*This working paper summarizes the findings of the Advancing Black Workers in the South research initiative. The research was conducted by a team of scholars at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) and a Minority-Serving Institution (MSI) as part of a project funded by grants from WorkRise and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. WorkRise aims to build a more equitable and resilient labor market that expands opportunity and economic mobility for workers. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of WorkRise or the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The research team included Dr. Joseph Jones, Clark Atlanta University; Drs. Berneece S. Herbert and Talya D. Thomas, Jackson State University; Dr. Allison Tomlinson, University of North Texas; Wakita Barksdale, Clinton College; and Drs. Lawren M. Long and Jacorius Liner from Tougaloo College. The principal investigators include Dr. Algernon Austin, Center for Economic and Policy Research; and Dr. Kate Bronfenbrenner, Cornell University. We would like to thank the United Southern Service Workers, SEIU; UNITE HERE, the American Federation of Government Employees, and the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades for their assistance with the research, as well as graduate and undergraduate research assistants at each of the HBCUs, the MSI, and Cornell University for their work on the project.

This is a final report from the Advancing Black Workers in the South study, an initiative of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and a Minority-Serving Institution (MSI). This report will focus on the challenges Black workers in the South face at work and Black workers’ experiences with and attitudes toward unions. These issues were the primary impetus behind the study. This exploratory study also sheds light on the challenges faced by underfunded HBCUs in conducting research that can benefit Black communities. This understanding can help future HBCU research projects be more successful.

Black Workers and the Southern Economic Development Model

The South is a very important region for understanding the state of Black America. The Bureau of Economic Analysis’s Southeast region is composed of the following states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia.¹ These 12 states contain more than two-fifths of the Black labor force.² If Texas were added to the region, then one would have a slight majority of the Black labor force.³ This study focuses on five states in the region — Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina. Black workers are overrepresented in the Southeast region. Although Black workers make up 13 percent of the US labor force,⁴ Black workers make up 20.7 percent of all workers in this region (Figure 1). For the other regions, the Black worker share ranges from 15.3 percent in the Mideast to 2.7 percent in the Rocky Mountain region. The Southeast region has been shaped economically by the Southern economic development model, which provides subsidies and tax breaks for wealthy corporations while under-investing in safety net programs and supporting anti-worker policies.⁵ For example, the organization Good Jobs First found that in 2013, Mississippi provided $1.3 billion in incentives to attract a Nissan factory.⁶ Yet, Mississippi still has a minimum wage of $7.25 per hour⁷ which was set in 2009, and the state has not joined the majority of US states that have expanded access to Medicaid.⁸ Mississippi is not alone. The other states in this study — Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and South Carolina — also have a $7.25 minimum wage. Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina also have not expanded Medicaid.⁹ Supporters of the Southern economic development model claim that it produces economic prosperity,¹⁰ but the economic data do not support this claim. The South is a region characterized by low per capita GDP, and low rates of labor force participation.¹¹ Southern Black workers are some of the main victims of the Southern economic development model.¹²  Figure 1 Across all states and major industries in the South, Black workers earn less than other workers, even when concentrated in the same occupational categories. The earnings gap is largest in precisely the industries that dominate employment in the region — manufacturing, transportation, retail, and accommodation and food services. These gaps are embedded in the region’s wage structures.¹³ Weekly wages are consistently lowest in states and counties with the largest Black populations.¹⁴ Few Southern states have Medicaid expansion, leaving many low-income adults, particularly Black workers, without insurance or access to healthcare.¹⁵ Many scholars agree that the official poverty rate, which was developed in 1963, is an out-of-date and inadequate standard.¹⁶ The researchers at the National Equity Atlas have developed a more realistic measure — two times the official poverty rate — to determine which workers are the “working poor.” So, instead of a worker with a family of four needing less than about $30,000 family income to be considered poor based on the official poverty measure, they define workers with less than about $60,000 in family income as “working poor.” Figure 2 Figure 2 shows the rate of “working poverty” in the states in the study. In all the states, the Black “working poverty” rate is more than twice the White rate. In Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina, roughly one in five Black full-time workers would experience at least some difficulty maintaining a comfortable standard of living for their family. This illustrates that the Southern economic development model is harmful to the Black population.

