The rights of working people to organize through collective bargaining are being eroded across the country, particularly in states and sectors where the majority of workers are Black. Additionally, an increasing number of workers are being pushed into the “gig economy” where even fewer protections exist.
Ensure the right of all working people to join together to practice economic democracy in their workplaces and negotiate a fair return on their labor without fear of reprisal from their employers – including disabled and migrant workers, and workers in informal, gig, franchised, service, agricultural, care and criminalized economies.
Democracy is about more than just elections. While winning elections and passing legislation are important aspects of democracy, policies affecting our everyday lives are also made at our worksites, in our apartment buildings, at our community centers, and at programs and agencies we access every day. Working people must have enforceable, not just advisory, roles in governing everywhere in order for all of us to have a healthy democracy.
Collective bargaining is fundamental to economic democracy. At its best, collective bargaining is a mechanism through which working people can exercise collective power to directly confront individuals and corporations who control the means of production, and to fight for a fair return on the labor they put into building, operating, servicing, or transporting goods and services. Collective bargaining allows everyday people to “practice democracy” by directly engaging in the decisions and choices that impact their lives. And as a result, it has provided a pathway to economic sustainability for millions of workers, ensuring they can support themselves and their families. For most of the past century, a union contract has been the best weapon to ensure access to staples of a social safety net such as health care, retirement income, and other benefits often provided in other democracies directly by the government.
The right to negotiate collectively in the workplace is a fundamental building block toward Black economic power and building strong, stable communities. Research and history show that one of the surest ways for Black people to climb out of poverty is through joining together in union.
In theory, the right to organize is protected by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). In practice, the NLRA falls short, particularly when it comes to informal, criminalized, and “gig” economies (freelance, independent contractor, and “on demand” positions like Uber/Lyft Drivers), franchised (fast food and retail jobs) and subcontracted positions, and agricultural, domestic and care work where Black workers are concentrated. In order to build power for Black workers and Black communities in the long term, we need to fight for an expanded and enforced right to negotiate collectively.
Black workers—particularly southern Black workers—have long been ready to organize and collectively bargain. From sanitation workers in Memphis, auto-workers in Mississippi and Tennessee, shipyard workers in Norfolk and Oakland, to today’s Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama, Black workers are ready to fight for 21st century frameworks for economic democracy.
The right to organize is being eroded across the country, and particularly in states and sectors where the majority of workers are Black. Just as our society has excluded Black people from political democracy, our laws and institutions have excluded Black people from our economic democracy, denying them the right to a voice in their workplace. Currently, only 11% of workers in the United States belong to a union. Research shows that declining union membership is directly responsible for growing wage inequalities.
Millions of people have been profiled, harassed, violated and abused, arrested, incarcerated in jails, prisons, on probation or parole, or detained, deported, civilly committed, or placed in child welfare proceedings based on drug use, possession, and sales. The vast majority of cases involve small quantities of drugs for personal use or low-level drug sales. According to the Drug Policy Alliance, in 2012,
Black people made up 38.8% of people incarcerated in federal prisons for drug offenses (99.5% related to selling and distribution). As of 2011, Black youth were 44% more likely to be arrested for drug offenses than white youth, despite reporting equal rates of drug use. In 2014, Black people were over 3 times more likely to be arrested for selling and distributing drugs, despite growing evidence that white people sell drugs at a slightly higher rate.
Black LGBTQ people are also at higher risk of being ensnared in the drug war due to higher levels of poverty, higher rates of drug use stemming from family and community rejection, structural exclusion, denial of necessary health care, and disproportionately high rates of police contact. One study found that nearly 40% of -LGB+ people used criminalized substances in the past, compared to 17% of the public. Nearly 30% of transgender and gender-nonconforming respondents to the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey also report past use of criminalized substances.
Structural exclusion from formal economies drives many Black queer, trans and gender-nonconforming people into criminalized economies. Twenty-eight percent (28%) of Black respondents to the 2015 U.S. Trans Survey participated in the underground economy for income at some point in their lives, including in sex work, drug sales, and other currently criminalized work, compared to 20% of all respondents. Fourteen percent (14%) had done so in the last year, compared to 9% of all respondents.
