Ray's article

ATLANTA STRIKE OF 1977

The sanitation workers strike of 1977 was a culmination of frustrating and contradictory relations with a new generation of ruling elites. Pivotal was the relationship between city workers, represented by AFSCME Local 1644, and Mayor Maynard Jackson. This relationship began in 1970 when sanitation workers struck for union recognition, higher wages, and change in the unequal social relations between city management and rank-and-file employees. Their demands mirrored those of striking sanitation workers in Memphis just two years earlier. Atlanta’s white mayor, Sam Massell, battled back by firing workers and using prisoners from city jails for garbage removal.[5]

Jackson, then vice-mayor and a former lawyer with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), publicly chastised Massell’s hard line tactics, supporting those on strike and calling their wages “a disgrace before God.”[6] This endeared Jackson to city workers, progressive whites, and many folks in the black community who helped elect him mayor in 1973. However it was Jackson who, by March 1977, became a “disgrace before God” in the eyes of those same city sanitation workers he supported in 1970, and who got out the vote for him two years later.

This contradiction showed Jackson’s success in preempting popular black support for the 1977 strike by municipal sanitation workers, nearly all of whom were black and who were easily the lowest-paid workers on the city government’s payroll. Jackson short-circuited union and worker attempts to build community support for the strike by portraying it as a racial attack by a white-led AFSCME on his administration. This, even though most of its local union leaders were black and had struck against the initial wishes of many whites in the union’s national leadership.[7]

This relationship helped form the foundations of social relations between largely black-run city government and everyday black folks they governed. This was the logical outcome of civil rights and Black Power struggles for self-government, for these movements at their philosophical core sought a seat at the table of representative democracy, rather than turning that table over in favor of a democracy from below. For many everyday black folks Maynard Jackson represented Black Power, and they believed his rise to power meant the city’s social and economic patronage circles would trickle down to them.

In the minds of the new black officials and perhaps the majority of working folks in the black community, the actions of striking sanitation workers threatened what they believed was Black Power finally achieved. The perceived gains for the black community would not be uprooted by class struggle under the watch of black officials and their supporters. This relationship continues today in Atlanta, where black officials receive wide support among folks of various class and ethnic backgrounds throughout the city.

The 1977 strike occurred in two separate waves. The first played out during four weeks in January and February. It began with sanitation men wildcatting when they were told to report to work in cold weather conditions. The city and union had agreed employees did not have to work if the temperature was below 25 degrees, which it was on the 18th and 19th of January. City bosses ignored this agreement and docked employee pay.

Already upset their demands for higher wages were falling on deaf ears, many sanitation workers walked off the job for a week in February when city officials refused to reinstate pay.[8] Jackson and city officials refused to give in, demanding employees return to work or face termination. The move caused the ranks to waiver, with the majority of AFSCME Local 1644 staying on the job. A solidarity strike among waterworks employees also failed to materialize.

The city agreed to pay only half the wages docked. AFSCME local organizer Leamon Hood said the strike was not so much about the pay as “the principle of someone sitting in a warm office and telling you to go out in cold weather when you couldn’t even get the ice off the cans.”[9] It was the idea that sanitation workers should manage their workplace of their own accord, free of bosses sitting in the warm offices of city hall.

Another theme evident was that bosses failed to follow agreed upon work stipulations, and held it against workers when they dare follow the rules. This demonstrated the contempt city bosses had towards any terms of the contract or any other agreements favorable to working folks, showing how tenuous labor-management contracts really are. Won through the struggle and self-activity of workers, not dreamt from the minds of labor bureaucrats, contracts that supposedly govern workplace social conditions are never set in stone. Their gains must constantly be guarded by working folks against bosses who would assume they never existed in the first place. The strikes of January and February would serve as a prelude to events occurring some weeks later.

