Listen: Poverty Exists Because We Allow it to Exist
Many workers at JFK Airport must work two and three jobs just to get by. Photo courtesy of 32BJ SEIU.
By Bob Hennelly
On this episode of the Moral Monday Labor Radio Hour with Rev. Dr. William Barber & Bob Hennelly we’re counting down to the June 29th “Mass Poor People’s & Low-Wage Workers’ Assembly & Moral March on Washington D.C. and to the Polls.” We hear from AFL-CIO Secretary Treasurer Fred Redmond about the national union’s commitment to support the march.
“We are committed to vanquishing oppression in all of its forms and there is no greater form of oppression than a country with the immense wealth we have but allows its people to suffer and die for a lack of resources,” Redmond said. “Poverty is a failure of the system. It exists because we allow it to exist.”
We hear from workers around the country fighting for union recognition and details about a landmark contract for 20,000 security officers with 32BJ SEIU in New York City.
During the national worker roundtable, Kenya Slaughter, a former Dollar Store employee and now an organizer with Step Up Louisiana, talks about the impact of her op-ed in the New York Times about Dollar Store’s failure to protect its employees during the Covid pandemic.
Mo Haskins, a cook in Atlanta, describes how inadequate wages and workplace conditions, like excessive heat in the kitchen, motivated him to join the Union of Southern Service Workers. Sophia Brewster, a 32BJ SEIU airport worker at JFK, who helps disabled travelers, describes how her co-workers have to work two or three jobs to get by.
In the second half of the show, Izzy Melendez, a vice president with 32 BJ SEIU, discusses the significant challenges security officers face working on the front lines of the city’s homelessness and migrant crisis.
Listen to the entire show below: