Holloway:
Downsizing, privatizing, outsourcing: they might be good for the bottom line, but what about for some of the lowest paid workers? This issue and more, next on Black Issues Forum.

[MUSIC]

Holloway:
Nearly 30% of US workers lost their jobs from 1990 to 1995 because of job cuts or company shutdowns. With downsizing, it's African Americans who are first fired. And when things are looking up again, the last hired. Convention wisdom held that public employees were immune from the job insecurity of the private sector. But is that the case? With talk from Washington to Raleigh about downsizing government, who benefits? And, will the lowest paid workers in the state suffer most

Lewis:
Another event, a banquet to honor the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. So what? Where's the news? Is it another program where government officials and business leaders claim allegiance to the spirit of King's work, focusing on the famous "I have a dream" speech? On only the weekend of the national holiday? Well, hardly.

Male:
[RECORDED QUOTE] We tell the truth, Dr. King is an inconvenient hero.

Lewis:
Since their inception fifteen years ago, Black Workers for Justice, or BWFJ, has organized a yearly banquet to honor Dr. King. Unlike many other organizations, BWFJ holds their celebration on the anniversary of his assassination to commemorate King's work when he died.

Male:
[RECORDED QUOTE] He moved from civil rights to in fact attacking the social economic system which is the life and blood of this nation, which is capitalism. King was ready to march and change the system when they took his life. He opposed all of that when he took his stand with garbage workers years ago...

Lewis:
Black Workers for Justice seized their mission as continuing King's work. Female: [RECORDED QUOTE] Black Workers for Justice has been supporting public worker organizing throughout the State of North Carolina. And like Martin Luther King did before he died, he was actually supporting sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee to struggle for justice on the job, better pay, safe working conditions. And that type of thing has been going on here in North Carolina. Female: [RECORDED QUOTE] Manufacturing jobs, cotton mills, textiles, all those jobs are leaving the state. Service workers are really the business that is booming in this area. Service workers from housekeepers, groundskeepers, food service...

Lewis:
With support from groups such as Black Workers for Justice, Barbara Prear and other housekeepers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are seeing to it that their jobs get better, and they are succeeding.

Prear:
: [RECORDED QUOTE] UNC Housekeepers Association has been organizing since 1990, and over that period of time, we did a lot of marching, a lot of screaming. We were able to raise the bottom wage up.

Lewis:
In addition to raising the entry level salary from $11,000 to $14,000, the Housekeepers Association also won access to training opportunities, and pay raises that rewarded seniority. All this in an era when many public employees are labeled as "non-essential", and face downsizing and privatization.

Prear:
: [RECORDED QUOTE] Our campaign now is to ensure that we stay state workers.

Female:
[RECORDED QUOTE] And we're already low income workers. Privatizing, we'd been even lower.

Lewis:
Housekeepers at East Carolina University in Greenville are also trying to improve their working conditions. The ECU Housekeepers Association began meeting last year in response to incidents of harassment.

Female:
[RECORDED QUOTE] Several racial slurs made to Afro-Americans by a manager. Slaves always did the service work, and now they're coming out of slavery, that same service work has always been Afro-Americans that did it. You stay humble, and don't cause no trouble. You go in a little closet and stay there. And Martin Luther King died for that, so we had the same right as anyone else. And you sit on a job five years, no promotions through housekeeping, at all. Every supervisor they

Female:
[RECORDED QUOTE] Labor organizing in the South has always been real hard, and I guess it all comes from the good ol' boy system of who is controlling who.

Lewis:
State laws restricting public employees from collective bargaining have not slowed the ECU housekeepers' efforts. However, the University's chancellor has refused to negotiate with the Association. Meanwhile, at Chapel Hill, an organizing campaign and legal battle forced the chancellor to concede regular meetings with the UNC Housekeepers association.

Prear:
: [RECORDED QUOTE] I go down to organize with housekeepers all through the 16 schools in the system, to organize so that we'll be stronger and we can all fight back, fight back privatization.