Unions and Black Workers

Unions provide strong economic benefits to Black workers. Black workers in unions earn over 10 percent more than their peers without union representation. Union representation is also associated with a 15.7 percent increased likelihood that a Black worker will have health insurance, and a 53.7 percent increased likelihood that a Black worker will have an employer-sponsored retirement plan.¹⁷

The benefits of unionization are even stronger in the South, largely due to the low wages and weak safety net in the region. The Center for Economic and Policy Research reports that while the Black union wage premium is 13.2 percent nationally, it is 15.5 percent in the Southeast, the second highest by region.¹⁸

Figure 3

Opposition to unionization is very strong in the South, so much so that during recent UAW elections at Volkswagen in Tennessee and Mercedes-Benz in Alabama, governors from six Southern states joined together to publicly campaign against unionization.¹⁹ The lowest Black unionization rate is in the Southeast (Figure 3). Only 7 percent of Black workers are represented by a union in the region. The highest rate is in the Mideast region (Delaware, District of Columbia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania) where 23.3 percent of Black workers are represented by a union. Since two-fifths of the Black population is in the Southeast, increasing the Black unionization rate in the region would improve the economic condition of Black America. To achieve this goal, it is useful to understand Southern Black workers’ concerns about their workplaces, and their attitudes toward unions.

Methodology

The data for this study was collected by researchers at Clark Atlanta University (GA), Clinton College (SC), Jackson State University (MS), University of North Texas, Dallas (TX), and Tougaloo College (MS), in partnership with the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT), UNITE HERE, and the United Southern Service Workers (USSW), an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). The research sites reflect a range of industries, occupations, and unions in the South, all with a majority of Black workers.

Waffle House is a family-owned privately held corporation, which operates or franchises a chain of more than 2,000 24-hour, 7-day a week diners nationwide, 400 of which are in Georgia. Employees include servers, cooks, hosts, shift supervisors, and restaurant managers.²⁰ Although Waffle House remains non-union, since 2022 the United Southern Service Workers have engaged in strikes, lawsuits, and other direct action to gain improvements in wages and working conditions for Waffle House workers.²¹

The Birmingham Veteran’s Administration Health Care System includes a central medical center located in downtown Birmingham, Alabama, and operates a network of community-based outpatient clinics across the region, along with the Birmingham Vet Center and a mobile medical unit.²² AFGE represents workers at VA hospitals nationwide, including the Birmingham VA. During the survey process, the Trump administration eliminated collective bargaining rights and issued mass layoff notices for VA workers.²³

Ingalls Shipbuilding, in Pascagoula, MS, is a subsidiary of Huntington Ingall Industries, Inc., a publicly traded global shipbuilding company that designs, constructs, and repairs nuclear and non-nuclear ships for the US government, particularly the Navy.²⁴ The workforce, primarily building and metal trades workers, has a long history of unionization. Today, the largest group of workers, including members of IUPAT, are covered under the Pascagoula Metal Trades Council collective bargaining agreement.²⁵

Caesars Superdome, in New Orleans, LA has been home to the New Orleans Saints since 1973. On July 1, 2025, New York based Legends ASM Global took over concession service at the Superdome from French food service giant Sodexho. Legends agreed to retain all the Superdome’s 880 employees and honor the Sodexho collective bargaining agreement with the 600 Superdome cooks, bartenders, and concession workers who organized with UNITE HERE in 2023.²⁶

Although South Carolina is a majority White state, Richland County and neighboring counties of Fairfield, Bamberg, Orangeburg, and Allendale in Central South Carolina have a majority or near-majority Black population. Outside the city of Columbia, these are mostly rural counties, with few large employers, persistent poverty, and little (if any) union activity.²⁷ USSW has been seeding organizing in the area by actively canvassing low-wage workers in manufacturing, retail, homecare, and other service occupations.

The Quantitative Study

At each research site, the researchers received membership lists from the union partners. Random samples were drawn from the names on the lists for which the unions were able to provide contact information. Because of the challenges in conducting the research, the total combined sample for this study is small and the study should therefore be considered exploratory.

The final sample size for the quantitative research from the five sites combined was a total of 131 complete surveys, including 94 Black respondents, out of a combined population of more than three thousand 3,000 workers. For the combined sample, 48 percent of all respondents and 57 percent of Black respondents were union members. Because many of the Black workers are in unions, and at some sites the unions helped facilitate data collection, these results may be more pro-union than for the Southern Black population.

