Opinion | Why Empowering Workers Is a Form of Reparations – YES! Magazine

The conversation about reparations for slavery entered a new stage earlier in 2021, with the U.S. House Judiciary Committeevoting for the creation of a commissionto address the matter.

The bill,H.R. 40, has been introduced every Congress since 1989 by U.S. Reps. Sheila Jackson Lee and John Conyers,until his death in 2019. But this year marks the first time that its request to study and develop reparation proposals for African Americans has cleared the committee stage.

Calls to redress the lasting impact of slavery and racial discrimination have been amplified recently because of further evidence of the impact of systemic racismboth through thedisproportionate effect of COVID-19 on the Black community and the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others at the hands of U.S. police.

To many, the question is not so much whether or not reparations are in order, but what kinds of reparations might be appropriate.

Most of the conversation to date has focused on reparations in terms of payouts of some form. Prominent authorTa-Nehisi Coates, in a powerful argument for reparations, said payments must be made by White America to Black Americamuch asGermany started paying Israel in 1952to compensate for the persecution of Jews by the Nazis.

As ascholar who has written on economic justice and the labor movement, I agree that reparations must have economic substance, because the impact of racism is inherently linked with power and money. But myresearch suggests another modelfor reparations: If one of the most significant aspects of slaveryeven if not the only onewas a massive disruption of labor relations, then a crucial part in the reparations discussion could involve reshaping the labor relationship between employers and employees today.

I believe such a reshaping of the labor relationship would substantially benefit the descendants of enslaved people in the United States. Labor, as my research has argued, has implications for all aspects of life and labor reform would, I believe, address many of the problems of structural racism as well. In addition, reshaping the labor relationship would also benefit all working people,including those who still experience enslavement today.

Labor relations can be considered distorted when one party profits disproportionally at the expense of another. In other words, it is a departure from a fair days pay for a fair days worka concept that forms a bedrock demand of the labor movement, alongside good working conditions.

This is not just a matter of money but also of power. Under the conditions of slavery, the distortion of labor relations was nearly complete. Slave owners pocketed the profits and claimed absolute power, while slaves had to obey and risk life and limb for no compensation.

Black Americans continue to be disadvantaged in the labor market today. As CEO compensationsoars, the number of Black CEOs remains remarkably low justfour Black CEOs were at Fortune 500 companiesas of March 2021. In general, the wage gap between Black and White employeeshas grown in recent years. Fueling these disparities, as well as building on them, is the structural racism that reparations could be designed to address.

Unionization can be a tool to rebalance labor relations and candiminish this racial gap,studies have shown. But union membership in generaland among Black workers in particularhasdeclined in recent decades. And a weaker labor movement is associated, studies show, withgreater racial wage disparity.

Another tool to rebalance labor relations is worker-owned cooperatives, which have along tradition in African American communitiesaseconomist Jessica Gordon Nembhardhas noted. From early on, she points out, African Americans realized that without economic justicewithout economic equality, independence, and stability social and political rights were hollow, or actually not achievable. Gordon Nembhards work also shows that such cooperatives were often fought and ultimately destroyed because they were so successful in empowering African American communities.

Some in the labor movement are beginning to link reparations with union rights. Laborlawyer Thomas Geogheganhas suggested that the proposed Protecting the Right to Organize Act, a bill before Congress that would strengthen workers rights and weaken anti-union right-to-work laws, should be viewed as a practical form of Black reparations. He argued inan article for The New Republicthat wealth redistribution through union membership is more permanent and lasting than a check written out as Black reparations, however much deserved, and far more likely to get a return over time.

While many disagree about the profits employers should be able to make from the labor of their employees, few disagree about the wrongness of practices like outrightwage theftwhich today takes the form of employers not paying part or all promised wages or paying less than mandated minimum wage. Even those who rarely worry about employers making too much profit would for the most part likely agree that wage theft is wrong. Agreement on this matter takes us back to slavery, which might be considered the ultimate wage theft.

Addressing the ongoing legacy of slavery and systemic racism requires not only economic solutions but also improving labor relations and protecting workers against wage discrimination, disempowerment at work, and violations such as wage theft thatdisproportionately affect workers of color.

Reparations that fail to pay attention to improving labor relations may not achieve economic equality. The reparations paid to Israel by Germany, for instance, have not helped to achieve economic equalitythe Israeli economy is still, alongside the U.S.s, among themost unequal in the developed world, with the richest 10% of each countrys population earning more than 15 times that of the poorest.

Simple monetary payouts are not, I believe, sufficient to solve the problem of racial inequality. Wage theft can again serve as the example here. While repaying stolen wagesasNew York state did in 2018by returning $35 million to workersis commendable, repaying stolen wages does not in itself change the skewed relationships between employer and employee that enable wage theft in the first place. Greater empowerment of working people is needed to do that.

So while redistributing money can be part of the solution, it may not go far enough.

Tying reparations to the improvement of labor relationswhich can happen through the empowerment of working people or the promotion ofworker-owned cooperativeswould not only help those most affected by wealth and employment gaps, Black Americans, it would alsobenefit others who have traditionally been discriminated againstin employment, such as women, immigrants, and many other working people.

Improving labor relations would address systemic racial discrimination where it is often most destructive and painful: at work, where people spend the bulk of their waking hours, and where the economic well-being of families and by extension entire communities can be decided.

This article was originally published byThe Conversation. It has been republished here with permission.

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Opinion | Why Empowering Workers Is a Form of Reparations - YES! Magazine