Bitter and emboldened by their experience in January and February, sanitation workers and AFSCME Local 1644 continued pressing the Jackson administration for fifty-cent-per-hour wage increases to a salary averaging $7,000 annually. This amount was below the national poverty line. Jackson refused, claiming raises would put the city budget into deficit. With Jackson up for reelection and seeking to shore up support among white business elites and middle classes, he did not want to be the first mayor since 1937 to take the city to the bank.[10]

Jackson claimed he felt sanitation workers deserved wage increases, but the city’s economic bottom line was obviously more important. AFSCME countered with full-page ads in the New York Times and Atlanta Constitution lambasting Jackson, claiming city budgets showed multi-million dollar surpluses that easily could cover wage increases for sanitation workers.[11] The line in the sand was clearly drawn, as it was clear Jackson, though claiming he “felt their pain,” would not acquiesce to sanitation worker demands.

The second strike began on March 28 and was fully supported by the over 1,300 rank-and-file workers of Local 1644. The strike was organized by local union figures like Leamon Hood, with support from national AFSCME offices through its president Jerry Wurf. A national ad campaign against Jackson and the city’s policies began with the union calling out his administration on cronyism. Locally, strikers staged pickets and direct actions, unfurling a banner during a nationally televised Atlanta Braves baseball game that read “Maynard’s Word is Garbage.”

Later, some strikers dumped trash on the steps of city hall against Jackson’s strike-busting tactics.[12] The rank-and-file appeared united, in it for the long haul, and ready for whatever city bosses could dish out. Jackson served striking workers pink slips, giving until April 1st for employees to return to work. Those individuals who stayed out after that date were fired.

Sanitation workers were shocked that a man, who in 1970 supported them against scabbing tactics by then mayor Sam Massell, resorted to and carried out mass firings. They could understand Henry Loeb and Sam Massell doing that to black workers, but not Jackson, seen as one of their own. The difference was in 1977 Jackson, unlike Loeb and Massell, had broad community support. He built a coalition between the old white business and civic elite and the black ruling elite forged from the civil rights establishment (also known as the “Black Boule”).

The new coalition proved very powerful in marshalling all of Atlanta official society and its supporters, among everyday working folks, against the strike effort.

The conditions that made this new coalition of elites possible have their roots in the Civil Rights and Black Power struggles. These movements for black liberation had many figures and tendencies advocating for reformist strategies, hoping to secure relative freedoms from a benevolent state and a seat at its table while suppressing movements edging towards self-government by black folks in communities and workplaces. The liberal civil rights agenda sought a more humane state and the election of leaders, black and white alike, who were not openly racist and could sympathize with the plight of working people.

Some aspiring political elites even came from humble backgrounds themselves, having personally felt the harsh realities of white supremacy in America. Figures and organizations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Urban League, Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Student Nonviolence Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and even among Black Power organizations like the Black Panther Party (BPP) and Congress of African Peoples (CAP) were instrumental in normalizing the participation of black folks in governance from the local to the national level.[13]

Though their struggles advanced liberation and self-governance for black folks (and all peoples for that matter) they ultimately ended in a reconstruction of liberal representative democracy. This new framework ultimately constituted, at its best, a progressive gloss over the state and institutions continuing to deny everyday folks governance of judicial, military, economic, and social affairs. This new progressive governance, including individuals from groups historically oppressed based on race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation, today receives support, although at times unevenly and inconsistently, from both conservative and liberal groups and individuals in civic, political, and corporate realms.

This rainbow coalition of corporate managers and political ruling elites is now the normative mode of governance in an American society understood as multicultural. Only from this can one understand contemporary racist and imperialist policies against black people, at home and abroad, being legislated by “women of color” in government, or how corporations managed by individuals from historically oppressed groups can treat their employees, some who are from their same background, like dirt.

This explains how elites in business and government, no matter what their ethnic or racial background, gender or sexual orientation for that matter, have so much contempt for the working classes of their own background or identity. We also see this dynamic playing out between union bureaucrats and rank-and-file workers.

In America, this multiculturalism is subordinate to the legacy of white supremacy, not because White men put guns to the heads of black aspiring elites, rather because the latter freely accept their new power knowing it rests fundamentally upon social inequalities. White supremacy in the United States today depends on representatives from historically oppressed groups to assistant in its orchestration of social, economic, political, judicial, and military affairs. Atlanta politics and society in 1977 clearly shows these ideas and systems taking shape.

