeking remedies for job discrimination...

...White" and "high-status" have become synonymous and interdependent terms in the crafts...

...The ILGWU once enjoyed an outstanding reputation for its enlightened policies...

...Today, the union's membership consists largely of nonwhite women, many of them from the Caribbean, Central and South America, and Asia...

...Thus, organized labor and management have jointly created a severely exploited class of black labor, rigidly blocked from advancing into many all-white occupations...

...The white electrician, by virtue of the exclusion of blacks from his trade, is spared the burden of competing with an entire class within the working population...

...The greater rate of exploitation of the black worker, locked into an all-black labor classification, subsidizes the higher wage of the white "brakeman conductor...

...Postal Service v. Aikens, an important case recently argued before the Supreme Court of the United States, the AFL-CIO joined with the Chamber of Commerce and the Reagan Administration's Justice Department in attacking the rights of minority workers under Title VII...

...Conspicuously absent from the roster of participants in the March, and even from the list of sponsors, was the national labor federation, the AFL-CIO...

...These practices have been the subject of extensive Federal litigation involving the United Steel Workers and other industrial unions...

...In unions across the country, labor dissidents are fighting to achieve this kind of internal change...

...The inferior status of blacks in the labor force makes it possible for whites to receive higher wages and enjoy relatively better working conditions—individually and as a class...

...Out of their rich experience, these embattled groups have rejected the tradition of narrow business unionism, have denounced racist and sexist employment patterns, and have embraced the task of speaking up for the unemployed, the working poor, women, and racial minorities...

...Most AFL-CIO bringing about racial equality in the workplace...

...But in the years after World War II, the labor force in the New York City area, where the garment industry is concentrated, underwent a significant change in racial composition...

...district judge had ordered an affirmative action plan that amounted to a "forbidden racial preference...

...The labor federation argued for new and more stringent standards of proof that would make it more difficult for workers to prove they were the victims of racial bias...

...By maintaining separate lines of promotion and rigid adherence to union seniority, many industrial unions have prevented blacks from advancing into higher-paying skilled jobs...