Fifty-nine percent of the respondents were women, and a majority had a high school or GED degree (30 percent) or had some years of college (23 percent). Only 15 percent had a bachelor’s degree and 7 percent a graduate degree. The average age of the respondents was 41 years. Two-thirds of all respondents, and 77 percent of Black respondents, were hourly workers, 26 percent were tipped employees, and only 6 percent were salaried.

The survey was fielded starting in late fall 2024 through the summer of 2025. Additional methodological details can be found in the site-specific reports.

The Qualitative Study

To probe more deeply into the issues raised from the quantitative study, at each site, researchers also conducted interviews with community members. In total, 48 interviews were conducted. The community members included workers, local labor leaders, workforce and economic development professionals, religious leaders, local politicians, educators, and members of social justice and community service organizations. These individuals were asked about their views on working conditions, worker power, employer and union strategies in the South, and community support of workers. The interview respondents were identified based on the prior community connections of the investigators and by using snowball sampling. The interviews were conducted in the Fall of 2025. Additional methodological details can be found in the site-specific reports.

Findings

The following section summarizes the survey findings adding in insights from the qualitative interviews. Workplace Issues It is more common today for employers to subject workers to varying work schedules.²⁸ This unpredictability can have a negative effect on workers’ well-being.²⁹ More than half of all workers surveyed (51 percent), and 56 percent of Black workers, indicated that they receive less than one week’s notice about their work schedules. Only about one in six workers knew their work schedule a month in advance. Worse than short-notice scheduling are last-minute schedule changes. This issue is one of the major concerns of workers in the study. Forty-five percent of all workers indicated that they are subject to last-minute schedule changes. The rate falls to 35 percent for union members and 36 percent for Black workers, who are more likely to be union members. Interviewees described the instability created by frequent schedule changes as “deeply pervasive and deeply impactful.”³⁰ Schedule changes make managing transportation, childcare, and financial stability particularly challenging.³¹ As one Richland County interviewee put it, “How can you really plan for how your child is going to be cared for… whether it be, like, at a daycare… or through a family member or friend if you can’t give them proper notice?”³² Another described this instability as a deliberate management tactic, “just another way that they try to dehumanize workers.”³³ Others explained that scheduling issues are acute in the South because firms “have the advantage of the Southern mentality of a right-to-work state… the workers don’t have a voice… they always feel like they’re gonna get terminated.”³⁴ Workers are not only concerned with variable work hours but also work-hour reductions. Thirty-one percent of all workers, and 27 percent of Black workers, indicated an issue with work-hour reductions. A substantial share of respondents reported that they struggle to get by. One-third (32 percent) of all workers and 38 percent of Black workers reported concerns about or difficulty paying rent or affording adequate food. For workers facing difficulty paying for day-to-day expenses, losing work hours would be a particular hardship. In interviews, shipyard workers complained of stagnant wages, with most earning under $15 per hour, even after years of service. Workers reported that many held two or more jobs to survive. Precarity traps workers in “a really awful conundrum,” as the absence of public transportation exacerbates inequality; without cars, many cannot access regional employment opportunities.³⁵ As a Richland County nurse aide explained, “You can’t pay Columbia [South Carolina] rent making CNA (Certified Nurse Assistant) pay.”³⁶ Twenty-two percent of the Black workers surveyed, but only 8 percent of White workers, worked 50 hours or more a week, while overtime for Black workers averaged 14 hours a week, compared to only six hours for White workers. As a Jackson County interviewee reported, since COVID-19, “the workload has increased…and staffing hasn’t. We worry about burnout.”³⁷ Understaffing has direct implications for the quality of service that workers can provide. As one Richland teacher described it, “It feels like we’re holding the school together with tape.”³⁸ About a quarter of survey respondents reported workplace safety concerns. Twenty-seven percent of all workers and 24 percent of Black workers indicated that they had to work without proper protective equipment. Twenty-eight percent of all workers and 23 percent of Black workers feel that their work environment is dangerous or unsafe. A Birmingham VA interviewee described unsafe staffing levels and exposure to workplace aggression as part of the “normal chaos” of working in healthcare. In Richland County, a sanitation worker described dangerous heat exposure during summer months.