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News
Street Roots • April 7-13, 2017
Unions stand up to racism, hate
Labor leadership in
Portland comes together
in defense of targeted
communities and
immigrant workers
BY EM ILY GREEN
S T A F F W R IT E R
any activist groups may find their
members fall into one school of
thought or another, but few
organizations represent such varying
ideologies among their membership as
unions.
Now, as the two outer edges of the
political spectrum square off in Oregon,
leaders of several local labor organizations
are taking a stand against the vitriol that’s
been echoing from fringe factions of the far
right.
Since November, Portland-based local
unions representing painters, carpenters
and stagehands have all passed strongly
worded resolutions stating their plans to
mobilize against racist and fascist hate
groups, with several of their counterparts
a ro u n d the Pacific Northwest following suit.
M
T h e O reg o n AFL-CIO also p a sse d a
resolution to stand against hate incidents,
and it set up a hotline for workers to call if
they experience hate or discrimination in
the workplace.
Local labor groups have become a regular
presence at area immigrant rights rallies
and are gearing up to march alongside
immigrant workers on May 1. In Salem,
immigrant rights organization Causa and
Oregon School Employees Association are
co-presenting Salem’s main May Day event,
and others are planning events in Portland.
A recent resurgence of hate incidents in
Oregon, along with the history of unions’
organizing against white supremacists, is in
part why it’s the responsibility of the labor
movement to take a stand against hate
today, union representatives told Street
Roots.
The Industrial Workers of the World in
Seattle has also released a statement saying
it will organize “against the KKK and other
white supremacist organizations, to stand
with other unions and other community
allies, and to quickly mobilize when these
forces present a threat.”
Union opposition’s racist roots
Most of these unions pointed to the
connection between white supremacy and
the origin of anti-union “right to work” laws
in their resolutions, saying racist
organizations pose a direct threat to union
members and the labor movement as a
whole, and always have.
“There certainly were some people who
were white supremacist, and very much
connected to that ideology, that were
supportive of ‘right to work,”’ said Bob
Bussel, labor history professor and director
of University of Oregon’s Labor Education
and Research Center. Right-to-work laws
prohibit unions from automatically collecting to-work laws, he argued, it’s worth
remembering how they originated - and it
dues from member workers.
was in states where black people could not
“The basic idea of right-to-work laws were
vote and political power was concentrated in
to make unions weak,” he said. “In the
the hands of the elite.
Southern United States,
“Right-to-work laws
unions were viewed as a
sought to make it stay
direct threat to systems
that way, to deprive the
and structures of white
" I f the U.S. labor move
least powerful of a voice,
supremacy because they
ment is to rebuild Its
and to make sure that
threatened to organize
workers remained
workers - in some cases strength during this pe
divided along racial
riod of crisis of racist
interracially - and they
lines,” Pierce wrote in
threatened to drive a
organising and attacks, It
the article. “The current
wedge through the
must tafee up the struggle
push for Right-to-Work in
divide-and-conquer
against white supremacy/ Kentucky and Missouri
tactics that employers
white nationalism , not as
(along with the fueling of
and their allies used. It’s
nativism) does something
no accident a number of an abstract debate, but as
part of its social, p o litica l, similar - it is an attempt
the states that enacted
to persuade white
right-to-work laws
and organizing agenda."
working people that
following World War II
P A C IF IC N O R T H W E S T R E G IO N A L
unions and racialized
C O U N C IL . O F C A R P E N T E R S
were in the Southern
R E S O L U T IO N
others are more
United States, although
responsible for their
not just there.”
plight than the choices
In a recent article for
made by capital.”
the Labor and Working
Today, more than half
Class History Association, Michael Pierce, a
of U.S. states have right-to-work laws.
University of Arkansas associate professor,
Proponents say these laws are about
examined the connection among the origins
workers’ right to choose whether they want
of right-to-work laws, anti-Semitism and Jim
to pay dues. Union representatives say they
Crow.
are meant to hurt unions by attacking their
As states continue to contemplate right-
funding source, and according to the AFL-
CIO, workers in states with these laws have
lower wages and are less likely to have
employer-provided insurance.
Despite repeated attempts, no state on
the West Coast has passed right-to-work
legislation.
Corporate power and party politics
These days, it’s corporate forces, not
white supremacists, that are pushing the
right-to-work agenda, said Marcus Widener,
labor history expert and professor emeritus
at the University of Oregon.
“There’s a huge effort to spread right-to-
work laws around the country by
organizations like ALEC, who are very much
aligned with the conservative Republicans,”
he said.
ALEC, the American Legislative
Exchange Council, is a conservative
organization that writes corporate-funded
legislation for lawmakers to introduce in
Congress and state legislatures.
There are questions, however, around
what ratio of “lunatic fringe right” and
traditional conservatives compose the
Trump administration, Widener said.
“There would appear to be some rubbing
of the shoulders of these organizations right
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