A. Philip Randolph’s Message of Justice Via Unions Still True Today (organized Porters in 1925)

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2008/02/29/a-philip-randolphs-message-of-justice-via-unions-still-true-today/

by James Parks, Feb 29, 2008

The economic downturn is hitting black workers especially hard, reminding us again that unions are still the best hope for people of color to gain social and economic justice.

Throughout Black History Month, which ends today, black union leaders have reminded us how that message sprung to life through the first AFL-CIO African American union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and its founder A. Philip Randolph.


A. Philip Randolph

Despite recent declines in African American union membership, the union still is the best bet for black workers. Today, African American union members earn 37 percent more than their nonunion counterparts and are far more likely to have health care coverage and secure pensions. (Click here to get a comparison of union and nonunion wages, health care and more.)

Clayola Brown, president of the A. Philip Randolph Institute (APRI), an AFL-CIO constituency group, says Randolph’s message that unions are important for people of color is more pertinent today than ever before.

Eighty years ago, A. Philip Randolph understood something that all of us take for granted today. He knew that if African-Americans were going to win justice if they were going to win equality it would happen not only in the courts and Congress, not only in the streets and the ballot box, but it would also have to happen in the paycheck and the wallet.

African-Americans needed good jobs with good wages and he also knew that one of the best ways for them to win those jobs was through the union.

Randolph, who died in 1979, organized the Sleeping Car Porters in 1925. The porters, as many as 20,000 in the mid 1920s, worked for the Pullman Co., which leased as many as 9,800 cars to the nation’s railroads. The workers who took care of the passengers—shining shoes, cleaning spittoons, babysitting children—were all black males. At the time the union was formed, Pullman employed more blacks than any other company.

FULL story at link.