The Black Community Gathers

On December 4, 2010 members of Boston's Black Community The minutes from the Black Community Gathering are here!!! Click on the attachment below to find out more information about what was discussed and what the next steps are...

Meeting Minutes

MAAP Collectuve Bargaining Declaration Spring 2011 

The African American community as well as white-working women has a special affinity to collective bargaining and workers rights.  The struggle for workers’ rights was a major force in building the black middle class during and after the great migration and later, after the passage of the civil rights act of 1964.

Below is our community response to the attacks by the right on workers and their rights.  We believe it is imperative that we take a bold stand on the attack on workers. And although in numbers, it is not reflected here in Massachusetts, public employment is the single most important and equitable industry for Black workers in the United States (click here to see new study). The right wing assault is as much a racial one as well as it is against workers.

This resolution will be introduced in local city councils throughout Massachusetts before the middle of May.  We ask that people and organizations of good will who believe in collective bargaining and workers rights, the personification of a democracy endorse and lend their name to this effort.

What Union of Minority Neighborhoods is asking is that individuals and organizations support the resolution as well as the spirit of the resolution. Please call or email us or use the Contact Us link on this website to be added as an endorser. Thanks!

(DRAFT COLLECTIVE BARGAINING RESOLUTION LANGUAGE)

Prepared by the Union of Minority Neighborhoods and the Massachusetts Alliance of African Peoples

A RESOLUTION IN SUPPORT OF COLLECTIVE BARGAINING AND WORKERS RIGHTS

WHEREAS:  Collective Bargaining, workers rights and the labor movement were concepts born amid great struggle in this country more than 150 years ago, and

WHEREAS:  In the effort to ensure worker and family protections, adequate pay, and workplace representation, scores of workers fighting for these right were assaulted, maimed, and in many cases, killed by security forces hired by corporate bosses, causing workers great harm and family displacement, and,

WHEREAS:   Some of the greatest struggles in labor rights history occurred in Massachusetts factories in cities such as Springfield, Holyoke, Boston, Worcester, Lawrence and Lowell, and,

WHEREAS:  The opportunities created by collective bargaining made it possible for Irish, Italian, Slavic, Eastern European, Jewish, English, Polish, Spanish, Chinese,  and Russian immigrants, victims of racism and class warfare in their home countries,  got people out of poverty and achieve the American dream, and

WHEREAS:  The rights secured by workers in their struggles for voice and representation in the workplace, created opportunities for more than 30 million black Americans to escape the oppression of the Jim Crow South, making possible the greatest human exodus in the history of the world, where black Americans left the south in what historians now refer to as the Great Migration, and

WHEREAS:  During the struggle for human and civil rights for African Americans in the 1950’s and 60’s, it was the labor movement, led by human rights champions such as United Auto Workers President Walter Reuther and Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters Union President A. Philip Randolp that gave the civil rights movement much needed support and mainstream credibility, and,

WHEREAS:   Upon passage of the civil rights act of 1964, it was the public sector unions that opened doors to blacks and white women, becoming the leading factor in the creation of the Black middle class and economic opportunity for women, and,

WHEREAS:  Collective bargaining, workers rights and the right to belong to unions  created benefits that have helped make America the worldwide model of a successful democracy.  The benefits accrued are today such a part of our daily routine we’ve taken them for granted, acting as if they’ve always existed. Some of the rights made possible through collective bargaining include: overtime pay, parental leave, child labor laws, paid sick leave, domestic partner benefits, paid vacations, workplace representation, grievance procedures, OSHA, pension benefits, health benefits,  workers compensation, the minimum wage, farm labor rights, unemployment compensation, equal pay for equal work, the 40 hour work week, and the weekend, and,

WHEREAS:   In states around the country, forces are at work to dismantle these hard earned rights of workers, accusing teachers, social workers , nurses, sanitation workers,  and other public sector employees as the cause for the economic downturn in America,  not corporate bailouts, overcompensated executives or endless war, and

WHEREAS:  It is critical, considering the profound labor history that exists in this region and because of what collective bargaining has done and how collective bargaining has benefitted every working person in this state, it is essential that we speak in one voice to affirm and defend the rights of workers to organize, to be represented in the workplace, and to continue to improve the lives of workers through collective bargaining…

THEREFORE:  The  ____________________ supports the fundamental human right of collective bargaining and worker representation, and embrace the concept of collective bargaining and workers rights as a fundamental human right that must be protected by all reasonable, forward thinking residents of this city/state and,

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED:  That an embossed copy be presented to members of the County Federation of Labor asserting our true sentiment.