Female:
[RECORDED QUOTE] Whatever job you do, be the best that you can be at it. And if you have any problems, try to form some kind of association, and be in unity.

Holloway:
Tonight in our studio, we have two guests who are very involved in this issue. Ajamba Dillahunt is a labor and community activist in the Triangle. As a postal worker, he is a public service employee himself, and President of the local American Postal Workers Union. He is also on the steering committee of Black Workers for Justice, which is involved in a campaign to organize public service workers. Thank you, Mr. Dillahunt. Appreciate your being here.

Dillahunt:
Alright.

Holloway:
And Harold Wallace has worked with two state universities. Duke, where he also attended divinity school, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he currently acts as the chancellor's special assistant on minority affairs. During the housekeepers organizing campaign and legal battle, he served as ombudsman, with the goal of mediating the conflict. He has also served on the Committee to Explore Downsizing of Service Workers at the University. Thank you very much

Wallace:
Thanks for having me.

Holloway:
Alright. This is certainly an interesting issue that's here specifically at UNC-Chapel Hill, but is alluded to in the piece. It has some implications to other institutions around the state, but also in general just on the concept of privatizing and other issues. But first, Mr. Dillahunt, in the piece they said something in there about how Dr. King was an inconvenient hero, but yet, you are also celebrating that. Can you clarify that to our audience?

Dillahunt:
What I think the Reverend Mendez meant about that is that you have to acknowledge him as someone who made a tremendous contribution to our people, but there are a number of things about him that those in power now don't necessarily want to recognize. In particular, his giants efforts to support working people throughout his career, but particularly at the end when he was struck down. That he felt that working people needed support, sanitation workers were low paid, they didn't d

Holloway:
Mr. Wallace, in terms of this particular case at UNC-Chapel Hill. Chapel Hill is part of the 16 campus system. I understand there's been a study that if the system were to look at privatizing, they could save 16.8 million dollars roughly in general. But who does that privatizing really benefit? How does that affect the workers, and how does the University deal with that?

Wallace:
Well, in the first instance, just the possibility that it might be downsized has a negative impact on morale. So what we have done at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is we have an Outsourcing Committee, and we have started to look at various working areas within the University to determine whether or not cost savings really can be realized. And various groups on campus of course are concerned: will I be downsized? Will I lose my job? Will my whole working unit be

Holloway:
How do you feel about that?

Dillahunt:
I'm hoping that things go in that direction. The whole idea of privatization is not just limited to North Carolina. It's a kind of national, in fact it's even an international phenomenon. Downsizing, reducing the size of government. And it's affecting the lower sector of workers in most cases. I think that in addition to what the brothers laid out, we also want to look at this question of accountability. When these jobs fall in the university system, they're part of the stat so on? So I think as we deal with the particulars of whether or not African American housekeepers and groundskeepers, cafeteria workers or whatever are going to have access to jobs and to benefits and security? We also want to look at the broader question: should these things just be laid open for private enterprise for profit? Those are the questions that are philosophical, I think.

Holloway:
Let's clarify for our audience. I don't want to assume that everyone knows what privatizing is, but you all have used the downsizing almost synonymously with that. Can you clarify what that means and what happens when we talk about privatizing?

Dillahunt:
I would say that essentially services that are performed through public institutions are turned over to the private sector. Put out for bid, if you will. And people who are out to solely make a profit are responsible for conducting those services. So it can be a University, and here we're focusing on the 16 campuses, but certainly all the municipalities across the state of North Carolina are looking at same possibilities, facing the same challenges as well. So just turning ove

Wallace:
I think it's important to point out that when one turns over these public functions to a private firm, one does not necessarily realize a savings. There could be some hidden costs in terms of the quality of the work, in terms of problems that are created in terms of turnover. One of the advantages of working at a public institution is that you have certain benefits, retirement, certain health benefits, and that creates a certain kind of a loyalty, and a commitment to the institution. You turn that service over to a private firm that does not provide these benefits, and the work force you bring in will not be as committed to this institution. So there are some hidden costs involved in that activity.

