Ray's article

A Project labor agreements (PLAs) also known as a Community Workforce Agreement, is a pre-hire collective bargaining agreement with labor organizations that establishes the terms and conditions of specific construction project.

These types of agreements are often a point of contention in the construction industry, particularly between private & union contractors, and are often credited for hurting black contractors ability to bid on public projects. These agreements are so contentious that builders are trying to get government-mandated PLAs banned at both the state and federal level.

In short, before any workers are hired on the project, construction unions have bargaining rights to determine the wage rates and benefits of all employees working on the particular project and often force non-union contractors to agree to the provisions of the agreement through political influence.

When signed, the terms of the agreement apply to all contractors and subcontractors who successfully bid on the project, and subsequently supersedes any existing collective bargaining agreements.

In other words, the deals govern just about anything related to how both union and nonunion workers are hired and treated on the job.

The agreements have been in use in the United States since the 1930s, and first became the subject of debate in the 1980s, for their use on publicly funded projects. In these instances, government entities made signing PLAs a condition of working on taxpayer funded projects.

Contractors are most likely to encounter PLAs on publicly funded projects. But in union strongholds like New York City and Los Angeles, it is very common to find a PLA in place on major private construction projects, such as the Los Angeles Stadium/Entertainment District at Hollywood Park that is a private. A PLA was also entered into for the second phase of the $25 billion Hudson Yards project in Manhattan, after several lawsuits were filed in New York.

Opponents of PLAs state that the agreements impact competition for project bids, which can lead to higher costs, particularly labor cost. Also, PLA’s reduce the number of potential bidders as non-union contractors, especially black contractors, are less likely to bid due to the potential restrictions a PLA would pose.

But according to union supporters, PLAs can be used by public project owners like school boards or city councils to set goals for creating local jobs and achieving social welfare goals through the construction projects.

PLAs may include provisions for targeted hiring and union apprenticeship ratio provisions. According to proponents, by including requirements for a certain proportion of local workers to enter union apprenticeship programs working on the construction program, PLAs can be used to help local workers gain skills.

Those who oppose PLAs have pointed to examples such as the construction of the Yankee Stadium and the Washington Nationals Ballpark, for both of which community focused hiring agreements were in place but the goals of local hiring and resources to be provided to the community were not met.

How PLA’s effect to Black Contractors & Black Workers

The National Black Chamber of Commerce opposes the use of PLAs due to the low numbers of black union members in the construction industry. According to the NBCC, implementing PLAs leads to discrimination against black workers who are generally non-union.

NBCC Policy Statement on Project Labor Agreements:

“It is the policy of the National Black Chamber of Commerce, Inc. to oppose Project Labor Agreements. This opposition is based on the fact that African American workers are significantly underrepresented in all crafts of construction union shops. This problem has been persistent during the past decades and there appears to be no type of improvement coming within the next ten years.

There have been rouses of diversity pre-apprenticeship training programs during the past twenty years but no increase in diversity at the apprenticeship to journeymen levels. The higher incidence of union labor in the construction industry, the lower African American employment will be realized. This is constant throughout the nation.

Also, and equally important, the higher use of union shops brings a correlated decrease in the amount of Black owned businesses being involved on a worksite.”

The problem with a project labor agreement, according to critics, is that contractors hire workers through hiring halls run by the building trades unions for their members, which are predominately white and have always been segregated.

As a result, African-American construction workers – no matter how experienced – tend not to be union members and have little access to union jobs. Black workers tend to work for non-union, Black-owned small construction firms. Those jobs could be eliminated by the use of PLA's.

It is also clear that the construction trade labor unions have been, and remain, a serious obstacle to the participation of black owned contractors in the construction industry. They intimidate black-owned construction firms to discourage utilization of black construction workers, discourage workforce development in higher-paying skilled trades, send less qualified workers to black-owned construction firms, and discriminate against black workers in apprenticeship programs. The execution of project labor agreement has also been cited as disadvantageous to black-owned construction companies and their desire to employ black workers.

