Union exclusion kept Black plumbers out of public-sector benefit jobs

Evidence

To get a job in the coveted public sector, you had to belong to the union. In fact, the existence of the union was part of the reason the job was so coveted; the expansion in benefits like pension and health insurance in the postwar years was due in large part to collective bargaining. But the union was famous for creating obstacles that prevented nonwhite workers from joining. In 1964, there were only sixteen black plumbers in the union, out of a total of 4,100. When the city forced a contractor to hire four nonwhite plumbers on a huge project in the Bronx that year, the union plumbers walked off the job. — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 361

Categorization

• SHARE: The 16-out-of-4,100 figures plus the Bronx walkout is a vivid, specific stat worth sharing with anyone researching labor history or structural racism.