The actions of Maynard Jackson and black official society against mostly black sanitation workers makes sense when one views multiculturalism as such a veneer, covering fundamental social, political, and economic inequalities. Many Atlantans (black, white, conservative, progressive, male, female) accepted Jackson and other new black officials with little debate. This is also true among “radical” community activists, for the new black official politics were judged on criteria apparently inconsistent with the principled political ideas they normally defended.

This translated, for some, to new simplified standards qualifying black officials and aspirants to such status as racially authentic, anti-racist or progressive. In turn the new class of black officials made gestures toward community “radicals” and their immediate, non-threatening initiatives (for example, adopting an honorific street name or issuing a proclamation to acknowledge African Liberation Day, or appointing an activist to a commission or a job).

This was an unacknowledged concession to the ascendancy of the new black political elite, amounting to a de facto agreement. They would not challenge the new elite’s power in exchange for occasional symbolic nods of recognition in a perverse pageantry of legitimization through dependence. This orientation both reflected and reinforced radical forces’ increasing marginalization in the black community.[14] This made it easy for officials like Jackson to proclaim that their election to office signaled the final victory for Black Power, while conflating power now wielded by black political elites as the achievement of self-government for all in the black community.

The litmus test of anti-racism and authenticity remains shallow for black officials because their racial and ethnic backgrounds, in the opinions of many, automatically give them passing marks. The fact that black officials even exist, especially back in 1977, remains a source of pride and celebration among everyday folks, even if they disagree with many policies these officials pursue. This was understandable for a time, since black people had been denied power on any level for so long.

In Jackson’s case, he was widely celebrated in the black community as fighting for more contracts and jobs for blacks in the construction of Atlanta’s airport, renamed Hartsfield-Jackson airport shortly after his death in 2003. So when black sanitation workers challenged Jackson for better wages and workplace conditions, attempting to change unequal economic social relations in the city, it constituted a real threat to his power. In turn, ordinary folks also saw it as an attack on the black community at-large. This was not merely a struggle to rename a park or street after a heroic radical labor or black liberation figure, of which Atlanta is famous for doing. Rather it was a fundamental challenge to the power that black officials wielded against ordinary people in their workplaces and communities. This challenge was met with swift reprisal.

The events of April 4, 1977 are telling in the struggle between working folks and those who saw them as unruly individuals to be managed from above. On the ninth anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King Jr., both striking workers and city officials used his memory to justify their actions. In a rally for strikers, Rev. John Bell invoked King’s memory and assassination nine years to the day in Memphis. They reminded folks that he came to the aid of striking sanitation workers. Bell believed King’s spirit would lead the striking garbagemen to victory.The crowd cheered, though with trepidation as they knew hundreds of men were lining up for their jobs at that very moment as Jackson had fired them just three days earlier.[15]

At city hall there was a very different scene. Jackson called a press conference announcing that strikers would permanently be replaced with new hires beginning that very day. Jackson told the press his decision to fire striking workers was one of the most difficult decisions he had ever made. That comment proved quite empty, for he then reminded the press his actions enjoyed broad city support, from groups such as the Atlanta Business League, Chamber of Commerce, as well as from the Urban League, SCLC, the Atlanta Baptist Ministers Union, and the Citywide League of Neighborhoods among others.

This show of unity among the“good ole boys” of the white business and civic community with new black officials and longtime civil rights establishment groups was really a first for Atlanta, showing a maturation of a new political and economic ruling elite.

The city’s major newspapers the Atlanta Constitution and the black-owned Atlanta Daily World both publicly supported Jackson’s firing of workers. It seemed all of Atlanta, black and white alike, were against the strike.[16] But the real kick to the stomach of the workers came later in the press conference when Martin Luther King, Sr. spoke. He strongly supported the firings saying,“If you do everything you can [for the union] and don’t get satisfaction…then fire the hell out of them.”