According to Harry Alford, President of the National Black Chamber of Commerce:

Project labor agreements handicap nonunion contractors who wish to bid on federal projects by imposing burdensome requirements on them. Under a PLA, an open shop contractor could be required to employ workers from union hiring halls, acquire apprentices from union apprentice programs, and require employees to pay union dues. As an example, he cited Nationals Park, which, was built under a PLA. Although it is in Southeast DC, “very few people in southeast Washington ”worked on it. As Alford noted, most minority contractors are nonunion.

Mr. Alford is completely right.  An October 2007 report by the District Economic Empowerment Coalition found that despite a government-mandated PLA requiring that at least 50 percent of journeyman hours on the Nationals Park project  be performed by DC residents (many of whom are black), non-DC residents worked over 70 percent of the journeyman hours!  The report also found that not only did contractors subject to the Nationals Park PLA failed to meet the hiring requirements, but they also failed to provide the training and apprenticeship opportunities they promised the District.

What do the studies say?

Several studies by the Beacon Hill Institute (BHI) at Suffolk University in Boston, Massachusetts have concluded that PLAs increase construction costs. Studies examining the impact of PLAs on school construction in several states have found that where PLAs were in use construction costs were increased. In 2003, a study by the institute found that use of PLAs created a cost increase of almost 14% increase compared to a non-PLA project. The following year their study of PLAs in Connecticut found that PLAs increased costs by nearly 18%. A May 2006 study by BHI found that the use of PLAs on school construction projects in New York between 1996 and 2004 increased construction costs by 20%.

In 2010, the New Jersey Department of Labor studied the impact of government-mandated PLAs on the cost of school construction in New Jersey during 2008, and also found that school construction projects where a PLA was used had higher costs, per square foot and per student, than those without a PLA.

Yet, construction trade unions support PLA’s, and state that rather than increase cost, the agreements provide benefits to the community, with higher paying jobs, and apprenticeship opportunities. According to unions, project cost is directly related to the complexity of a project, not the existence of an agreement.

Are union workers paid much more than nonunion workers? Not really. Including benefits and excluding union dues, most nonunion contractors (commonly called “merit contractors”) pay about the same as non-union contractors because they want to keep their good employees; the same method used by union contractors.

Some are arguing that there’s more at stake than just the cost of a project, and that PLA’s are outright unjust. Nationally, fewer than one in seven construction workers are in a union. What this means is that imposing a project labor agreement may deny work to six of seven local construction workers.

BOTTOM LINE

In 2009, President Barack Obama signed executive order 13502, which urges federal agencies to consider mandating the use of PLAs on federal construction projects costing $25 million or more on a case-by-case basis.

PLA’s disproportionately hurt black works and black contractors.

The debate has been heating up, as House Republican lawmakers have been recently urging President Trump to rescind Executive Order 13502. In a letter signed by 44 republicans to President Trump, they urged the following:

“We have strong concerns with Executive Order 13502 and believe that rescinding this negative policy is in line with your plans to cut red tape in Washington and across our government agencies.

To create the conditions for innovation and free enterprise, we must promote open competition, efficiency, fairness and equality in government contracting. Mandating, or even encouraging PLAs needlessly limits the pool of experienced and qualified bidders able to deliver the best possible product to taxpayers at the best possible price… Ensuring that PLAs are not encouraged on our federal projects will send a clear message to the construction industry that this administration is committed to merit-based, cost-effective projects that provide the best benefit for hardworking taxpayers.”

Construction industry-friendly President Donald Trump has not indicated he will make a move on this issue.

In 1963, the failure of mainstream civil rights groups to negotiate a workable plan for desegregating the construction industry inspired more militant activists to increase pressure on mayors and union leaders of the building trades unions across the United States.

In New York City, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) led the way, taking the streets in Harlem to demand that the construction industry immediately hire qualified African-American construction workers. In the summer of 1963, 150 demonstrators shut down work at the Harlem Hospital annex. Protesters blocked entrances to the work site and forced police to remove them from the site. Several scuffles broke out, forcing the head contractor to suspend work for the day. The following day more protesters arrived and fears of a riot eventually brought more than 300 police officers to the construction site.

