NEW YORK – A national coalition of trade unions, such as social and racial justice organizations, will organize a major recall this month, as a component of an ongoing review of systemic racism and police brutality in the United States.
Dubbed the “Black Lives Strike,” tens of thousands of fast food, ride-sharing, retirement homes and airports in more than 25 cities are expected to leave paintings on July 20 for about 8 minutes, the time prosecutors in Minneapolis seized their knees. George Floyd’s neck in May, reminiscent of black men and women who recently died at the hands of the police.
The national strike will also come with a handful of worker-led marches in the cities, organizers said Wednesday.
According to details shared exclusively with The Associated Press, organizers are demanding sweeping action by corporations and government to confront systemic racism in an economy that chokes off economic mobility and career opportunities for many Black and Hispanic workers, who make up a disproportionate number of those earning less than a living wage. They also stress the need for guaranteed sick pay, affordable health care coverage and better safety measures for low-wage workers who never had the option of working from home during the coronavirus pandemic.
“We want to unite these fights in a new and deeper way than ever before,” said Mary Kay Henry, president of the International Service Employees Union, which represents more than $2 million in the United States and Canada.
“Our members have embarked on a journey … to perceive why we gain economic justice without racial justice. This strike for the lives of blacks is a way to convey the perception of our members of this on the street,” Henry told the AP.
Among the strikers’ specific demands are that corporations and government declare unequivocally that “Black lives matter.” Elected officials at every level must use executive and legislative power to pass laws that guarantee people of all races can thrive, according to a list of demands. Employers must also raise wages and allow workers to unionize to negotiate better health care, sick leave and child care support.
The service personnel union has partnered with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the American Federation of Teachers, United Farm Workers and the $15 b&A and a union, which was introduced in 2012 through U.S. fast food staff. To push for a higher minimum wage.
Social and racial justice teams come with March On, the Center for Popular Democracy, the National Alliance of Domestic Workers, and the Black Lives Movement, a coalition of more than 150 organizations that make up the Black Lives Matter movement.
Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson, organizer of the black lives movement strike, said corporate giants who have spoken out on the BLM motion amid national protests opposed to police brutality have also benefited from racial injustice and inequality.
“They claim to have black lives, however, their business style works by exploiting the black workforce, spending pennies like a ‘decent wage’ and pretending to be surprised when COVID-19 sickenes the blacks who make up their essential workers.” Henderson, co-executive director of the Tennessee-based Highlander Research and Education Center, said.
“Corporate force is a risk to racial justice, and the only way to build a new economy is to assume forces that are not fully involved in dismantling racism,” he said in a statement.
Thirteen Andrews, a black maid in a retirement home for a retirement home run by Ciena Healthcare in the Detroit area, said she felt depressed after years of an overdue promotion. The 49-year-old believes that racial discrimination plays a role in the stalemate of her career.
“I’m 20 years old in the game and I’m at $15.81 (per hour),” he said in a phone interview.
As a single mother to a 13-year-old daughter and a caregiver of her father, a cancer survivor, Andrews said an insufficient non-public protective device frightened her to bring the coronavirus house from work.
“We have coronavirus ongoing, and we have this challenge with racism,” Andrews said. “They are bound, as a kind of segregation, as if our ancestors and Martin Luther King had not fought this kind of thing. He’s still alive here, and it’s time to be held accountable. It’s time to act.”
The strike continues a decades-long culture of staff rights movement. In particular, organizers were inspired by the strike of Memphis remediation staff for low wages, the disparity in profits between black and white employees, and the inhumane operating situations that contributed to the deaths of two black employees in 1968. At the end of that two-month strike, some 1,300 generally black sanitation employees jointly negotiated higher wages.
The organizers of “Strike for Black Lives” say they disrupt a multigenerational cycle of perpetual poverty through anti-union and other policies that make collective bargaining difficult for higher wages and operating conditions.
Systemic poverty affects 140 million people in the United States, with 62 million people running for less than a decent wage, according to the Poor Campaign: a national call for moral renewal, a striking spouse organization. According to the group, 54% of black staff and 63% of Hispanic staff fall into this category, 37% of white staff, and 40% of American staff of Asian descent.
“The explanation for why, on July 20, you’ll see movements and demonstrations, socially estranged walks and sit-ins, and voter records is because thousands and thousands of poor, low-wage employees of all races, and color perceives that racial, economic, health, immigration climate and justice are all related,” the Rev. William Barber II said in a phone interview. , co-chair of the Campaign of the Poor.
“If, in fact, we have to combat the police violence that kills, then we will have to deal with the economic violence that also kills,” he said.
Organizers said some striking employees would do more than quit their jobs on July 20 through police in 2014. The strikers will then march to a memorial site where Brown was shot dead.
In Minneapolis, where Floyd was killed on May 25, nursing home workers will participate in a caravan that will include a stop at the airport. They’ll be joined by wheelchair attendants and cabin cleaners demanding a $15-per-hour minimum wage, organizers said.
Angely Rodriguez Lambert, a 26-year-old McDonald’s worker in Oakland, California, and leader in the Fight for $15 and a Union, said she and several co-workers tested positive for COVID-19 after employees weren’t initially provided proper protective equipment. As an immigrant from Honduras, Lambert said she also understands the Black community’s urgent fight against police brutality.
“Our message is that we are all human and treated like human: we ask for justice for the lives of blacks and Latinos,” he told the PA.
“We are acting on words that no longer produce the effects we need,” he said. “It’s time to see the changes.”