AFGE leaders recently participated in the 50th Congressional Black Caucus Foundation (CBCF) Annual Legislative Conference (ALC), which creates a space for thousands of activists, thought leaders, faith leaders, and elected officials from communities across the country to have conversations about issues impacting African Americans and the global Black community.
This year’s theme was “Rooted, Ready, & Rising,” and participants were encouraged to engage in meetings, panel discussions, and roundtables about economic development, labor and workers’ rights, civil and social justice, public health, and education issues.
AFGE leaders participated in a labor roundtable hosted by the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists where AFGE National President Everett Kelley spoke to CBC members about the history of how the federal government has been a pathway to the middle class for generations of Black Americans because of merit-based hiring.
“Nearly one in five federal workers today is Black. More than a quarter of postal workers. That is how Prince George’s County, Maryland, became the wealthiest Black county in America. That is how a whole generation of our people bought homes, buried their parents with dignity, and sent their children to school,” Kelley said. “The Black middle class in this country was not handed to us. A good piece of it was earned at a federal desk, a federal loading dock, a federal hospital ward.”
Kelley cautioned that that progress is in jeopardy due to the Trump administration’s moves to slash the federal workforce. Last year the federal government shed 237,652 jobs, or more than 10% of the overall workforce.
The job cuts disproportionately affected workers of color at agencies responsible for delivering services to Americans most in need of assistance.
“The woman who processes your mother’s disability claim is a union member. The man who inspects the chicken that comes to your grocery store is a union member. The person who takes your complaint when you get passed over for a promotion because of your race, she works at the EEOC, where better than a third of the staff looks like the people in this room, and she is a union member, and her job is not safe,” Kelley said. “When they cut her, they did not cut the need for her work. They just made you wait longer for justice.”
AFGE sponsored the legislative conference and hosted a panel discussion on how attacks on the federal government negatively affect Black communities across the country. The panel, hosted by the Rev. Mark Thompson, informed the audience on issues at the Department of Labor, Social Security Administration, Food Safety Inspection Service, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Participants included AFGE Local 12 President LaRhonda Gamble (DOL), AFGE Local 2883 President Yolanda Jacobs (CDC), AFGE Local 2325 President Aaron Lee (FSIS), AFGE Local 2006 Secretary Kevin Parks (SSA), and President Kelley.
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