New Push for Black Workers and Rights

New Push for Black Workers and Rights

Precinct Reporter Group

…Last weekend, Dawn Modkins and partners hosted a career fair to provide information on jobs, union jobs, jobs for the formerly incarcerated, and procurement opportunities with local institutions. The event was in collaboration with the Port of Long Beach, Pacific Gateway, and Los Angeles County.

The hub coordinates, organizes and provides capacity building for Black worker centers in San Diego, the Inland Empire, and the Los Angeles center. Their latest development is the LongBeachBlackWorkersCenter in collaboration with the Southern California Worker Hub and the Los Angeles Black Worker Center.

Her main message to workers is the importance of understanding rights in the workplace, and that learning to organize around the conditions impacting Black workers is critical. She said they are working with the city, and unions that represent city workers.

“There is a campaign 1,000 strong, and efforts to coordinate,” she said. “They’re doing it in the city of L.A. and we’ll be doing it in the city of Long Beach to create access and pathways for Black workers, specifically in the public sector.”

Modkins said the city of Long Beach has a lot going on for people of color, but she worries that the Black community is consistently left out of opportunities. For that reason, she founded Black Agency over two years ago to organize and address local systemic anti-Blackness.

“What we’ve found is what folks experience. [Those] that work in our local systems, in higher education, at Cal State University Long Beach, at Long Beach Unified School District, or work for the city, there are multiple discrimination cases are coming out of the city right now, a couple have been won,” said Modkins, co-founder of the Long Beach Chapter of Black Lives Matter.

October also marks the start of a WorkersRights Awareness Campaign …

Originally posted in the Precinct Reporter.