Blacks, Latinos and labor are three of the most stalwart constituencies in Democratic Party politics. But the interests of the groups have increasingly brought them into conflict.
Take what happened in Los Angeles during the early 1980s. Up until that time, the janitors who cleaned offices tended to be African American, and many of those jobs were unionized. Then, seeing a way to save money, janitorial contractors dumped their existing workforce and hired Latino immigrants, tearing up union contracts and dramatically lowering wages along the way. Hotels cut labor costs the same way. And union jobs in auto, steel, rubber and aerospace plants vanished. The new jobs that came along tended to be low-wage factory jobs, and to the owners of the new sweatshops, displaced workers were anathema -- too used to high wages, too likely to form unions, too old and, often, too black.
Things have changed somewhat since then. L.A.'s new immigrant janitors turned out to be pro-union and have risked their jobs in attempts to re-unionize the industry. Many new hotel and factory workers have done the same. But through it all, black workers have remained unemployed, and tensions have remained high.
Now, two political initiatives are attempting to bring immigrants and native-born workers together. One is a union proposal in the current contract negotiations at Los Angeles hotels. The second is a new look at immigration reform contained in a bill introduced by Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-Texas).
Both the Hotel Employees Restaurant Employees union and Jackson-Lee see the key to better wages and conditions as prohibiting discrimination -- against both immigrants and against displaced workers -- by enforcing job creation and affirmative action as national policy. Both proposals share an assumption that unions and high wages offer protection against job competition.
In this year's hotel negotiations, the union has linked protection for the rights of immigrant workers with an effort to overcome past hiring discrimination. Black workers today make up only 6.4% of the hotel workforce, and that's a far cry from the way things used to be. Clyde Smith, a houseman at the Wilshire Grand, remembers that when he was hired 35 years ago African Americans worked in virtually all areas. "There are significantly less today," he said, "often only one or two in each department, and sometimes none at all."
