Gregory Butler, Local 608 carpenter, writes for Gangbox: Just 40 years ago, the New York City Building Trades were racist to the core. Some unions, like the Sheet Metal Workers, Plumbers, Lathers and Operating Engineers, all but barred Black and Puerto Rican workers from those crafts, and enforced a nepotistic "father-son" system through requirements that workers seeking to join the unions had to be "sponsored" by two current members...
How did an infamously lily-White industry, once known for open, blatant, in-your-face nepotism and a bastion of the "father son" system - that is, you were not allowed to even join the union unless you had relatives in it, get to be so integrated? Simple....
Our industry got integrated by workers fighting to break the color bar, and I do mean "fighting" literally...
The door was kicked open by something called "The Coalition," the generic name for the minority workers organizations (at their peak there were over 40 seperate "Coalitions" across the city) that waged a militant struggle to desegregate the construction workforce.
The Coalitions would send large groups of unemployed (and often armed) minority tradespeople to jobsites, where they would stop production until the contractors agreed to integrate. In a time sensitive industry like construction, even brief delays of production can have serious financial consequences for the bosses, so the employers had no choice but to integrate.
Let's take a look at how the Coalitions got started... [Read]
The article was also posted on LabourStart
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