The Greater Kansas City AFL-CIO is proud to recognize the accomplishments of African Americans during the month of February which is Black History Month.  We are featuring A. Philip Randolph and his involvement as a Labor Organizer and Civil Rights Leader.

Asa Philip Randolph was born April 15, 1889 and passed away on May 16, 1979.  A. Philip Randolph was a leader in the African American civil-rights movement and the American labor movement. He organized and led the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first predominantly Negro labor union. In the early civil-rights movement, Randolph led the March on Washington Movement, which convinced Franklin D. Roosevelt to desegregate production-plants for military supplies during World War II. In 1963, Randolph was the head of the March on Washington, which was organized by Bayard Rustin, at which Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his I Have A Dream speech. Randolph inspired the Freedom budget, sometimes called the "Randolph Freedom budget", which aimed to deal with the economic problems facing the Negro community, particularly workers and unemployed Negroes.

Labor Organizer:

Randolph had some experience in labor organization, having organized a union of elevator operators in New York City in 1917. In 1919, he became president of the National Brotherhood of Workers of America, a union which organized amongst African-American shipyard and dock workers in the Tidewater region of Virginia.  The union dissolved in 1921, under pressure from the American Federation of Labor. In 1925 Randolph organized the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) and was elected president. This was the first serious effort to form a labor institution for employees of the Pullman Company, which was a major employer of African Americans. The railroads had expanded dramatically in the early 20th century, and the jobs offered relatively good employment at a time of widespread racial discrimination. In these early years, however, the company took advantage of the employees. The union helped support The Messenger until 1928, when it needed to use funds for other purposes.

With amendments to the Railway Labor Act in 1934, porters were granted rights under federal law. Membership in the Brotherhood jumped to more than 7,000. After years of bitter struggle, the Pullman Company finally began to negotiate with the Brotherhood in 1935, and agreed to a contract with them in 1937. This gained employees $2,000,000 in pay increases, a shorter workweek, and overtime pay. Randolph maintained the Brotherhood's affiliation with the American Federation of Labor through the 1955 AFL-CIO merger.

Civil Rights Leader:

Randolph emerged as one of the most visible spokesmen for African-American civil rights.  In 1941, he, Bayard Rustin, and A. J. Muste proposed a march on Washington to protest racial discrimination in war industries and to propose the desegregation of the American Armed forces.  The march was cancelled after President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, or the Fair Employment Act.  Some militants felt betrayed because Roosevelt's order applied only to banning discrimination within war industries and not the armed forces.

But, the Fair Employment Act is generally perceived as a success for African-American labor rights.  In 1942, an estimated 18,000 blacks gathered at Madison Square Garden to hear Randolph kick off a campaign against discrimination in the military, in war industries, in government agencies, and in labor unions.  Following the act, during the Philadelphia Transit Strike of 1944, the government backed African-American workers' striking to gain positions formerly limited to white employees.

In 1947, Randolph, along with colleague Grant Reynolds, renewed efforts to end discrimination in the armed services, forming the Committee Against Jim Crow in Military Service, later renamed the League for Non-Violent Civil Disobedience.  On July 26, 1948, President Harry S. Truman abolished racial segregation in the armed forces through Executive Order 9981.

Locked-out workers from American Crystal Sugar and Cooper Tire will begin a 1,000 mile Journey for Justice tomorrow from Fargo, N.D., to Findlay, Ohio. The journey will highlight the corporate greed that marks their lockouts, and the growing drive by corporate CEOs to drive down wages and benefits to pad their own pockets.

More than 1,300 Crystal Sugar workers–members of Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM)–have been locked out of seven facilities in Minnesota, North Dakota, and Iowa since last August. More than 1,000 United Steelworkers (USW) members were locked out of their jobs at Cooper Tire’s Findlay, Ohio plant in November.

The justice trek kicks off with a rally in Fargo and then workers and their allies will deliver tens of thousands of signatures on a petition to American Crystal CEO David Berg at company headquarters in Moorhead, Minn. The six-day journey will make stops in Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana, before concluding in Findlay, with a “hands around the plant” action.  There will be rallies, fundraisers for the locked out workers and their families and other actions along the way.