When asked if his support of Jackson’s tactics meant he endorsed strikebreaking, King responded, “We don’t like the word ‘break’ the strike.”[17] But that indeed was going on just as “Daddy King” spoke. Strikers did not take the strike busting tactics lightly, and fought with scabs at numerous hiring locations in the city.

NEW YORK TIMES 1977 - Mayor Appears to Have Crushed Strike by Atlanta Sanitationmen

By mid-April, morale among strikers was faltering. Many reapplied for their old jobs, forced into the humiliating position of standing in line with scabs. A few rallies were still held, with one on April 12th seeing garbage dumped on the steps of city hall, resulting in the arrests of a number of protesters. Picket lines continued to thin out that week, to the point where only 300 of the original thousand-plus workers stayed out. Though small in numbers, they continued to rally.

Community support did exist in tiny numbers, even including a few prominent figures from the civil rights era. One was CORE co-founder James Farmer who served as director of the Coalition of American Public Employees at the time. Farmer had supported Jackson, but was perplexed by his tactics.[18] Another was Rev. James Lawson, a community leader in the 1968 Memphis strike. He compared Jackson to Henry Loeb. The Coalition of Black Trade Unionist (CBTU) also supported the sanitation workers, chastising Jackson for using “Black workers as political pawns in his efforts to please a middle class black political constituency and satisfy the black establishment.”[19]

This article is a case study of the betrayal of the African American working class by the Black political class elites brought to power by the Civil Rights and Black Power movements of the 1960's.

"A disgrace before God"

Labor struggle in the American South has a long and proud tradition. From the historic textile mill strikes of 1934, to streetcar workers in 1949 Atlanta, to sanitation workers in Memphis and St. Petersburg, Florida in 1968, working folks have organized to control social relations and conditions of labor in their workplaces, and to regain a semblance of their own humanity in the face of attacks from company bosses, police, and government officials. And this was all initiated with little or no formal union infrastructure or support. Yet Southern labor history is portrayed as backward or underdeveloped in relation to the North, with its long tradition of unions in large industrial cities like New York, Detroit, and Chicago. Instead we see that Southern folks, blacks and whites alike, have struggled for years against bosses running company towns with an iron fist, against Jim Crow segregation pervading workplaces, neighborhoods and cities, and against all authoritarian forces viewing organized labor struggles as the coming terror.

The city recognized the strikers’ call for union recognition, nationally backed by the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and conceded to demands for better pay and improved workplace conditions. This scene repeated itself in St. Petersburg and Cleveland later that year. This also occurred in Atlanta in 1970, where civil rights figures, some of whom were newly elected city officials, supported striking sanitation workers threatened with termination by Atlanta’s white mayor Sam Massell.

Carpenters’ Local 27 has reportedly requested and received the resignation of one of its members in response to a noose being hung at a Crosslinx Transit Solutions (CTS) worksite for a Metrolinx project. The noose was allegedly placed with the intent of threatening and intimidating black tradesmen working at the construction site.

The Carpenters’ statement read, “After a review of the events that took place, severing this individual’s connection and membership was the appropriate action; Local 27 denounces these acts in the strongest terms, and supports our industry employer colleagues in their swift removal of the individual. Behaviour that makes anyone feel unsafe on construction worksites will not be tolerated, and accountability rests on everyone in the industry to create safe and respectful workplaces.”

Ontario’s Minister of Transportation Caroline Mulroney previously reported on Twitter,“This is disgusting and unacceptable. I have spoken to the CEO @Metrolinx and the @TorontoPolice hate crime unit was called to investigate.” A Toronto Police Services spokesperson confirmed that a noose was found and that an investigation was underway.

For 140 years, the Carpenters Union has been a well-known haven for unchecked racism, and a hornet’s nest for bigoted white & Hispanic construction workers, according to many black union carpenters who have been victimized by fellow members.

This racially charged anti-black attack was the fourth reported incident of a noose being found at a Toronto construction site since the beginning of June 2020.