While tensions mounted at the in Harlem, the mayor at the time, Robert F. Wagner attended a conference in Hawaii. In his absence, Paul Screvane, the acting mayor, officially shut down the Harlem Hospital project. Protesters cheered when they heard Screvane’s decision. Screvane suspended work on the hospital until the mayor could confer with labor leaders and investigate the demonstrators’ charges.

As a result, the Harlem Hospital demonstration made fighting against racial discrimination in the building trades the most important civil rights issue in New York City. Other demonstrations sprang up all over the city, and a coalition of activists from different organizations began a round-the-clock sit-in at the mayor’s and governor’s offices. Calling themselves the ‘Joint Committee for Equality’ they demanded that New York elected officials enforce the state’s anti-discrimination laws, especially in the building trades.

In Brooklyn, CORE activists wanted to build on the momentum generated by the Harlem Hospital demonstration. Their target was the Downstate Medical Center construction project slated by the state of New York to upgrade the Kings County Hospital complex with a new 350-bed teaching hospital and renovations to the State University of New York (SUNY) medical school campus housed on the same property. These projects were part of the $353 million earmarked by the state in 1960 to expand the entire SUNY system by 1965. Upgrading the two state medical schools was the main priority of State.

The massive, multi-million dollar, state-funded Downstate Medical Center project seemed to be a win for everyone invested, the SUNY system, Kings County, and the residents who wanted affordable medical school training. But one group that criticized the construction project was unemployed  black construction workers, especially those that lived in the black residential areas of north central Brooklyn, which bordered the area which the Downstate project was located.

Brooklyn CORE activists found that except for a handful of Carpenters’ Assistants, there were few black workers; the workforce for the Downstate project was almost entirely white. Most of the workers came from white areas of Brooklyn and Queens, but some commuted to the Downstate project as far away as Long Island, Connecticut, and New Jersey. Yet black construction workers could not attain jobs, although they lived just a quarter-mile from the project.

Four leaders in Brooklyn CORE investigated the construction site, and quickly realized that staging a demonstration at the Downstate project would be difficult. The main work site was a seven-story medical facility embedded in a sprawling complex four city blocks wide and one large city block long. If Brooklyn CORE wanted to stage an effective protest and disrupt construction at the project, they would need hundreds of participants. As a result, its leaders sought support from other local civil rights organizations and black churches.

Knowing that something needed to be done, Brooklyn CORE’s president Oliver Leeds, contacted Warren Bunn, president of the Brooklyn chapter of the NAACP, and John Parham, leader of the local Urban League chapter. In early July, the three men went to the Downstate construction site to gather more data. Leeds, Bunn, and Parham then took their complaints to leaders of local construction unions and tried to convince them to recruit more black workers. The union leaders’ responses were not pleasant. “They wouldn’t listen to us,” Leeds recalled. “One of them almost threw us down the stairs.”

The three men went back to the Downstate project and planned their demonstration strategy. They realized a large picket line in front of the main entrance could effectively slow down the work site, and if enough people sat down in front of the entrance, blocking trucks, they could repeat the success of the Harlem protest. But Leeds knew Bunn and Parham could not rally enough members to pull off that type of disruption. Demonstrators would have to maintain the picket line from 7am to 4pm, five days a week. It would take hundreds, if not thousands of people.

To find the people needed to successful picket the Downstate project Oliver Leeds had the foresight to reach out to the black churches in Brooklyn, several of which had over 1,000 members. But getting the ministers to support a Brooklyn CORE project was its own struggle. For the most part, black church leaders in Brooklyn held conservative views about civil disobedience. Most prominent ministers did not want to risk their reputation by being associated with Brooklyn CORE, and its protest, which tended to be confrontational.

Most black ministers in Brooklyn at the time thought of themselves as moderate power brokers, and had met with the mayor and governor on several occasions, and some were appointed to government offices. The ministers had traditionally used their influence over thousands of black voters as leverage with elected officials. They felt they could lose their clout in City Hall and in the Capital, if they participated in anything led by CORE.

But, many factors changed the ministers hearts. According to Clarence Taylor, a historian, the Brooklyn ministers inspired by the example of Martin Luther King, whose leadership in the South motivated clergymen around the country to take direct action and fight for social and political change. Confident they could get thousands of their members to participate in the CORE protest at Downstate, they formed the ‘Ministers’ Committee for Job Opportunities’ and positioned themselves as the de facto leaders of the campaign.

