Tide is turning for Southern union workers

Labor rights have eluded us for too long

I was just 22 when I was faced with an impossible situation: Work two jobs or become homeless.

I knew I had no other choice to provide for my son. Waffle House paid me just $3.75 an hour, so after my full day shift at the restaurant, I worked late nights as a home care worker just to survive. I never qualified for food stamps or other government assistance because I was told “I made too much money.” But after 40 years holding down two jobs, I can say without a doubt that it’s never been enough.

I’ve met too many who share my struggle.

As a nursing home worker, I’ve been stretched so thin that at times I’ve had to care for 20 patients by myself, all for a job that never gave me benefits. As a fast-food worker, my manager once told me to finish my shift despite injuring my back after slipping on ice in the freezer.

No matter the job, our stories are the same. And for Black workers, we feel like no matter how hard we work, the system is always stacked against us. That’s why hundreds of workers of every race across the South are coming together to form the Union of Southern Service Workers. We’re launching our union to fight back against historic oppression and subjugation in the South and advance racial and economic justice.

For too long, Black and brown workers across the South have been systematically excluded from labor protections, minimum wage protections and union rights by racist politicians who built and enforced Jim Crow.

As a result, the South today is the region with the lowest wages, the fewest worker protections and the lowest rate of union density throughout the United States. Only 6% of workers in the South are members of a union. In my home state of North Carolina, that number is just 2.6%.

Racist preemption laws

We are stuck in a system dominated by racist preemption laws and attacks on voting rights that protect corporations at all costs. Throughout the South, corporations exploit workers with low wages and too often with unsafe working conditions.

I’ve been a member of Raise Up, the Southern branch of the Fight for $15. We’ve won victories by joining together, speaking out and taking action on the job against low pay, dangerous work conditions, sexual harassment and more. Yet despite these significant victories, working people in the South have not enjoyed the same gains as many other workers in other regions.

For most of us, it has been almost impossible or completely impossible to form a union through the existing rules. We are building our union despite the fact that the rules are rigged against us as Southern workers because we know that there is no solution other than collective action by workers.

Growing up in the South during the 1960s, I saw my granddaddy fight for his civil rights, housing, health care, respect and dignity – and today, workers of all races are continuing that fight.

Redefine union organizing rules

We have to define what a union is for ourselves, not let those in power do it for us. We must build the kind of union that reflects our reality and our needs.

And if the rules that govern union organizing don’t work for millions of workers, we must demand a new set of rules.

We are building an organization that includes all low-wage service workers in industries like fast food, care and retail. United with the Union of Southern Service Workers, workers will become what anti-democratic politicians and unionbusting corporations fear most: a multiracial, cross-sector movement committed to fighting for living wages, fair working conditions and a voice on the job through a union.

We won’t let politicians or corporations tell us any longer that we can’t have a voice on the job, because our voices have never been louder.