³⁹ An environmental justice organizer noted the link between environmental and safety hazards, explaining that “heat exposure, polluted air, old buildings with mold…it all affects workers.”⁴⁰ Eighteen percent of Black workers surveyed, (and 19 percent of all workers) reported that racial discrimination was an issue in their workplace. Interviews with VA workers found that racial identity determines exposure to discipline and inequitable assignments.⁴¹ Ingalls Shipyard workers reported in interviews that historical discrimination, favoritism, and the lack of diversity in leadership continue to restrict upward mobility for Black workers,⁴² while a Clark University interviewee described AI as a “super algorithm” that enables automated discrimination — “It’s racism at a different level.”⁴³ Attitudes Toward Unions The majority of the respondents report positive attitudes toward unions. Roughly three quarters of both all workers and Black workers see unions as giving workers a voice at work (Figure 4). A majority of respondents (67 percent of all workers and 61 percent of Black workers) believe unions help to reduce racial discrimination. Similarly, 60 percent of all workers and 51 percent of Black workers believe unions improve the economic conditions of low-paid workers. Workers at the VA described unions as “protective anchors” against “racial harm,”⁴⁴ while one New Orleans Superdome interviewee argued unions bring a “better quality of life”⁴⁵ Figure 4 On the negative side, almost three-fifths of respondents (58 percent of all workers and 56 percent of Black workers) see unions as protecting incompetent workers. Forty percent of all workers and 36 percent of Black workers view unions as slowing down technological improvements. A Clark University interviewee argued these perceptions are “generational,” that older workers believe “unions are greedy” and “only gonna protect the lazy workers. . .that has been instilled from the beginning here in Georgia.”⁴⁶ Another interviewee argued it is part of a larger conservative narrative to demonize Black people, “It’s on, like, the same wave of, SNAP and other social services. . . they have to come hat in hand about things that just humanize you instead of it being something that is a right.”⁴⁷ Beliefs about the Effects of Unions The half of the sample (52 percent) not represented by a union believe that there would be many benefits from the unionization of their workplace. About three-quarters of unorganized workers expect that their pay (77 percent) and job security (72 percent) will improve with unionization (Figure 5). Seventy percent believe that their benefits would increase, and 68 percent believe their training and promotional opportunities would improve. About two-thirds think that their safety at work would improve (67 percent), and that they would have a greater voice in how things are done at work (65 percent). A newly organized Superdome interviewee described how before the union came in there were “unanswered requests, nepotism, and a do-as-I-say-and-don’t-ask-questions mentality.” After the union won there was a shift from “hostility” and “frustration” to “confidence, optimism and a fundamental reclamation of human dignity.”⁴⁸ Figure 5 Similarly, the workers represented by a union expect that losing union representation would worsen their work situation. Sixty-one percent predict that losing union representation would also mean losing job security (Figure 6). About two-fifths believe that their pay (43 percent), their voice at work (40 percent), their relationships with managers (38 percent), and their benefits (36 percent) would also worsen.  Figure 6 Organizing Campaign Experience Only 21 percent of all respondents, and 19 percent of Black respondents, reported having participated in an organizing campaign. Two-thirds of all campaigns were won by the union, which is consistent with the average win rate for NLRB elections during this period.⁴⁹  Workers who participated in organizing campaigns in their primary workplace reported that one-third of their employers remained neutral during the organizing campaign (Figure 7), while the majority experienced one or more aggressive anti-union tactics such as mandatory “captive audience” meetings, surveillance, interrogation, or discipline for union activity (all 27 percent). A Superdome interviewee described the employer’s aggressive tactics such as having “police call on us,” and “threaten[ing] workers to fire them,” warning that “greed and power are things that are not yielded willingly” and that “retaliation is a common, common practice.”⁵⁰ Similarly, a worker interviewed by Clark Atlanta described how prior to the campaign, their manager was “nice enough,’’ but once the campaign started “you start to see the ways that management can be very evil… it awakens another part of your humanity and empathy for your fellow comrades.”⁵¹ Figure 7 Half of the workers reported that the employer campaign made them a lot more likely (42 percent) or a little more likely (8 percent) to support the union campaign (Figure 8). A quarter reported that employer opposition had no impact. and 17 percent reported that it made them a lot less likely to support the union. Figure 8  