Construction on Facebook's billion-dollar facility in New Albany, OH was temporally put on hold after racist graffiti was discovered at the site. According Turners to all construction workers were then required to undergo what the industry calls ‘anti-bias’ training, trainings that in the past, have rendered little in stopping race based attacks on construction sites; attacks that have escalated in recent months coinciding with social & economic uprisings across the U.S.

A spokesman with Turner Construction Company, one of the largest in the country, confirmed that the graffiti was found on the construction site, and said that the company subsequently called the police and shut down the site. But Turner refused to say what the graffiti entailed, or where it was found. Turner says it is reviewing security footage to try and find out who is responsible for the attack.

According to Columbus Business First, the $1.7 billion Facebook campus is the largest construction project in Central Ohio. A data center has already been completed and opened, and the third is under construction. Two more buildings are planned as part of the campus. Turner says that construction will resume once the training is complete.

A similar incident shut down Turner’s construction of the FC Cincinatti stadium project the week before, when racist graffiti was discovered at the future home of the FC Cincinnati soccer team. According to Turner this incident also was reported to the police, and all staff was required to participate in what many black tradesmen refer to as more “meaningless anti-biased training.”

Black tradesmen and women have been under constant attack this summer particularly hard, as these two graffiti incidents have not been isolated, and are rather common; earlier this summer, nooses were found hanging in several construction sites across the United States and Canada.

These hateful attacks have transpired during a summer when the construction industry and the U.S., in general, have grappled with systematic anti-Black racism, its prevalence, and how to remedy it. Turner and other major construction firms across the U.S. announced this summer that they would be taking a hard look at racism within the industry, but have not announced any measures to identify and eliminate these racist elements that are plaguing its workforce to the core. CHECK OUT OUR RELATED ARTICLE, THE CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY PLEDGES TO ELIMINATE RACISM, BUT WITHOUT A PLAN

While black construction workers across the U.S. seek to realize their dreams of succeeding as talented trade professionals, and builders of communities, these recent attacks show that they are constantly being dragged down by the inner workings of industry racists and bigoted unionist that seek to harass and intimidate black tradesmen and women.

The time has long come for construction labor unions and non-union firms alike to finally stand up, and fulfill their duties as leaders and protect their black workers, by taking all of their reports of racism, discrimination, and harassment seriously, and eliminating known racist agitators, and corrupt disingenuous supervisors that condone racist behaviors, the very one’s that are corroding the reputation of the industry as a whole.

One way to combat these racist attacks is by doubling down in the face of racism and adversity, by intentionally recruiting and training Tens-of-thousands of future black construction workers, the U.S. so desperately needs. The act of building up the black construction workforce would help shift the scales of the industry in favor of those workers that are most oppressed, and in need of employment protections. Yet the industry in far to hesitate to act appropriately and invest properly in this area.

The systematically racist Jim Crow era tactic of recruiting black construction workers into faulty ‘one-and-done’ union programs, known in the industry as ‘Pre-Apprenticeships,’ and other employment tricks such as non-union‘Temporary Day worker’ programs forces black apprentice, and unskilled laborers to work for contractors for less, without union benefits, and substantive training, is still in effect today and must end. These  types of shady employment practices are used throughout the industry, especially in the black communities, where new construction development in often booming.

And with half of all black construction workers being card carrying union members, the construction trade unions and their umbrella group, the Building and Construction Trades Councils must acknowledge their important role as industry leaders and immediately release comprehensive data showing their exact number of black workers in each trade, so that an honest conversation can finally begin, and substantial changes can be made as to how black workers are properly recruited, trained, retained, and protected in the hostile environment of 2020.

Ravena, NY – A federal lawsuit filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) alleges that black tradesmen were subjected to harsh racial discrimination, harassment, intimidation, and an attempted noose snaring at the Lafarge Ravena Cement Plant by the Texas subcontractor CCC Group while the plant was undergoing a $300 million multiyear upgrade. 

These vicious racially based attacks continuously occurred over a nine-week period without intervention, according to the black tradesmen mentioned in the suit

The lawsuit filed in U.S. district court contends the following -

CCC Group, Inc., violated federal law when it fostered a work environment rife with racist comments and discriminatory work conditions, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charged in a lawsuit filed.