Holloway:
So, when you're talking about these savings and these hidden costs, but if on third of these savings as I understand will come from these lower paying jobs, is that fair to take that hit from your lowest paid employees?

Wallace:
I think not, and as the dear brother said earlier, you have to not just look at costs, you have to also look at the philosophical position one takes on this. And what we're trying to do on our Outsourcing Committee is not just look at costs, but look at some of the larger philosophical questions involved. How does one reward long term loyalty? How does one reward employees who have been there 10, 15 or 20 years and have served the University with distinction? Do you go in and rip

Dillahunt:
And if I might add, too, one of the things in the piece that we saw earlier, that Barbara Prear from the UNC Housekeepers Association mentioned, was that these are jobs that were formerly held by slaves, reserved for African Americans. And has been a place where we have found employment by virtue of it being under the protection if you will of the public sector. We've had some kind of protection that we needed in terms of job security, access to grievance procedure, where people couldn't just without cause summarily be fired. Once that moves outside into the private sector, then those protections are lost, and we want to look at that. But if we look at the whole phenomenon of privatization, even outside the University system, across the state and across the country, again, the group that's going to bear the greatest attack are African Americans, and in many cases African American women who populate these jobs in a very large way.

Holloway:
Mr. Wallace, how has the University dealt with this legacy of: these are jobs that we had as slaves, and perhaps the University, the oldest public University in America is right here. We're talking about your employer. How has the University dealt with that legacy of slaves that built institutions are still in essence, their descendants are in those positions now? How do your colleagues and you deal with that?

Wallace:
At the urging of the Housekeepers' Association, we have responded positively. We've recognized that we need to have in place training opportunities, where housekeepers will have an opportunity to advance throughout the University system and be available for other jobs through additional training. The ones who stay in housekeeping might want to improve their skills and may be able to serve as supervisors at some point, or operate at some high level within the housekeeping division i

Holloway:
Have you had many successes?

Wallace:
We've just started our New Careers Program, and the housekeepers are participating in that with us, and it has a lot of promise for the future. But the idea is to give opportunities for the housekeepers to get additional training so that they can move to other jobs in the University system, or stay within housekeeping, but be able to take advantage of some of the advanced jobs within the housekeeping area. But in addition to that, we have recognized that we must begin to acknowledg

Holloway:
Let me ask both of you, the other side of the privatization is that some say the African Americans are in a position to own their own businesses and get these contracts. Now, do you all have opposing viewpoints on that? Is the University training persons to get in business for themselves, and how does the Black Workers for Justice view that?

Dillahunt:
It's a very interesting thing, and it creates at least an initial conflict in our community over that, because as people seek entrepreneurial opportunities, and fighting against a system of loans and so on, that has historically been against them, they look at this as a golden opportunity. But on the other hand, it's going against the grain of another movement, another trend in our community, and that is for greater empowerment, better working condition and wages of working peopl

Holloway:
What is the University doing, Mr. Wallace, on that issue?

Wallace:
While we haven't addressed the notion of training the housekeepers so that they might be able to participate in say the ownership of a company that might be up for a contract, but I must say that while I cannot speak for the Housekeepers' Association, that they're looking at all options. And they know that if they pursued that option, they would have to have some special training and preparation. And I would tend to think they would not look to the University to provide that, but t

Holloway:
Let me say, as an employee of the system, not at Chapel Hill, I don't know if people realize that, but I understand that employees there at the institution have the ability to take some courses there at no charge. Are the housekeepers privy to that as well?

Wallace:
Yes.

Holloway:
So if they wanted to take business development courses, but would they be encouraged to do that, I guess is what I'm saying?

Wallace:
Well, you are able to take one or two courses with permission of your supervisor. Of course that option is available to them, and they have not in the past been encouraged to do that, that I'm aware of, but that is a possibility. What we've tried to do is survey the workers and find out what courses do you think would be beneficial to you? And we've tried to work with outside agencies to actually come on the campus and offer those courses. So we've tried to tailor our new careers

Holloway:
Let me move this to just a broader concept, Mr. Dillahunt. In terms of this I don't know if it's unprecedented case that the housekeepers with UNC Chapel Hill, but what does that mean to the labor movement and what your organization has been shooting for for quite some time?