Additionally, barriers to health care for disabled, queer, and transgender people can lead to increased self-medication, which can be charged and prosecuted as a drug-related offense. For example, a quarter of respondents to the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey reported being denied coverage for transition-related hormone replacement therapy (HRT), and 33% of respondents reported avoiding healthcare services that they needed due to fear of being discriminated against by providers. When prescription HRT is out of reach, some transgender people turn to non-prescribed “street” hormones, which can lead to criminalization for possession of “drug” paraphernalia or unauthorized use of prescription medication.
Beyond incarceration, the drug war has subjected millions of people to mandatory and non-consensual drug testing, treatment, and incarceration or involuntary commitment in medical or other treatment facilities, including mandated treatment based on “junk science.” Additionally, drug treatment centers are sites of emotional, economic, physical, sexual, and other forms of violence and abuse. Conversely, countless people have been denied evidence-based medical care, including medication based support for withdrawal. Use — or even suspicion of use — places Black pregnant people and parents at risk of losing child custody and parental rights, regardless of whether there is any danger or harm to their fetuses or families.
The “War on Drugs” has also contributed to creating dangerous conditions for people who use drugs, including violence in illicit drug markets, increased overdose risk, vulnerability to sexual, physical, and other forms of violence at the hands of law enforcement officers, and denial of necessary medical treatment to people in custody, resulting in death or severe pain and suffering.
As marijuana is increasingly being decriminalized across the country, Black people with drug-related criminal convictions are being excluded from legal markets, while they continue to suffer the devastating harms and collateral consequences resulting from prior convictions, including years spent incarcerated or under criminal punishment system control for actions that are now legal.
Since its inception at the turn of the 20th century, vice policing has involved profiling and targeting Black, Native, and Asian women, who are framed as inherently promiscuous and sexually available and deviant under different logics serving anti-Black racism, colonialism, and imperialism. Prostitution laws have consistently been used to surveil, police, and criminalize Black communities, homes, and businesses. They have particularly facilitated police and community violence – including sexual violence – against Black women, trans, gender nonconforming and disabled people. Criminalization of prostitution originated and continues to be used as a basis for exclusion and deportation from the U.S.
Criminalization of the sex trade particularly impacts working class, low- and no-income Black people, and members of Black communities structurally excluded from formal economies, including Black migrants and disabled, queer, and trans people. The vast majority of people who trade sex do so in order to meet basic needs for housing, food, education, medical care, childcare, and elder care.
For instance, a quarter of Black disabled people live below the poverty line, and are often structurally excluded from formal employment. As a result, they may participate in the sex trade because it offers flexibility and accommodations jobs in formal economies do not. It can also substitute or supplement for inadequate or denied disability benefits, and to cover exorbitant medical costs.
Black women, girls, trans, and gender nonconforming people continue to make up a disproportionate number of people targeted by enforcement of prostitution-related offenses:
More than one in five (21%) Black respondents to the 2015 U.S. Trans Survey participated in sex work for income, compared to 12% of all respondents. Transgender women represent more than one- half (60%) of Black respondents who have traded sex for money in their lifetimes. Non-binary people assigned female at birth (AFAB) (18%) and transgender men (16%) also account for a significant proportion of Black queer people who trade sex to survive. More than a quarter (27%) of respondents traded sex for money, food, a place to sleep, or other goods or services.
Trans people who had lost a job due to anti-trans discrimination were 3 times more likely to engage in sex work. Of those who interacted with the police while doing or thought to be doing sex work, 90% of Black trans respondents reported some form of police harassment abuse, or mistreatment including being verbally harassed, physically attacked, or sexually assaulted by police.
Instead of meeting the basic needs that drive people into the sex trades, criminalization of prostitution-related offenses drives people in the sex trades further into poverty, closing off access to housing, employment, health care, reproductive rights, family, and community. Vice and drug law enforcement cost the U.S. billions of dollars each year that could be used to meet the needs of targeted communities-— for medical care, including voluntary, quality, low-threshold and harm reduction-based drug treatment, mental health treatment, and parental and family support, for housing, living wage employment, and basic necessities.
Over half of voters in the U.S. support decriminalizing sex work.
The Movement for Black Lives calls on policymakers to:
