Black Workers, Public Sector, and the Jobs Crisis – Interview Summary

Speaker & Organizational Background

  • Lola Smallwood-Cuevas

    • Project Director, UCLA Labor Center
    • Co-founder, Los Angeles Black Worker Center (LABWC)
    • Incubated the first Black Worker Center (BWC) in California; model for the National BWC Project
    • Executive roles
    • Executive Committee, National Black Worker Center Network
    • Secretary-Treasurer, L.A. County Workforce Development Board
    • Member, City of L.A. Employment Equity Committee & LAHSA Ad-Hoc Committee on Black People Experiencing Homelessness
    • Publications
    • Co-editor: “Women’s Work – L.A. Home-Care Workers Revitalize the Labor Movement” (2009)
    • Co-author: “Common Cause” chapter in Black Los Angeles: American Dreams & Racial Realities
    • Prior experience
    • Researcher & Political/Community Coordinator, SEIU Local 1877 (Stand for Security Campaign)
    • Journalist: Chicago Tribune, Long Beach Press-Telegram, Oakland Tribune
    • Introduced to labor organizing through East Bay Newspaper Guild

  • Black Worker Centers (BWCs)

    • Purpose: Build power among Black workers; expand access to quality jobs; fight discrimination; transform industries
    • Current sites: Los Angeles, Oakland, Chicago, Baltimore, Washington DC
    • Methodology: “Action-research-organizing” fusion; community & labor alignment

  • CARE at Work (Center for the Advancement of Racial Equity at Work)

    • New UCLA Labor Center initiative led by Smallwood-Cuevas
    • Bridges workers, community, and university research to advance racial equity in employment
    • Spring course: “Black Worker Organizing & Social Movements” + paid internships with LABWC, Inland Empire BWC, San Diego BWC, etc.

Key Reports Discussed

  • “Ready to Work: Uprooting Inequity – Black Workers in L.A. County” (2017)

    • Documents historical presence & recent population decline of Black Angelenos
    • Central finding: L.A. is in a Black jobs crisis
    • Statistic repeatedly cited: Over 50%50\% of working-age Black adults are unemployed or under-employed in L.A. County

  • “Re-imagine Recovery: Black Workers, the Public Sector & COVID-19” (May 2020)

    • Written at start of the pandemic (≈ 30,00030{,}000 U.S. deaths; now 220,000220{,}000 +)
    • Shows how infections shifted from affluent travelers to poor & working-class Black/Brown communities
    • Emphasizes public-sector employment as both bulwark and vulnerability

Defining the Black Jobs Crisis

  • Dual dimensions
    • Unemployment – consistently 2 × white rate nationally & locally since data collection began
    • Under-employment – concentration in jobs below a living-wage (≈ $14\$14/hr in L.A.); many workers stitch together 2–3 such jobs for basic survival (rent, transport, insurance)
  • Aggregate effect: > 50%50\% of Black community faces economic instability; post-COVID proportion even higher (data forthcoming)
  • Cascading social impacts (L.A. County)
    • Population share: 7%7\%
    • Homelessness: 40%40\% of unhoused
    • Jail population: 45%45\%
    • Life-expectancy gap: die 1717 years sooner than other groups

Historical Roots – Racialized Capitalism Timeline

  • Slavery – foundational U.S. economic engine; denial of Black humanity sets baseline labor standards
  • Post-Emancipation (Black Codes, Jim Crow, 13th Amendment loophole) – “slavery by another name”; convict-leasing & terrorized labor
  • New Deal (1930s) – Social Security, minimum wage, overtime excluded domestic & farm workers (≈ 90%90\% Black workforce). Example: great-grandmother’s SS check = 1212
  • A. Philip Randolph (1940s)
    • Organized Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
    • Pressured Roosevelt to desegregate military & federal defense jobs
    • GI Bill ultimately denied to many Black veterans via state carve-outs – blocked paths to home-ownership, education, aerospace jobs
  • Civil Rights & Affirmative Action (1960s-70s) – brief opening (≈ 11 years) before…
  • De-industrialization & Reagan Era (1980s) – industrial flight, union busting, welfare reform; public-sector shrinkage
  • Globalization – new wave of labor exploitation; immigrant labor inserted into deregulated service economy; corporations set racialized hiring priorities; Black workers displaced

The Public Sector – “The Black Sector”

  • Definition: Government-funded services (streets, utilities, licensing, administration, healthcare, etc.) financed by taxpayer dollars
  • Why critical to Black workers
    • Public dollars → public accountability; can mandate equity & diversity unlike private employers
    • Historically offered unionization, higher wages, stronger benefits
    • Statistics (L.A. County): 1 in 5 Black workers vs 1 in 8 white workers are public-sector employees
    • Heavily female: anchors Black women heads-of-households; boosts community stability
    • Threats
    • Prop 209 ban on affirmative action cost women-owned firms ≈ 11 billion in lost public contracts; Prop 16 (2020) sought reversal
    • Janus SCOTUS decision (2018) weakened union resources by banning mandatory dues in public sector
    • Austerity cycles: layoffs, furloughs, service cuts target Black women first

COVID-19 Specific Dynamics

  • Pandemic trajectory
    • Initial spread among global travelers → rapid shift to poor/Black/Brown neighborhoods
  • Employment impacts
    • Public budgets absorbing PPE, testing, tech costs → looming deficits → layoffs hit Black workers hardest
    • Service economy shutdowns (retail, food, customer service) over-represented Black workforce
    • Early recall data: Black workers 2 × less likely to be called back
    • Workplace safety activism: Black workers 2 × more likely to voice PPE concerns and then face retaliation/termination (e.g., Amazon’s Christian Smalls case)
  • Health-employment feedback loop: economic precarity → higher exposure risk; pre-existing inequities amplify mortality & morbidity

Re-imagine Recovery – Policy & Program Recommendations (Racial-Equity Lens)

  • Budget alternatives to layoffs
    • Offer incentivized early retirement for higher-paid senior staff
    • Redirect savings to maintain entry-level positions & services
  • Targeted Local Hire + Union Training
    • Channel vacant entry positions to residents of census tracts with high unemployment, homelessness, incarceration
    • Rapid up-skilling via union-supported apprenticeships/pre-apprenticeships
  • Invest in Public-Sector Workforce Development
    • State/Federal funding streams now focus on private industry; reallocate toward public-service training pipelines
  • Federal Job-Creation & Infrastructure Packages
    • Health (contact tracing, long-term COVID care)
    • Green infrastructure & technology projects
    • Tie all investments to enforceable racial-equity benchmarks, community benefit agreements, and union labor standards

Why Center Black Workers?

  • "Lift Black workers, lift all workers" – policy wins (Social Security, civil rights, OSHA, wage/hour laws) historically start with Black-led demands and broaden outward
  • Failure to address Black jobs crisis yields genocidal conditions (housing, health, incarceration)
  • Intersection of race & capital positions Black labor at the bottom; equitable remedies must be intentional, not race-neutral

Community Mutual Aid & Organizing Tradition

  • From Abolition to Civil Rights to BLM: continuous lineage of Black self-help, church mobilization, women’s auxiliaries, labor alliances
  • BWCs embody this tradition: action-research-organizing, worker-centered, community rooted
  • CARE at Work extends model by fusing university research capacity with community wisdom & worker leadership

Course & Internship Opportunities

  • Spring UCLA course: “Black Worker Organizing & Social Movements”
    • Combines theory (racial capitalism, labor history) + practice (campaign planning, data analysis, storytelling)
    • Culminates in paid internships with Southern CA BWCs & allied organizations

Numerical & Statistical Highlights

  • Black share of L.A. population: 7%7\%
  • Homeless share: 40%40\% | Jail share: 45%45\%
  • Life-expectancy gap: 1717 years shorter
  • Un/under-employment: >50\% of working-age Black adults
  • Unemployment ratio: 2:12:1 (Black : White) consistently
  • Public-sector employment: 15\frac{1}{5} Black workers vs 18\frac{1}{8} white workers
  • COVID-19 U.S. death toll jump: 30,000→220,00030{,}000 \rightarrow 220{,}000 (May → Autumn 2020)

Ethical & Practical Implications

  • Economic policy is inseparable from racial justice; austerity without equity reproduces historical harms
  • Public sector serves dual role: essential services + racial-equity employer; gutting it deepens inequality
  • Equity-first recovery models (akin to a modern WPA) can simultaneously meet urgent social needs and correct historic injustices

Take-Away Connections for Students

  • Black labor history is American economic history; every major labor standard has racial context
  • Employment discrimination is structural, not cultural; blaming Black communities ignores policy-driven exclusion
  • Research + organizing + policy advocacy = holistic toolkit for systemic change (model used by BWCs & CARE)
  • Upcoming course/internships offer hands-on avenue to merge scholarship with community activism