DIRECT ACTION at Downstate!

Impatient and bold, and not wanting to feel controlled by the ministers, Brooklyn CORE members organized and began to picket the Downstate construction site five days before the ministers arrived. On July 10th, at 7am CORE amassed 30 members, along with their children, to block the entrance to the work site, but failed to disrupt the site. This effort resulted in several protesters being arrested when they sat down in front of an on-coming truck.

After getting news of the arrest at the Downstate construction site, the Brooklyn ministers felt that their leadership could control the picket line and keep the protesters from becoming too brash. On July 15th, they effectively took over as leaders of the Downstate campaign. Still the demonstration attracted protesters who were neither interested in following the minister’s directions nor willing to adhere to to the CORE principles of nonviolence. These new protesters, more that Brooklyn CORE and the ministers’ moral authority and political power, proved to be instrumental in shaping the outcome of the campaign.

For the most part, the ministers held rallies in their church halls, raised bail money from members, and inspired congregants with weekly sermons on the righteousness and justness of the Downstate construction site protest.

Still, the Brooklyn CORE members were a significant force at the picket line. Their experience during earlier campaigns made them much more experienced than the ministers in working with the press and devising tactics to disrupt the work site.

The ministers, on the other hand, were overly cautious when it came to disrupting work at the site. Protective of their reputation, they tried to choreograph their every move on the picket line, including the exact day they would get arrested. The ministers planned to make their presence known by giving interviews to reporters, and posing for pictures. They even sought to control the demonstrators’ behaviors, a task that became more difficult as time went on.

Media attention would be essential for the success of the campaign, The CORE leaders and the ministers wanted photographers and television cameras to capture images of demonstrators lying in front of trucks, blocking entrances, singing freedom songs, and being carried away by police officers, to rouse public support for increased employment opportunities for African-American workers on publicly funded construction projects.

A rally held on Sunday, July 21st  1963, in Tompkins Park drew over 6,000 people. Reverend Sandy Ray declared that the Downstate campaign was a part of the national struggle for civil rights and human dignity, “We are here in response to the call of history,” he exclaimed. “There will be no turning back until people in high in places correct the wrongs of the nation.” Reverend Dr. Gardner Taylor shouted, “We’re ready!” he added, “We’re not going another step and America is not going anywhere without us!””Revolution has come to Brooklyn!” he shouted, “Whatever the cost we will set the nation straight!”

The Downstate hospital protest made history for the high number of people arrested for disruptive acts of civil disobedience. On July 22nd over 1,200 people attended the demonstration and over 200 were arrested – 143 were arrested on July 23rd – 84 on July 25th.  This was the largest mass arrest of African-Americans in New York since 500 people were jailed during the Harlem riots of 1943.

Daily news coverage of dramatic, heroic acts of civil disobedience and record numbers of arrest made the atmosphere at Downstate a magnet for activists from all over the city. Malcolm X attended the protest daily, but never participated in the demonstration. Some Brooklyn CORE members approached X and invited him to join the protest, but he declined because CORE's the picket lines were inter-racial. Malcolm X was quoted as saying, "I'd be only to happy to walk with you just as soon as you get them devil off the line." But Malcolm X’s presence helped shape the evolution of Brooklyn CORE and it’s militant nature, and tactics. 

While at the demonstration, Malcolm X caught the eye of a young Sonny Carson, who was drawn to the Downstate protest because of the militancy and dramatic tactics of Brooklyn CORE. A former street hustler and member of a gang called the Bishops, Carson was fresh out of prison when the Downstate protest began. Meeting Malcolm X that day turned him into a political activist. Malcolm X approached him, shook his hand, and, according to Carson, "looked at me and said, you look like you can get something done." That inspired the young man to direct his energies and leadership abilities towards black nationalist politics and militant activism. 

But Brooklyn CORE members’ non-violent tactics, bold spirit, and strong camaraderie, which kept the Downstate protest alive, also appealed to a rowdier elements of the Brooklyn community, and out of work black tradesmen that neither CORE nor the ministers could control.

