While extreme heat and other unsafe working conditions are harmful to all workers, Black and Latinx workers disproportionately bear the brunt of the climate crisis. In general, Black and Latinx workers have been sorted into outdoor work and other manual jobs that subject them to climate disaster harms. Nationally, just under 22 percent of white workers are employed in at-risk jobs, while 25.5 percent of Black workers are in these industries, as are 36 percent of Latinx workers. In 14 states, Black workers face at least a 30 percent chance of being in an at-risk job. Clearly, Black and Latinx workers have been unjustly put at greater risk in these more dangerous jobs.
This is occupational segregation, the process of shunting workers into specific occupations based on their gender, race, ethnicity, or socioeconomic background. This practice significantly influences economic outcomes for Black people, people of color, immigrants, and women, profoundly impacting their wages, benefits, working conditions, and their capacity to speak out on the job or organize and form unions. And in the case of climate-related dangers, it has even resulted in Black and immigrant workers being forced to enter evacuation zones to work in the midst of disaster, even as public safety officials compel others to flee.
Black workers also experience particular harms due to legacy labor market policies and systemic practices that—from the era of slavery to the era of Jim Crow segregation and persisting to this day—have deliberately excluded them from accessing fair and equal wages and benefits, safety and health protections, job opportunities, and advancement prospects. This is why Black workers like Naomi Harris, founder of the Union of Southern Service Workers, or USSW, a “multiracial advocacy group for workers in low-wage, high-turnover jobs that have a legacy of racism,” are intent on leading, organizing, and helping workers unionize and push back. “We are going to fight by marching up on the bosses with our petitions, striking at the right time, getting community support for rallies. We will organize walkouts, sit-ins, and boycotts if we need to. We will take legal action. . . . We’re going to fight and fight and fight until we get what we deserve,” Harris told the American Prospect.
Worker unionizing plays a vital role in industries where racial occupational segregation and other inequities are prevalent, as it offers workers an opportunity to collectively confront workplace injustices and build solidarity. By unionizing and negotiating strong contracts, workers can address issues such as wage disparities, protection against unjust terminations, improved benefits, and the establishment of robust health and safety regulations. Historically, unionization has been instrumental in fighting against racial discrimination and promoting economic justice for Black workers, who maintain the highest rates of unionization compared with other racial groups.
In fact, long before the current wave of union organizing and strikes, the Fight for $15 and a Union captivated the labor movement’s imagination, inspiring and activating Black workers and workers of color from coast to coast to join together in one of the first mass-scale labor actions in the United States in a generation. Steadily over the past decade, this movement has achieved major successes in 28 states and the District of Columbia, putting $150 billion in additional income into the pockets of 26 million workers and significantly narrowing the racial wealth gap, particularly in higher-wage states.
Today, as the labor movement sets its sights not only on a living wage but also on safer working conditions and other workplace protections, our challenge now is to design comprehensive policies and initiatives that benefit all workers while also addressing the disparities faced by Black workers like Naomi and the worker members of the USSW.
Together with our allies in a growing number of jurisdictions, we are advocating for a meaningful right to refuse dangerous work in the face of climate-change-induced natural disasters—a right that must be supported with job-protected rights to paid leave, anti-retaliation provisions with penalties for noncompliance, and expansive unemployment insurance benefits. These reforms would be an important step toward a meaningful acknowledgment that workers’ lives are more important than keeping businesses open during disasters for the sake of corporate profits.
Central to our vision for a good-jobs economy is a rebalancing of power so that workers can exercise more autonomy over their own workplace safety. As active members of the Worker Power Coalition, we support the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, or PRO Act, which would strengthen and protect workers’ rights to organize and collectively bargain, prevent employer interference, and bolster funding and resources for the National Labor Relations Board.
Today, more and more workers are joining together, using tactics such as strikes, protests, lobbying, public awareness campaigns, and legal action to hold employers and policymakers accountable for the changes that our society needs. This is how we begin to make every job—including those in Mississippi’s poultry processing plants—a good job. By growing worker power, we can build a good-jobs economy in which all workers can thrive.