NYT: For Blacks, a Dream in Decline

[Rose Siding]

THE Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. set forth the goal. Civil rights and union membership were to be intertwined. The labor movement, Dr. King wrote in 1958, "must concentrate its powerful forces on bringing economic emancipation to white and Negro by organizing them together in social equality."

That happened in the 1960's and 1970's. But then unions lost bargaining power and members. And while labor leaders called attention to the overall decline, few took notice that blacks were losing much more ground than whites.

In the last five years, that trend accelerated. Despite a growing economy, the number of African-Americans in unions has fallen by 14.4 percent since 2000, while white membership is down 5.4 percent.

For a while in the 1980's, one out of every four black workers was a union member; now it is closer to one in seven. This loss of better-paying jobs helps to explain why blacks are doing worse than any other group in the current recovery. Labor leaders have acknowledged the disproportionate damage to African-Americans, but they decline to make special efforts to organize blacks and offset the decrease, saying that all groups need help.........

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/23/weekinreview/23uchi.html?hp

[newswolf56]

1. What if the decline in union jobs -- outsourcing, downsizing,

privatization etc. -- is another expression of the vicious white racism that destroyed the New Deal? Once again, this Krugman essay is the most important political writing since the Civil War:

http://www.pkarchive.org/column/091905.html