Record job losses for Black workers
By Monica Moorehead
The overall unemployment rate in the U.S. is
hovering around 6.4 percent--the highest since 1994. This
figure is based on those who are still looking for work. The
rate doesn't include hundreds of thousands of workers who have
become so discouraged that they have stopped looking for a job
altogether.
Over the past 28 months nearly 2.6 million jobs have been
eliminated. Ninety percent of these lost jobs were based in the
manufacturing sector.
This is a nightmare for the working class as a whole. But
for African American workers in particular, the impact is even
more devastating because of the historical legacy of
discrimination--being the last hired, first fired.
The July 11 Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed that the
unemployment rate for Black workers is rising at a much faster
rate than at any other time since the mid-1970s. As a result,
the rate for Black workers aged 20 and older has risen 3.5
percentage points--to 10.5 percent--compared to a 1.7
percentage point increase for white workers.
In 2000, 2.1 million Black workers held 10.1 percent of the
20 million manufacturing jobs in the U.S. The great majority of
these jobs were landed during the economic boom of the
1990s.
Once the capitalist recession hit hard in March 2001, 15
percent of these 2.1 million jobs--or 300,000--were eliminated.
More white workers lost jobs--1.7 million--but because they are
much more numerous than Black workers, the percentage of whites
who lost work was less.
Over a decade ago, the deepest concentration of
manufacturing jobs for Black workers was in the Northeast and
Mid west. According to the National Assoc iation of
Manufacturers, today every state has lost manufacturing jobs as
corporations pull up stakes and move factories to smaller towns
and cities here and abroad where profits can be made by
lowering wages and downsizing benefits. This is what is
commonly referred to as "lowering labor costs."
Autoliv, a Swedish-owned company that makes seat belts,
recently shut down a plant in Indianapolis. Some 350 workers
lost their jobs, 75 percent of them African American. Many of
these workers never graduated from high school. With the loss
of these jobs, they face the real prospect of committing crimes
for survival that could eventually lead them to prison or even
worse.
An important related factor is that the official June
unemployment rate for those between the ages of 16 and 19 years
old was 19.3 percent--and the Black teenager unemployment rate
was among the fastest rising. (New York Times, July 14)
While rich get richer
UNITE, the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile
Employees, has made available data illustrating that the
disproportionately large job losses for African Americans are
not confined to those recently hired but affect workers who
have been on the job for 20, 30 or more years. Textile mills
that have been the economic mainstays of cities and towns in
the South have shut down and set up sweat shops in Asia. This
includes the loss of 1,000 jobs in Roanoke Rapids, N.C.; 1,500
in Martinsville, Va.; and 1,000 in Columbus, Ga. Factory
closings not only mean lost wages and benefits but diminished
pensions and tax revenues.
Bill Lucy, president of the Coalition of Black Trade
Unionists, stated, "The number of jobs and the types of jobs
that have been lost have severely diminished the standing of
many Blacks in the middle class." (New York Times, July 12) By
"middle class," he means workers with steady jobs.
A random poll taken by the Joint Center for Political and
Economic Studies asked 850 Black workers if they felt
financially better off, worse off or about the same. When the
poll was taken in October 2000, 45 percent said they were
better off, 10 percent worse off and 44 percent said their
situation had not changed. But exactly two years later, the
numbers had dramatically changed to 19 percent, 42.6 percent
and 36.7 percent, respectively.
Economic analysts love to tell workers to be patient and
optimistic because the recovery is right around the corner. But
a growing number of workers are not buying into this nonsense
as they witness how the rich are getting richer with the
assistance of the Bush tax breaks and the unimaginably large
war budget.
And in periods of capitalist boom or bust, there is no
denying that workers, regardless of their nationality, sex,
gender, sexuality or age, are exploited for their ability to
work by their bosses and the ruling class as a whole. There is
no denying that capitalism, a system that feeds off profits at
the expense of workers' needs, can never create full
employment.
African American workers are not only exploited as workers.
They are super-exploited by a racist system that relies heavily
on institutionalized racism based on the false premise of white
supremacy.
Under a divide-and-conquer system like the capitalist U.S.,
white workers must extend a hand of anti-racist solidarity to
Black workers and all the oppressed in order to build the
multinational unity needed to win the right of all workers to a
decent-paying job and full benefits.
Reprinted from the July 24, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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