Community Partnerships, Diversity Fortify Labor Movement & Economy

JOURNAL: ISSUE 2 - 2013

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.- Proverb

Extending the scope of labor into new frontiers in the form of lasting community partnerships – on a scale never achieved before – may well be the key to revitalizing a movement that provides the only meaningful counterweight to the concentration of wealth in our economy. Part of that challenge will require making sure that labor's message is reaching an increasingly diverse workforce, including millions of new Americans who, with the anticipated passage of common-sense immigration reform, will join the ranks of the legally employed.

Says BAC President James Boland, "For three decades this country has systematically denied a legal path forward to millions for the sole purpose of funneling cheap, exploitable labor to fraudulent employers. Our members and contractors have had it with wage busting, sham contractors that exploit immigrant workers and drive wage rates down. Freeing these workers out from their clutches is important for the labor movement and for our industry."  Boland continues, "It's also necessary for the economy. Growth in the labor force is a key determinant in a nation's rate of economic expansion. We need to speed up the expansion rate in the U.S. and speed it up quick. Immigration reform can help achieve that."

Even without factoring in the potential rise in the number of legal workers, among them, many Latinos, as a result of immigration reform, the composition of new entrants to the labor force over the next ten years will be progressively Latino, Asian and African-American with women's participation in the workforce continuing to grow.

"As the economy rebounds and our members retire, newcomers to the trowel trades will reflect the demographic contours of their communities to a greater extent than ever before. Our ability to recruit skilled craftworkers and great union members will rely in part on BAC's capacity, along with other Internationals, to cultivate long-term relationships with a host of civil rights, women's and health and welfare organizations dedicated to the values we share on a community-by-community basis."

BAC Outreach

BAC has made a number of steps in that direction. In keeping with resolutions adopted at the 2010 IU Convention, President Boland has appointed women and people of color from throughout the Union's membership to represent BAC at meetings and trainings sponsored by groups such as the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement , the A. Philip Randolph Institute , the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People  (USHLI), the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, and Chicago Women in the Trades, among others.  

Widening the circle of socially- and economically conscious organizations and creating sustainable, institutional links could easily triple the number of working people "who are already on the same page as millions of union members," says President Boland. 

The prospect of 30 million individuals, joining together to advance shared agendas in cities and states across the country could, as the proverb says, take us far indeed.