Dillahunt:
It's just an encouragement, for people who are already organized, they've just really seen this as an important step. Courageous, unprecedented, as a matter of fact. And for those who are seeking organization, and this is something that has really provided inspiration and encouragement to them. I think what Brother Wallace said before, this idea of giving workers a say on the job is so important, but it's got to be through the agency of an organization, we feel. That the indiv employee association, and we say ultimately and preferably, as a union.

Holloway:
Now, you mentioned that, but they were not a union as I understand during this negotiation. Are they now, and let's talk about that in the last few minutes, about the need, and this is not a heavily unionized state, the need for workers being unionized.

Dillahunt:
Well we would say absolutely. All workers need an organization, all workers need a union. And while they were not formerly a union, if you now examine how they function, their goals, their activities and so on, you would have to say that they were a union in that sense.

Holloway:
You don't encourage that, does the University encourage that?

Wallace:
No, what I've encouraged is I want the housekeepers to have the same freedoms as the Faculty Council. There's a Faculty Council, there's a Black Faculty/Staff Caucus, there's a Black Student Movement, there's an Employee Forum. There ought to be a Housekeepers' Association--an organization that can speak to their needs. This involves very carefully my earlier comments not to speak for that organization. Because I recognize, here's an organization, with stated goal, with leadershi

Holloway:
In terms of obstacles for organizing, what are they, and what obstacles do these present?

Dillahunt:
Well you've got the whole litany that we've seen over the years, of course. The power of big business, the lobby that they can present at the state capital. The idea of fear that's placed in the hearts of workers. The kind of traditions, and so on. And those tend to be obstacles. People spend a lot of money to keep unions out. But on the other hand, we've got the positive examples like you see with the housekeepers, we've got large segments of the religious community, like t

Holloway:
What do you see in the University system and from a state government system, Mr. Wallace, in terms of low wage workers? What is the future that you see now for people in that work category?

Wallace:
I'm encouraged by what I see in terms of the example at Chapel Hill. The lowest paid workers on our campus organized themselves. They sought power. We had to respond as a University community to their grievances, and ultimately, we assisted in the empowerment of these workers, to have a voice.

Holloway:
You told me earlier you all learned a lesson from this.

Wallace:
We learned a lesson from this. It's that if you empower the housekeepers, give them an opportunity to speak for themselves, and to make decisions in the workplace, they improve the quality of the work environment, that their work improves, and they feel a part of the campus. You're less likely to have problems when you engage them in conversation. Now we're required to have a monthly meeting where we have issues that come up from the housekeepers and so we have to address those is

Holloway:
Black Workers for Justice, what do they say is the future now for low wage workers?

Dillahunt:
Well, the future, without the intervention of folks like ourselves, the goodwill of people like Brother Wallace and others, is very bleak. But on the other hand, I think people are seeing the need now to come forward, to be engaged in activity at all levels, whether is legislative, whether it's in their churches and communities, on the campuses, in the streets, with picket signs, petitions, all kinds of things. And we think it's important, we think that this is the movement for

Holloway:
Congratulations to both of you gentlemen on your fine work, and speaking on behalf of black workers for justice, and on the lessons that have been learned here at UNC-Chapel Hill. We thank you both for appearing on Black Issues Forum.

Dillahunt:
Thank you for having us.

Wallace:
Pleased to be with you.

Holloway:
And unfortunately, many current economic trends, including privatization, are driving down the standard of living for the poorest citizens. But there are social costs to economic gains. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Said, "When the bottom rises, everyone rises." We want to thank you for joining us on Black Issues Forum and we want to invite you to send us information and call us at 919-549-7167. Write us at UNC-TV, PO Box 14900, RTP, NC 27709-4900. Send us e-mail at: bif@unctv