The Congressional Black Caucus - African Americans and the Labor Movement

Floor Speech

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Mr. VEASEY. Mr. Speaker, Mr. Jeffries, thank you very much for having us here to talk about the importance of wages and labor unions in our country. I want to thank my friend from the Empire State of New York for putting this together. This is very important and very timely as we try to pull our country out of the economic glut that it was in, as we are turning things around and we're getting job numbers back and things seem to be getting better slowly but surely. But we want to make sure, as things get better, people have a living wage, one where they can earn a good salary and have dignity and respect and be able to feed their families and take care of them.

I was listening to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Payne) talk about his life when he was growing up and the importance that labor unions played in his life. I can tell you, when I was in high school, that I worked at a grocery store and it was a union grocery store, probably the only one in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area. I remember, we had benefits. We had time and a half. We were paid extra on holidays. We were young people, but we were allowed to make a little extra money. No one got rich off it, but at least when we were working extra on those days that people would normally have off, when we worked those extra hours during the summer and when school was out, we were compensated for it and compensated for it fairly. I am really proud of that.

Also, thinking back to my childhood, I often think about the people who would come over to our house and play dominoes and cards on Friday and Saturday night, and when the men would talk about trying to uplift themselves and getting that better job and better salary, and the companies that they often talked about.

How do you get on there? That was a saying back then: Do you have a friend that can get me on over there? When people were talking about getting on someplace that had a good salary, it was a place that had a union. It was a place that had one of our labor forces fighting for good wages, fighting so your family could have health care insurance, fighting so your family could have dental insurance, and just basic things like that that so many people take for granted every day, but it certainly helped shape the person that I am today.

A strong labor force is the key to economic security. Labor unions have historically sought to fight for workers' rights--to increase wages, raise the standard of living for the middle class, ensure safe working conditions, and increase benefits for both workers and their families.

Unionized workers are more likely to receive paid leave, have employer-provided health insurance, and to participate in employer-provided pension plans. They reduce wage inequality by raising wages for low- and middle-wage workers and blue-collar workers without a college degree. And they raise wages of unionized workers by roughly 20 percent and raise compensation, including both wages and benefits, by about 28 percent.

Today, the labor movement is an important tool for African Americans and, as unions, continue to play a pivotal role in both securing legislative labor protections, such as safety and health, overtime, family and medical leave, and making sure that those rights are enforced on the job.

Labor unions are critically vital to the African American community's economic security. They have been historically and will continue to be in the future. African American union workers' earnings are nearly 24 percent higher than nonunion counterparts, and labor unions provide key bargaining power by organizing the workers to negotiate an agreement with management. This agreement covers things such as a safe place to work, decent wages, and fringe benefits.

Unionized workers are 28 percent more likely to be covered by employer-provided health insurance and are almost 54 percent more likely to have employer-provided pensions and are more likely to receive paid leave.

Fifty years ago, the March on Washington was led with a labor message to increase economic security. Today we must work together to continue that charge. Working people need the collective voice and bargaining power unions provide to keep employers from making the workplace look as it did in the past.

Unions are vital in ensuring that corporations do not focus on creating profits at the expense of their employees.

African Americans are serving in key leadership roles in the larger labor movement. Arlene Holt Baker currently serves as the AFL-CIO's executive vice president, and Lee A. Saunders serves as the president of AFSCME.

Today, labor unions are still on the forefront of efforts to ensure that the gains of the past are maintained and that those who fight for our dignity and equality continue to march on.

I encourage my colleagues in Congress to continue to honor the traditions of the Davis-Bacon wage protections that have helped cement labor agreements and other fair practices that have helped the African American community and all Americans achieve prosperity and economic security.

And as we think about what transpired last month with the March on Washington and as we commemorated 50 years, we think about all of the great things that Dr. King did in his service to our country while God allowed him to live on this Earth, and one of my favorite quotes by Dr. King is, and I'll close out with this:

As I've said many times and believe with all my heart, the coalition that can have the greatest impact in the circle for human dignity here in America is that of the Negro and the forces of labor because their forces are so closely intertwined.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Jeffries, thank you very much for this time. Let's continue to march on.

Mr. JEFFRIES. Thank you, Representative Veasey, for your very eloquent thoughts and observations.

Of course, we understood that Dr. King was very close with organized labor, with 1199 in New York, with the retail workers, and a variety of other unions. And of course on that tragic day down in Memphis, Tennessee, when he was assassinated in 1968, he was there in support of striking Black sanitation workers, so he leaves behind a tremendous legacy. Part of that legacy, of course, includes standing up for the rights of workers to organize and fight for decent wages and health care and a pension. These are all things that Dr. King would advocate for were he around today.

We have been joined by one of the leaders of the CBC, someone who was a distinguished civil rights attorney prior to his arrival here in the Congress and a judge, and now he serves as vice chair in the Congressional Black Caucus, one of the most eloquent voices in the CBC, and I am pleased to yield the floor to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Butterfield)

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