"We Struggled in Vain"

After just three weeks of protesting, some on the Ministers’ Committee felt they might no longer be able to control people in the crowds, which increasingly became restless with the lack of support from the mayor’s office and the amount of arrest. Many ministers wanted to end the protest because they felt the demonstration was taking up too much of their time and causing them to neglect their churches.

The ministers officially became the leaders of the campaign, when they jumped the gun, and issued the following demand: Governor Rockefeller, Mayor Wagner, and Building Trades Council President Brennan had to make the workforce on all publicly funded construction jobs at least 25% African-American and Latino. Brennan denounced the 25% demand as blackmail; his only concession was to establish a six-man panel to screen job applicants.

The ministers wanted to negotiate while they still had some influence with elected officials. They were looking for a way out of the campaign that allowed them to save face with their political contacts and church members. An opportunity came at the end of July.

During the last few days of July, as the demonstration threatened to fizzle without any gains, some protesters wanted to employ more destructive and violent measures to gain politicians’ and labor leaders’ attention. On July 31st, the picket lines at the Downstate construction site erupted into a near riot. Teenagers from local high schools started a new technique that day. Ten of them locked arms and blocked a truck until police asked them to disperse, which they did. Quickly, after they left, another ten appeared in their place. The crowd of about one-hundred demonstrators spilled into the streets, scuffled with the police, and one protester kick a cop in the groin, sending him to the hospital.

The incident on July 31st was the breaking point for the ministers, and they quickly began to distance themselves from Brooklyn CORE and began to aid the police in cracking down on militant protesters.

On August 6th the ministers’ committee met with Governor Rockefeller and dropped its demand for the quota, and three hours later worked out a compromise that ended the campaign.

In exchange for an immediate end to the demonstration, the governor agreed to appoint a representative to monitor the construction industry and report cases of discrimination to the State Commission on Human Rights. Rockefeller also promised a special investigation into charges of racial discrimination against blacks. Last, a recruitment program would be created to place qualified African-American and Latinos in unions and apprenticeship programs.

Except for the promised recruitment program, nothing new had resulted from the Downstate protest, and subsequent talks. Moreover, there was no guarantee that the Building Trades Council or the union, which retained their power to discriminate without penalty, would support the governor and the ministers’ apprenticeship program.

The ministers’ held a rally that evening and announced their victory. They invited Olive Leeds to speak and publicly endorsed the settlement, which he did. Twenty-five years later, Leeds regretted his decision, calling it “the biggest mistake I’ve ever made in my life.”

Logistically, Leeds realized that the demonstration was over without the ministers’ political influence and support. “Basically, I felt what the hell, I can’t carry it by myself,” he said. “CORE can’t carry it. The NAACP isn’t anywhere. Urban League’s got no troops and the ministers are pulling out. What’s left? There’s nothing. So I agreed to go along.”

Members of Brooklyn CORE it was still possible to win minimum hiring percentages or at least push for some immediate hires. They accused the ministers of selling out just when tangible signs of victory seemed possible. CORE wanted to the protest to continue. Leeds put the question to a vote, and the decision was unanimous. But, Brooklyn CORE could not generate the necessary numbers after the ministers abandoned the campaign.

In many ways, the Downstate protest might seem like a failure. The promised apprenticeship program failed to produce many jobs. After the settlement, Gilbert Banks, a black labor organizer remembered that the unions and politicians “got a construction team to review 2,000 people who applied for these jobs. There were 600 who could do anything they wanted: electricians, plumbers, carpenters, steamfitters; all that stuff. The deputy mayor got this committee together, and two years later, nobody was hired. So we had struggled in vain.”

It is estimated that 5% of the U.S. work force, and 14 - 25% of construction workers are illegal aliens. It's politically correct to call them undocumented workers, but let's get real, they are undocumented because they are here illegally.

The booming housing, and commercial construction industry over the past few years has been cited as one reason so many illegal immigrants are in construction , and you often  hear, "they are doing work that Americans don’t want to do." Bulls**t. If you are a black tradesman, you know that's not true.

