Locked Out: Unions Within the Building Industry - One of the Most Racist Segments of American Organized Labor

Blacks attending an outdoor meeting of the Southern Tenants Farmers Union in 1937.  Even though African-
Americans have a long and storied history in the union movement, the construction trade unions remain
among the most racist and sexist segments of American society. (Photo from Kheel Center)

By Playthell Benjamin
Virtually all of the black and Nuyorican construction workers I talked to believe that their plight is the result of a criminal conspiracy at the top.  And it is easy to see why.  Beneath the orderly exterior of the construction industry that the public routinely observes when walking past building sites, there lurks a putrid world of racism, sexism, corruption and criminality.

These vices take the form of gender exclusion and crude sexual harassment on the job, wholesale violation of civil rights laws by excluding non-white workers and contractors, widespread refusal to abide by the prevailing wage and benefit laws, flagrant disregard for health and safety regulations, rigged union elections, and the machinations of the invisible hand of organized white crime, who fix contracts and meddles in the affairs of unions and contractors big time.

Industry watchdogs say that there appears to be a kind of selective morality at work, one that says: “So long as the buildings go up on time everything else is cool.”  The obvious problem with such a position is that it stands on the same moral ground as those who attempt to justify Nazism because it brought about an economic revival in Germany!

Continue Reading...