The San Antonio, Texas-based construction company operated a construction site in Ravena, N.Y., in 2016. According to the EEOC’s lawsuit, white supervisors and employees regularly made unwelcome racist comments, used racial slurs, threatened black employees with nooses, and subjected African American employees to harsher working conditions than white co-workers.

The EEOC charges that white employees frequently referred to black employees with insulting racial epithets. According to the EEOC’s lawsuit, some of this harassment occurred on a company radio channel for all to hear. White employees bragged that their ancestors had owned slaves and told a black employee he walked funny because slaves used to walk with a bag on their shoulder picking cotton.

Further, one white supervisor attempted to snare an employee with a noose, the EEOC said. Another Caucasian supervisor told an African American employee that for Halloween, “You don’t even have to dress up. I will dress in white and put a noose around your neck and we’ll walk down the street together.”

The EEOC further charges that African American employees were given more physically taxing and dangerous work than Caucasian counterparts, including being assigned outdoor work in winter while white colleagues worked inside. Black employees objected to and complained about the racial harassment, but it persisted, the EEOC said.

Such alleged conduct violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employers from discriminating against employees on the basis of race. Race harassment is a form of race discrimination that is prohibited by the statute.

The EEOC filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, after first attempting to reach a pre-litigation settlement through the agency’s conciliation process. The EEOC seeks compensatory damages and punitive damages for the affected employees, and injunctive relief to remedy and prevent future workplace racial harassment.

“Employers need to proactively prevent any behavior that creates a racially hostile workplace,” said Jeffrey Burstein, regional attorney for the EEOC’s New York District Office. “Here there were numerous examples of abho­rrent racial discrimination and harassment. The use of a noose is especially vicious. Such misconduct violates federal law and common decency.”

Judy Keenan, acting director of the New York District Office, added, “Racial harassment is never acceptable. This harassment was especially vicious, widespread and continuous, and the employer failed to do anything to stop it.”

The EEOC’s New York District Office is responsible for processing discrimination charges, administrative enforcement, and the conduct of agency litigation in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, northern New Jersey, Rhode Island and Vermont. The agency’s Buffalo Local Office conducted the investigation resulting in this lawsuit.

Lafarge Company who was contracted as the general contractor on the project, issued the following statement, “We find the allegations against CCC contracting  to be very concerning. Lafarge and its parent company, LafargeHolcim, take all claims of discrimination of any kind very seriously. We follow a business code of conduct and investigate and take action on all complaints that are brought to our attention.”

For years black American men and women have been subjected to the unreasonable approval of white employers, picking away at their black identities in order to cuddle white-anglo insecurities in the workplace. This specific type of attack on black working men and women can especially be seen when whites determine what is considered to be a so-called professional hair style, and what is not.

In the court of white society, any black person can make a choice to have ‘locks’ aka ‘dreadlocks,’ but choosing to have them often means accepting the very real probability of not getting hired for a job that you are clearly qualified for. And in the construction industry, many black tradesmen attribute this ‘ban on locks’ as a ‘buck breaking’ tool that hearkens back to the days of American chattel slavery.

In today’s construction industry, some employers have implemented rules against locks aka ‘Dreadlock bans’ which falls disproportionately on black American workers, and carries historical racist reproach for black people being their natural selves.

Drawing from unique styles of African cultural traditions, for centuries black American descendants of slavery and their natural hair has been both a case of pride and punishment from white society.

During the period of American Chattel slavery, enslaved black people took meticulous care of their African hairstyles, which served as a form of self-expression when they had little control over their own bodies while being kept in bondage for over 250 years, often helping do each other’s hair, sharing in a communal activity that continues today in American barbershops, salons, and homes.

In retaliation, white slave owners would often degrade African hair by referring to it as “wool,” and some slave owners would cut the hair of enslaved black people they deemed unruly, and completely shaved black women’s heads bald to castigate and demean them.