Ending the Subminimum Tipped Wage Is a Step Towards Building Black Worker Power – Inequality.org

Eliminating the subminimum tipped wage would also eliminate a shameful relic of slavery. Tipping became prevalent in the United States after the Civil War, when restaurants and railway companies embraced the practice because it meant they didnt have to pay wages to recently freed slaves.

That past hangs heavily over many Black workers.

Lets face it, Wallace-Gobern told Inequality.org, 50 years after President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a war on poverty, Black people in the South still contend with economic hardships, persistent poverty, and the enduring legacy of slavery. We believe that in order for there to be justice for all workers, we must expand the capacity of Black workers, and for us that means that our work has to be concentrated in the South.

Currently based in Raleigh, North Carolina, Wallace-Gobern began her organizing work in Chicago as a student at Loyola University. Her work on a range of racial justice issues, from combatting racist stereotypes and attacks on Black students to fighting for Black professors to receive tenure, caught the eye of labor movement recruiters. When they offered her a job, she said she would only do it if she could organize Black people and Black women in particular.

Black workers are the canaries in the economic coalmine of our country, Wallace-Gobern told Inequality.org. When the canary died, that was a signal that the conditions were bad for the miners. Thats the role Black workers play. If you improve their working conditions, that will lift all workers.

She became the first executive director of National Black Worker Center Project three years ago, after stints with the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (a predecessor of UNITE HERE), the AFL-CIOs Historical Black College Recruitment program, and the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions.

One Fair Wage rally for a $15 minimum wage for all U.S. workers, Feb. 8, 2021. Credit: Rebekah Entralgo.

Wallace-Goberns aim now is to strengthen the capacity of Black worker centers to win progressive policies like minimum wage increases, build up a cadre of Civil Rights 2.0 organizers, and advance a Southern strategy on racial justice and democratic freedoms.

The challenges are many. Particularly in the south, worker advocates are up against anti-union right to work laws and pre-emption restrictions that block cities from improving labor protections at the local level.

But Wallace-Gobern is optimistic about the future.

Young people are not turning their back on the legacy of the civil rights movement, but they are ready to lead if we step aside and give them space, she remarked. I welcome the opportunity for them to stand on our shoulders and take us to heights that I and my grandparents could never imagine.

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Ending the Subminimum Tipped Wage Is a Step Towards Building Black Worker Power - Inequality.org