From The Irish Famine To The Employee Free Choice Act
By Michael D’Souza
Former Chair: TNG-CWA Committee on Human Rights and Equity
 
(A synopsis of a presentation made at the 2009 Sector Conference of the TNG-CWA in Washington, D.C., on June 20, 2009) 

I first heard the song "The Fields of Athenry" (song - lyrics) in an Irish bar - could have been in Toronto, could have been on the island of Newfoundland. It’s a song that always makes me think about equality.  This is the story about a man in mid-19th-century Ireland being sent to Australia for stealing grain to feed his family. Now we all know that the Irish potato famine was not a famine: There was plenty of food, more than enough to export. But the starving Irish were tenant farmers who couldn’t afford food, food they were growing in many cases. This was a clear case of inequality.  
 
Our brother Carl Younger from Boston has been giving much thought to inequality. I affectionately call him "The Professor." He, after all, has gone to Harvard to take a closer and more learned look at the state of labor in North America and around the world. Now the inequality described in the song "The Fields of Athenry" falls neatly into one of those definitions of inequality that Carl has been looking into. He identifies it as Vital Inequality. This is differential exposure to life and death, and can be the result of resource inequality as in the lack of food, medicine or protection of law. In the case of the Irish famine, the Irish simply didn’t have a vital resource: food. 
 
While the potato famine dates back to the mid 19^th-century, the problems of vital inequality are very much with us today. As this century started, the 21^st century, the kingdom of Swaziland was in the grip of a famine. The country in southern Africa is smaller than New Jersey and has a little more than a million people living there. Even as a drought meant many of its people were starving, the government allocated more than 7,000 acres of farmland to growing bio-fuel for export. That meant 40 percent of its people faced acute food shortage. Life came second to profits. 
 
And if you think vital inequality is something that only happens in far-away places, take a closer look at the panhandler you stop to give a buck to ... or swerve to avoid. The thinkers who classified inequality have a few more definitions:

Existential Inequality
 
Resource Inequality
 
Knowledge Inequality 

Existential Inequality is rooted in how we as a people label others. Slavery and racism are a couple of examples. Patriarchy is another… an extreme case of Father Knows Best. 
 
Resource Inequality can be described as the distribution of income and property. Poverty is an example. But resource inequality is not only access to a reasonable income, it can also include an unequal access to education or even social networks like the old-boys club. And we all know how belonging to that club certainly has its advantages. 
 
Knowledge Inequality is just that. It’s not having access to the benefits of knowledge, especially science.  

The TNG-CWA Committee on Human Rights and Equity talked for a long time before it opted to use equity instead of equality in its name.
 
The best way I have of explaining the difference is an experience at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Our collective agreement permits members to reclaim cab fares up to $12.50 per ride during off-hours. But one of our members uses a wheelchair and the rate for a wheelchair-accessible cab, starts at around $30 and that’s before the vehicle even leaves the sidewalk.
 
The union had no case if it demanded equal treatment…. It had a much stronger case when it asked for equitable treatment. This is an example of how unions can fight for a more equitable workplace. Many of the collective agreements within the TNG-CWA have some exceptional language on defending the rights of members of equity-seeking groups. But negotiating such language has its pitfalls. In the United States in particular, you can run afoul of discrimination laws if you try to include any language seen to favor one group. Then there’s the fundamental principle of seniority that is the part of the bedrock of collective bargaining. But most new members see this as a terribly unfair clause. I know, it’s an issue I have to address almost daily on the Local Joint Employment Committee. That’s the redundancy committee at the CBC. The Corporation has cut about 800 jobs and in most cases it is the youngest that will leave the corporation.
 
At this time I’ll note that members of equity-seeking groups are an inordinately large percentage of the members whose continued employment is in jeopardy.
 
But yet demographics, both in Canada and the United States, show that this part of the population is the fastest-growing. In Toronto, members of minority groups are close to being the majority. Soon no single group will be able to claim it is the majority population in the country. 
 
And that is the challenge faced by this union and the labor movement. I’ve been trolling through the data posted by the U.S Bureau and was startled by some of the information. Here’s what it says is happening to the population of this country.
 
The numbers of members of equity-seeking groups are growing dramatically in the United States. By 2050 -- that’s just about 40 years from now -- minorities will be the majority of people in the United States, more than 50 percent of the population.

And look at who will be the largest part of that segment: Hispanic Americans. Going from about 15 percent today to around 30 percent by the middle of this century. That sounds so far away, but remember we’re already at the end of the first decade. And look at the chart. See how fast that percentage is increasing.



This looks daunting. The population is changing and much of that population is missing from the union movement. But mining for data does come up with gems. Even a reason why members of equity-seeking groups would want to sign union cards. 
 
We all know that unionized workers make more money and have better benefits than other workers. In 2008, last year, unionized workers made $195 dollars more in weekly wages than non-unionized workers. But when you look at those numbers closer, you’ll notice that the difference is especially dramatic for Hispanic workers, $221 per week.



The numbers are really dramatic when you look at the percentage difference. It’s 22 percent for most groups; for Hispanic workers it’s a difference of 30 percent. It’s only serendipity that 30 percent also happens to be the projected percentage for the Hispanic population in 2050.



The Employee Free Choice Act gives us an opportunity to reach out to these groups. The debate over the act is increasing simple awareness of the labor movement. And now, as we debate the issue, is the time we should start organizing. That way when the act does become law we, the TNG-CWA, will be in the lead, talking and reaching out to the fast-growing population of workers.