When lightning strikes: Meet the black women at the forefront of today’s labor movement

“I am unwavering in my belief that Black women are the wave that lifts all ships,” says Andrea Thornton Bolden, showrunner and executive producer. “It’s not at all a strange sight to see Black women at the forefront of many movements because these are the spaces where we tend to find ourselves. It’s an integral part of who we are.”

Bolden is one of greater than half 1,000,000 individuals who took part in the 2023 labor strike. From Hollywood writers and actors to auto staff and teachers, the growing labor movement has swept the country, with lots of of 1000’s of union staff taking to pickets to fight for higher wages , safer working conditions and greater job security.

Bolden, a member of the Writers Guild of America (WGA), helped lead the union’s picketing as a strike captain at NBC Universal. “The reason this strike was so important to us is because our career was at existential risk,” he explains. “Various media entities wanted to find a way to pay us less using artificial intelligence. They hired smaller and smaller staff to write programs, which meant that fewer and fewer people worked much more and received less pay.”

After 148 days of strike – making it the second longest in the WGA’s 104-year history – the writers reached an agreement with the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). They voted overwhelmingly for a three-year contract providing pay increases; regulated use of artificial intelligence in projects; improved staffing and duration provisions; and streaming data transparency was achieved.

“Hitting is a challenge,” Bolden says. “I personally had no training in organizing work, but I used to be ready and willing to do it because I believed in what we were fighting for. “I am proud and hope that one day I will be able to tell my future grandchildren that I was the captain of a strike that may have been the turning point for the workers’ revolution in America.”

Labor organizing has broad roots amongst Black people. One of the earliest examples in the United States is the Atlanta laundresses’ strike of 1881, during which a gaggle of formerly enslaved black laundresses gathered to demand higher compensation. Historically, black labor has shaped the nation and its economy; greater than 140 years after the Atlanta strike, black women remain at the forefront of labor leadership and labor organizing.

For Patricia Johnson-Gibson, advocacy runs in the family. “My late father, Melvin Gorman Sr., was a union employee for the United States Postal Service,” he says. “Because of the experiences he went through, I learned a lot about how relationships can be effective.”

During her second term as vp of health take care of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 105, Johnson-Gibson worked with 11 other union members on the national bargaining unit and led a three-day strike in Colorado. This strike was part of the largest health care strike in U.S. history, involving greater than 75,000 Kaiser Permanente employees in multiple states, including California, Washington, and Oregon.

America’s healthcare facilities have been dangerously understaffed for years, and the Covid-19 pandemic is making workforce shortages even worse. As Johnson-Gibson states: “This is the worst crisis I even have ever seen in my 26 years at Kaiser. I imagine it’s because they made the decision to stretch people as thin as possible, risking patient care.

About per week after the historic strike, Kaiser Permanente and a coalition of unions reached a landmark tentative agreement that features bonuses, strong outsourcing protections, higher medical advantages for retired staff and a 21 percent wage increase over 4 years. “It’s a huge change because this fight alone is keeping people from sleeping in their cars and not having housing,” Johnson-Gibson says. “Working for a multi-billion dollar organization should never let this happen.”

According to Cornell University’s Labor Action Tracker, there have been roughly 400 strikes in the United States from January 1, 2023 to November 30, 2023. Additionally, in accordance with the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the union membership rate for black staff remains to be higher than that of staff in every other racial group. The most up-to-date labor actions in the U.S. included the Portland Association of Teachers (PAT) strike, during which public school teachers like Angela Bonilla fought for weeks for smaller class sizes, higher wages, safer working conditions and higher mental health supports for college students.

Bonilla is from the Bronx and joined PAT in the 2016-17 school yr as an educator. Since then, she has climbed the union ladder. In 2022, she was elected the organization’s first Afro-Latina president. “Every school I worked at had a really strong union culture,” she says. “When I felt powerless at work, I turned to union work because that was where the power was.”

After several months of negotiations with Portland Public Schools (PPS) and little progress made, PAT members went on strike for the first time in the group’s 30-year history. “We went on strike because our students deserve more than they got,” Bonilla explains. “We are fed up with rats and mold in our schools, asbestos tiles in classrooms falling on children’s heads, and extreme heat due to a lack of air conditioners.”

The teachers’ strike began on November 1, 2023. Nearly 4 weeks later, PAT and PPS reached a preliminary agreement and successfully ratified a three-year contract. In addition to recent class size restrictions and higher mental health support for college students, it provides, amongst other things, a cumulative 13.75% increase in teacher living costs.

“History matters; we are only here because of all the work that awaits me,” says Bonilla. “When we are here to fight for our children, we will make sure we get great public schools for every student. We are simply grateful for the support our families and communities have given us because it keeps us going.”

The earlier organizing work Bonilla mentions sets a precedent for today’s labor leaders. When segregation and racial discrimination excluded blacks from some of the strongest labor unions in America, black women union leaders took matters into their very own hands, forming their very own organizations. Unfortunately, labor market inequality persists, and Black women proceed to be disproportionately affected by the pandemic, are overrepresented in low-wage jobs, and are negatively impacted by race and gender pay gaps. Nevertheless, history has shown that change is feasible through unionization, collective motion and employee solidarity.

Given ongoing challenges in the labor market, Black women remain the backbone of the labor movement and proceed to steer today’s struggles for economic justice. “The recent strikes have sent a clear message that people want to fight and stick together because we want to do the right thing on behalf of the people who run these industries,” Johnson-Gibson says. “We are the faces of the people on the front lines – no one ever sees the CEO. I think it’s time for people to pay attention to the labor movement. They were here. We’re not going anywhere.”