The debate over immigration reform found new life in 2016, under a president who thoughtfully supports both increased border enforcement, and deportations for those that have abused the system and have become felons.

From amnesty on the left to expulsion on the right - from here on, it seems that anyone interested in speaking thoroughly on the matter can no longer do so without discussing its impact on black America.

Although many factories have gone oversea, and have taken millions of jobs with them, in the construction industry (and other industries with a strong illegal work force, such as building maintenance and landscaping), it is impossible to send the work to other countries, so instead of exporting the work, workers are imported. Or rather, we look the other way when they work construction projects.

This is subsequently overwhelming black tradesmen, and killing their growth opportunities, since black tradesmen are often in direct competition with illegal immigrants for construction jobs. “Black males are more likely to experience competition from illegal immigrants,” Commissioner Peter Kirsanow told The Daily Signal.

Kirsanow, an attorney in Cleveland and former member of the National Labor Relations Board, said illegal immigration is both a short-term and long-term problem for young black males.

“What happens is you eliminate the rungs on the ladder because a sizable number of black men don’t have access to entry-level jobs,” Kirsanow said. “It is not just the competition and the unemployment of blacks. It also depresses the wage levels.”

As former Mexican President Vicente Fox infamously declaring in 2006 that Mexican immigrants perform the jobs that “not even blacks want to do.”

Despite the former Mexican President assertion, illegal immigrants worked heavily in the construction industry, an industry that employed hundreds of thousands of blacks in 2018.

With some studies showing that black male unemployment is being under reported, and is hovering around a staggering 17.6 percent, it seems even less likely that immigrants are filling only those jobs that black Americans don’t want to do. Just ask Delonta Spriggs, a 24-year-old black man profiled in a Washington Post piece on joblessness, who pleaded, “Give me a chance to show that I can work. Just give me a chance.”

Pew Research Center estimates that about 11.3 million people are currently living in the U.S. without authorization. More than half come from Mexico, and about 15 percent come from other parts of Latin America. These workers are doing work that U.S. citizens are willing and able to do. In the construction industry, they are hired under the table by unethical contractors who can charge much less for their work because they are undocumented, and their labor costs are much lower. 

Contractors who follow the law, who document all workers, pay all payroll taxes and worker's compensation insurance, are basically being penalized for following the law.

In addition illegals are earning more than African-Americans. African Americans were paid a median household income of $36,000 in 2018. In the same year, the median household income for illegal immigrants was $45,000. Besides competing for work while simultaneously attempting to avoid drastically deflated paychecks and benefits, unemployed African-American tradesmen must also frequently combat racial discrimination, and high levels ethnic nepotism in the building trades.  

Texas Report

According to an alarming report by the University of Texas, half of the construction workers in Texas are undocumented. In a state were Black/African-American unemployment has consistently been nearly double that of white & Hispanic the report estimated that as many as 400,000 undocumented immigrants work in the Texas construction industry statewide. 

Illegal immigrants are not only willing to accept lower pay than their African-American workers, but they are also less likely to receive safety training according to the report. The report showed that 73% of illegal immigrant workers reported they had not received basic safety training.

Texas black tradesmen have had it worst off as tradesmen of other states, due to more than half of the state’s construction industry being made up of illegal aliens. This claim also acknowledges wage fluctuations over the years. Evidence shows Texas black workers in general have a higher unemployment rate than fellow Texans and also being the lone group with the lowest overall wages.

Reports provided by the Economic Policy Institute indicate that median hourly wages of Texas whites and Hispanics increased 8 and 2.9 percent, respectively, from 2000 to 2014 while median hourly wages of black Texans decreased 0.8 percent. When asked why black unemployment in Texas appeared to be running higher than white and Hispanic unemployment and wages much lower, Josh Bivens, director of research and policy, said this may be because of discrimination in the labor market, according to politifacts.

Are trade unions apart of the problem?

Construction unions over the pass few decades have focused on keeping their members happy and employed, and have fought to keep lucrative work building offices and highways instead of pouring money into recruiting masses of new workers, such as black tradesmen & women. Nonunion shops on the other hand, also looked over black workers, and instead made aggressive inroads into home building, hiring thousands of illegal aliens who in most cases no experience at all. The result: Today slightly more than 1 in 10 construction workers are in a union, compared with 4 in 10 in the 1970s.

