By Joséphine Li
Systemic poverty affects around 140 million people nationwide. Thus, in an effort to fight the systemic racial injustice that’s embedded in workplaces and society within the service industry, thousands of union workers decided to participate in a massive, full-day Strike for Black Lives on July 20. In addition to walking out, various rallies will continue to take place across the country throughout today. The strike is intended to gain more attention on low-wage workers as well as highlighting the economic plight of service workers. Many of whom are people of color.
Although many companies pledge support for the Black Lives Matter movement, their business model functions by exploiting Black labor—passing off pennies as ‘living wages’ and pretending to be shocked when COVID-19 sickens those African Americans who make up their essential workers. The corporate giants pay their workers poorly. They fail to provide paid time off while sick, and, in some cases, fail to provide the necessary equipment to keep them healthy.
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This morning, workers in the service industry staged the “Strike for Black Lives,” which took place in several cities across the country. Those who cannot strike for the whole day walked out for almost eight minutes, representing the amount of time George Floyd suffered for having a former officer’s knee on his neck.
The organizers of ‘Strike for Black Lives’ declared that they want to disrupt issues of racial equality and police treatment of minorities perpetuated by anti-union that make it hard to bargain for better wages and working conditions. The strike is a massive endeavor that results from the coordination between labor unions and social justice organizations including the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Service Employees International Union (SEIU), United Farm Workers, the American Federation of Teachers and the Fight for $15 movement as well as the social justice groups the Center for Popular Democracy, March On, the Movement for Black Lives and the National Domestic Workers Alliance. The core demand of the strike is for the U.S government and corporations to declare ‘Black Lives Matter.’
The strike organizers want elected officials in federal and local governments to pass laws that will reduce the inequity between all races as well as for employers to provide better wages and let them unionize so they can negotiate for support for child care, sick leave, and better health care benefits.
Trece Andrews, a single mother to a 13-year-old daughter and a worker at a retirement home in Detroit, is among those planning to strike. She has been in the industry for 20 years, and she is still only at $15.81 an hour. Andrews believes that racial discrimination has been the fundamental factor for her being continuously passed over for multiple promotion opportunities. She also has concerns that a lack of protections at her job could result in her contracting Covid-19 and bringing it home to her daughter. “We need to take action,” Andrews said. “We’ve got the coronavirus situation going on, and now we’ve got this thing with racism going on. They’re tied together, like some type of segregation. It’s still raging; it’s time for someone to be held accountable.”
