Building Better Labor Unions with Bianca Cunningham
Black History Year
PushBlack
4.6 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 12 December 2022
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today’s History Story: White Americans Kept Unions Exclusive – But Black Workers Still Triumphed
The right to earn a living wage under just and safe work conditions is as inalienable a right as our freedom of speech. Still, the history of Black people in the American labor movement is rooted in injustice. White supremacy has sought to keep Black workers from the best jobs, the most robust industries, and their sacred labor unions. However, today is a different day, as Black workers now occupy more seats at the labor union table than any other race or ethnicity in America.
Here to help us explore this dramatic change is Bianca Cunningham, campaign director at The Action Center on Race & the Economy (ACRE), a non-profit that directly takes on the financial institutions and anti-democratic actors that are responsible for pillaging communities of color and poor families, subverting voting rights, and destroying our environment. She’s also the co-founder of the AfroSocialists and Socialists of Color Caucus of the Democratic Socialists of America. Bianca will share her story of unionizing her retail job, taking that first step towards reconfiguring the makeup of labor unions everywhere.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | If you love Push Black's Black History Year, you'll love our newest podcast called Two Minute |
| 0:08.2 | Black History. |
| 0:09.7 | In only two minutes, you'll hear little-known stories about our people and reclaim the |
| 0:15.0 | knowledge we need to take action and advance our community. |
| 0:20.4 | To move towards the future, you've got to look to the past. |
| 0:24.6 | Learn the history you didn't get in school. |
| 0:26.7 | Tune in to Two Minute Black History, every Tuesday through Friday, right on the Black |
| 0:32.0 | History Year feed, and wherever you listen to podcasts. |
| 0:50.1 | We ain't asked to come here, but they brought us and they bought us anyway. |
| 0:55.6 | We didn't want to work for them, but they beat us into service. |
| 1:01.4 | And after we fought off their oppression and won our hard-earned freedom, |
| 1:07.2 | they wouldn't share a slice of their precious apple pie. |
| 1:11.1 | The right to earn a living wage under just and safe work conditions should be as |
| 1:18.0 | inalienable a right as a freedom of speech, but white supremacy sought to keep black workers from |
| 1:25.5 | the best jobs, the strongest industries, and their sacred labor unions. |
| 1:31.0 | I'm Jay from Push Black, and you're listening to Black History Year. |
| 1:35.7 | America's history of black labor is rooted in injustice. |
| 1:41.2 | Our struggle to be heard in the workforce dates pretty far back. |
| 1:45.0 | Let's look at 1869 when the color-dational labor union was formed. |
| 1:50.9 | Uniting black folks across the country in response to the exclusion of black workers |
| 1:56.4 | at every other union in the country practice. |
| 1:59.4 | The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Portals established in 1925 was one of the first Black-led labor |
... |
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