Union discrimination suppressed black wages well into the 1960s

Evidence

My father, meanwhile, had to work as an assistant at a private plumbing company, because New York City’s plumbers’ union wouldn’t admit black men until the mid-1960s. Neither of my parents was earning at their peak salary potential, because the system just wouldn’t allow it. And their two reduced salaries were critical to our survival. — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 112

Categorization

• SEED: A concrete engine for a piece on how labor-union exclusion quietly depressed black family income for generations, unlike the better-known redlining story.
• XREF: Echoes the imputed-income/family-structure story in chapter 2’s main argument — the two-earner black family only exists because each earner was underpaid. — connects to: The 1938 minimum wage law deliberately excluded majority-black occupations — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax…, 354; Postwar Northern unions expelled Black workers from skilled trades; Excluding black occupations from wage law permitted legalized discrimination in pay and benefits — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax…, 358 (+5 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: The 1938 minimum wage law deliberately excluded majority-black occupations — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax…, 354; Postwar Northern unions expelled Black workers from skilled trades; Excluding black occupations from wage law permitted legalized discrimination in pay and benefits — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax…, 358 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Unionization decreases income inequality by disciplining employer power #complicates (0.76) — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 583