“What happened was, slowly, one contractor became nonunion … and picked up a couple workers, and somebody told him about their Mexican friends, and that was a model people adopted,” said Hart Keeble, the business manager of the Reinforcing Ironworkers local 416, based in Southern California, during an L.A. Times interview.

In fact, for more than 100 years, building trades unions refused to hire black tradesmen & women. The Ironworkers local, like many building trades unions, used to be an “old boys club,” Keeble said, where the unspoken rule was to only let in people related to current union members.

Hire Black Youth as Apprentice!

In the summer of 2005, when Las Vegas was going through a construction boom, Keeble advertised in local papers to fill 150 union apprenticeships over the course of a few months. After not being able to find the workers he wanted, instead of advertising in an African-American newspaper or publication he decided to advertise in a Spanish-language newspaper, as a result he found all the workers he needed.

The Ironworkers union, whose members install the steel bars and cables that form the skeleton of a building, used to take in 300 apprentices from high schools across California every summer. But in the summer of 2016 they managed to only pull in 80. In most cases at-risk youth from heavily populated African-American communities are not aware of these opportunities, nor are they solicited to in any form.

According to Tom Brown, head of a San Diego based engineering firm, 90% of his employees are “good old redneck Americans” and the rest are immigrants.

Part of the reason black youth are also not running into the trades is that employers aren’t eager to raise pay all that much. Even as home building shot up from 2011 to 2018, hourly wages for construction workers rose slower than average private-sector pay, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, this can be directly attributed to illegal immigrants driving down wages by excepting less pay for construction work.

A U.S. Civil Rights Commission study in 2010 determined immigration had a disproportionate impact on black Americans, especially those working in entry level positions, such as construction apprentice.

“About six in 10 adult black males have a high school diploma or less, and black men are disproportionately employed in the low-skilled labor market, where they are more likely to be in labor competition with immigrants,” the commission report says.

The report continues:

“Illegal immigration to the United States in recent decades has tended to depress both wages and employment rates for low-skilled American citizens, a disproportionate number of whom are black men. Expert economic opinions concerning the negative effects range from modest to significant. Those panelists that found modest effects overall nonetheless found significant effects in industry sectors such as meatpacking and construction.”

Our Conclusion

“Some people are putting party preference over the needs of their constituents,” say Commissioner Peter Kirsanow. “The [Congressional Black Caucus] styles themselves as protecting and enhancing the interest of black Americans. The problem is that black workers are being ignored. So, there is another agenda at work.” Black Tradesmen U.S. agrees, whenever we speak on this issue of the lack of black faces in the trades, and union apprenticeships, most politicians and union officials just ignore the issue and kick the can, while recruiting tons of illegals & DACA recipient’s instead of black tradesmen & women.

The construction industry has provided outstanding opportunities for blue collar workers in the United States, but those benefits has been largely restricted to white men and their families. After World War II, home ownership along with Social Security, became one of the few entitlements that allowed people to feel “American”. As numerous studies have shown, the racial exclusivity of the post-World War II federal subsidies for home ownership, combined with the lack of fair housing laws, disproportionately benefited white families. The resulting level of wealth accumulation from the 1940’s to the 1960’s ensured that the middle class would remain predominantly white and suburban.

Post World War II also marked a time when federal government construction spending was at an apex, during which the building trade unions used racially motivated tactics to restrict black workers from taking part in the booming industry. Construction industry unionization was at its apex in 1940-1960, in fact, during this period half of all construction jobs were union controlled, and in many cities outside of the Southern U.S. labor unions wielded tremendous power. During the this time Federal & local laws were passed that required government contractors to pay “prevailing wages”, which provided unions extraordinary leverage to organize the construction industry. These laws and organizing efforts ensured that  the majority white construction labor poolwould receive a fair share of profits from the construction boom.

