Labor & Employment Law

Workers Who Win South Can Change The Nation

By James Parks

MaryBe McMillan

As we approach the massive One Nation Working Together march on Oct. 2, MaryBe McMillan, secretary-treasurer of the North Carolina State AFL-CIO, says the road to an economy that works for all must first come through the South.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. realized the only way to win freedom for people of color everywhere was to win it first in the most difficult place?the segregated South. Union leaders must also direct their attention and resources to the South, where union membership is small and violent anti-union tactics are widespread.

In her Point of View column on the AFL-CIO website, McMillan says:  

 The southern United States is the center for exploitation of workers of all colors.  Employees in the South have the lowest wages, the fewest worker protections and the least union representation. And nowhere are the harmful effects of globalization and flawed trade deals more evident than in the South.  

She cites her hometown of Hickory, N.C., as an example. Thousands of jobs in the textile and furniture industries have been lost there, mainly because of bad U.S. deals, but workers aren?t rushing to join unions. Because unions have not invested in organizing her neighbors, the only voices they hear are conservative talk-radio hosts and the local Chamber of Commerce. No wonder workers end up voting for anti-worker conservative lawmakers, which hurts every one.

She points out that when unions do pay attention to the South, we can win, citing the election of Kay Hagan, a pro-worker senator from N.C. in 2008, followed by the successful effort by workers to form a union at the world?s largest pork slaughterhouse in  Tar Heel , N.C. She says:

During the 1963 march, Dr. King outlined his dream of racial equality. I too have a dream?a dream that one day, even in North Carolina, the least unionized state in the country, all workers will have good jobs and the freedom to organize and bargain collectively.

Read McMillan?s full column, ?Workers Who Win The South Change The Nation? here.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on August 28, 2010 (boomark / email).