The march will not only highlight the plight of the Crystal Sugar and Cooper Tire workers but also focus attention on the most recent wave of greed-motivated corporate attacks on workers and their unions including recent lockouts of thousands of workers at Caterpillar, Rio Tinto Alcan, HealthBridge and elsewhere.

You can follow the workers on twitter  @JourneyJustice and here on their blog.

Register NOW for the FREE, 4th Annual Union Retiree Financial Forum which will be held on Tuesday, March 13, 2012 by clicking here. This event will be held at Gladden Hall adjacent to the Credit Union, 6320 Manchester Ave., KCMO 64133.

This year the featured speakers and special guest that will be part of the program are Chris Koster,  Missouri Attorney General; Jeff Lanza, Retired FBI Special Agent; Robert Burks, Senior Vice President of RBC Wealth Management; Chad Terry, Certified Financial Planner with BlackRock Investments; Jeff Easterday, Attorney Parman & Easterday; Representatives from AARP will be on hand to explain its new Home Fit Program and Walter White, former Kansas City Chiefs Player. 

Working Families's Friend will be hosting the following events in 2012.  Please mark your calendars and more information will be forthcoming.

Texas Hold'em Tournament:  Friday, April 27, 2012 at Pipefitters Local #533

WFF Annual Golf Tournament:  Wednesday, June 20, 2012 at Teetering Rocks

WFF Fall Cookout: Thursday, September 6, 2012

Texas Holdem Flyer 2012.pdf

Overall Union Membership Notches Up from 2010 to 2011

by Tula Connell, Jan 27, 2012

Overall union membership increased by 49,000 from 2010 to 2011, including 15,000 new 16-to 24-year-old members, according to new U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data out this morning. An increase of 110,000 in the private sector was partially offset by a decline of  61,000 in the public sector, making the rate of union membership essentially unchanged at 11.8 percent, with some 14.8 million U.S. workers union members.

Public-sector density increased from 36.2 percent to 37 percent though November 2011. Private-sector union membership remains at 6.9 percent. The largest increases in union membership were in construction, health care services, retail trade, primary metals and fabricated metal products, hospitals, transportation and warehousing.

Bottom line, says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka:

Despite an unprecedented volley of partisan political attacks on workers’ rights and the continuing insecurity of our economic crisis, union membership increased slightly last year. Working men and women want to come together and to improve their lives.

The Institute of Labor Studies and Kansas City, MO radio station KKFI 90.1 FM host a weekly radio program called Heartland Labor Forum.  This is the only radio show about the workplace and the labor movement in Kansas City. 

The Heartland Labor Forum airs on Thursday evenings 6:00 PM till 7:00 PM and is rebroadcasted on Friday mornings from 5:00 AM till 6:00 AM.  Older broadcast are archived at The Institute of Labor Studies website and are available for listening as streaming audio. 

Outraged at the inhumane treatment of workers in China who make iPads, iPhones and other Apple products, protesters visited a half-dozen Apple stores around the world yesterday to deliver petitions calling for reforms in the working conditions at factories run by Apple’s suppliers, accroding to Democracy Now!

A demonstration at Apple’s Grand Central Terminal store in New York City drew a dozen people, who peacefully handed over a petition with 250,000 signatures to an Apple store manager. Shelby Knox, the director for Change.org, led the effort to collect the signatures.

Knox and New York Times reporter Charles Duhigg, who helped break the story about the horrific conditions involved in producing the world’s most popular products, spoke today with Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman. Also on the show: Mike Daisey, whose one-man play, “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,” is based partly on his visits to Apple’s Chinese factories and his interviews with the workers there. Daisey pointed out one of the key reasons the ability of Apple suppliers like Foxconn to institute slave-like working conditions–lack of a free labor movement. Read the rest of this entry »

The Greater Kansas City AFL-CIO is proud to endorse the United Labor Credit Union as the official lending institution for Organized Labor in the metropolitan area.  United Labor Credit Union is located at 6320 Manchester Ave, Suite 41C, on the lower level of the Greater Kansas Firefighters Hall.  

United Labor Credit Union offers competitive lending rates, regardless of what you need to purchase.  They provide many options to it members including checking, savings etc.  ULCU is owned, operated and controlled by its members.  We invite you to join ULCU.