Thus, although the construction industry literally paved the way for the emergence of a postwar economy, black workers, tradesmen, and craftsmen remained largely trapped in industrial jobs that provided lower wages, and very few opportunities to move up the ranks into management. In fact, during the period between 1940-1965 black unemployment increased rather than decreased, even during the heyday of the postwar economic  boom, because of the segregation of blacks into low and semiskilled jobs. Due to de-industrialization in the inner-city black workers were made vulnerable to layoffs, as factories were relocated to the suburbs.

It was in this context that black activists of the 1960’s, in mostly northern U.S. cities, frustrated with the glacial pace of post-World War II racial liberalism and the slow pace of politically established civil rights leaders, built a large blue-collar grassroots movement, to confront institutionalized racism in the construction industry through large scale protest. They were led by a combination of black youth, community activists, and black construction workers who did not fit neatly into the standard civil rights, black power, and labor movements. Their mobilizations gave everyday people the means to put forward their own vision to confront the construction industry and the so-called urban crisis.

Although, the black struggle for inclusion in the northern building trades unions and the construction industry began long before the rise of direct action protest during the 1960’s. During the first half of 20th century, black tradesmen in the United States were restricted to the low-skill “trowel trades” of the construction industry. Even though black tradesmen earned good wages hauling materials, excavating rock, and performing other low-end construction work, this type of work, and even construction jobs that required specialized skills, were rarely permanent and always physically taxing and dangerous. When black laborers were no longer needed at a jobsite they were laid off. With no union protection or job placement assistance, black tradesmen wandered from site to site, city to city, in search of work, much like today. Black tradesmen in the postwar era found it almost impossible to advance to positions that required more skills and paid higher wages. Unlike many whites, they could not use construction work to climb the economic and social ladder into the U.S. middle class.

When black tradesmen attempted to join construction labor unions it proved fruitless, and almost impossible. In New York City for example, the industry was almost entirely white. Some union locals made no attempt to cover up their exclusion of black tradesmen. Local 3 of the electrical workers outright refused to admit black tradesmen. Plumbers Local 2 enforced racial exclusiveness by not issuing licenses to black tradesmen who had gained experience or completed apprentice programs in other states. Sheet Metal Workers Local 28 was strictly a father-son local with no black members at all. The Carpenters union had more black members than other trades, but their union halls segregated members as well. After World War 1, black carpenters were assigned to Local 1888 in Harlem, and relegated black carpenters to jobs in Harlem only, limiting the number of jobsites available to them. As a result, black membership in Local 1888 fell from 440 carpenters in 1926 to only 65 in 1935.

In other instances’ some unions had no black members, or only  a token number: Local 1  Plumbers 3,000 members total and only 9 blacks; Local 2 Plumbers and Steamfitters had 4,100 members total and only 16 blacks; Local 28 Sheet Metal Workers had no black tradesmen among its 3,300 members. In the 1960’s only the 42 Carpenters and Joiners locals had a sizable number of black members; out of 34,000 members, 5,000 were black/African-American. At a time when the construction industry was booming due to government-funded building projects, unions excluded black tradesmen from lucrative jobs, denied them access to apprenticeship programs, and barred them from advancement in one of the most promising labor markets for unskilled men with little or no specialized education.

White construction foremen usually hired black tradesmen only when they were behind schedule. Even highly skilled black tradesmen would in most cases find themselves hired to perform the worst jobs, and provided the least pay, often in a temporary position as a “chipper”. Chippers operated a pneumatic hammer that broke concrete, which was one of the most basic, dangerous, and unhealthy jobs at a construction site. Men working as chippers for long years did not live long; many developed ‘silicosis’ from breathing in dust from the machines and spending hours in deep holes with little or no ventilation.

Whenever black tradesmen would ask for permanent or more skilled labor positions, foremen and unions would give them the run-around, they’d say: ‘Do you have a union membership card/book?’ If the answer was no, they’d say, ‘Go get a union membership card/book and we’ll give you a job.’ When the black tradesman would go to the union hall and ask to become a member, they’d say, ‘Listen, if you get a job, we’ll grant you membership.’

As a result of this open and outright discrimination, black tradesmen formed independent worker associations that served as parallel labor organizations, not unlike those found among black craftsmen in other segregated industries in the early 20th century. Over time black tradesmen sought greater control of their work through state and local licensing to become independent construction contractors.