Challenges for HBCU Research

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) are grossly underfunded in comparison with predominantly White institutions. The Century Foundation found that at private institutions, the average HBCU endowment per student is one-seventh that of non-HBCU endowments.⁵² This translates to HBCUs providing less support for faculty research and lower salaries for professors.⁵³ The underfunding of HBCUs also likely leads to a higher rate of executive and faculty turnover.⁵⁴ The HBCU scholars conducting this study faced challenges due to the lack of research resources. One institution lacked an institutional review board (IRB), which provides an important ethical review needed for much scholarly research, while others experienced long delays because of IRB understaffing. Several of the institutions did not have access to the software for conducting the survey. All the scholars had multiple teaching, research, mentoring, and administrative obligations competing for their time. Many suffered from limited administrative and graduate student support. There was also turnover of institutional leadership and the departure of researchers from their institutions which disrupted the flow and progress of the work. An additional challenge is the growing problem of survey nonresponse. A decade ago, a report for the US Department of Health and Human Services stated, “the increase in [survey] nonresponse has been much greater in telephone surveys than in face-to-face surveys, which is consistent with the growing number of solicitations that households receive by telephone and the increasing use of answering machines and caller ID to screen calls.”⁵⁵ Over time and as researchers rely more on telephone and texts to save money, the nonresponse problem has only gotten worse. There has been a steady decline in survey response rates.⁵⁶ In the case of this study, because the period of the study coincided with a presidential election and the aftermath, respondents’ emailed surveys and follow-up texts often got lost in a sea of political fundraising emails. This is a serious problem for the most experienced and well-resourced researchers. One such researcher reported,

As the response rates decline, you have to work a lot harder — do a lot more calls or send out a lot more questionnaires and possibly offer incentives — just to get enough respondents. . . We’ve seen the response rates decline on major surveys — in some major federal surveys from 70% to 40% or less — over the last 20 years. The 2018 Survey of Medicaid in Ohio had a response rate of just 12%.⁵⁷

The problem is even worse for Black people likely because of socioeconomic disadvantage.⁵⁸ As a result of this growing problem, survey researchers have been struggling to adapt.⁵⁹ Because of these challenges, research involving HBCU researchers requires more resources, including sufficient funding to free up researchers from other obligations, equip researchers with needed technology and supplies, finance travel needs, and provide technical and research support. The community stakeholders interviewed in the qualitative study affirmed the “unique role” of HBCUs in addressing the challenges faced by Black workers and Black worker organizing in the South. As one said, “It is critical…this research is being done by HBCUs, we’re training the next generation of leaders… training for the liberation spaces is also really important.”⁶⁰

Policy Recommendations

The HBCUs made the following policy recommendations based on their interviews with workers, union representatives, and community stakeholders.

1. Strengthen collective bargaining and organizing rights at the federal, state, and local level. Give all workers more rights at work to voice their opinion and to have their free speech about their job. Repeal “right-to-work” laws and other barriers that prevent workers from joining unions.⁶¹
2. Prioritize the passage of fair scheduling and pay reporting legislation, including notice requirements and reporting pay for when shifts are changed or canceled.⁶²
3. Prioritize local, state, and federal anti-retaliation policies and just cause standards to protect workers more robustly from employer retaliation during organizing drives.⁶³
4.  Invest in continuous worker education for union members about their contracts and the broader purpose of unionism.⁶⁴
5. Prioritize intergenerational leadership development to mentor and train younger Black workers as organizers to ensure the long-term sustainability and vibrancy of the labor movement.⁶⁵
6. Strengthen and maintain strategic alliances with political officials, faith leaders, and other community organizations to leverage power and create a supportive ecosystem for labor organizing, and long-term workforce sustainability in the unique Southern context⁶⁶
7. Raise the minimum wage and advocate for living wage and fair procurement practices to ensure that full-time workers are not earning poverty wages.⁶⁷
8. Enact comprehensive paid family and medical leave so workers are no longer forced to choose between their health, their family, and their job.⁶⁸
9. Mandate enforceable worker-centered state and federal workplace health and safety standards, including heat protections and safe staffing legislation.⁶⁹
10. Increase public funding for education and social services including HBCU-led workforce development and labor education initiatives and integrate worker wellness into public health and social service programs.⁷⁰
11. Regulate artificial intelligence in the workplace to protect worker rights and privacy.⁷¹
12. Strengthen anti-discrimination laws and re-commit to diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace.⁷²
13. Facilitate and support future HBCU research on Black workers and Black worker organizing.⁷³

Conclusion

Black workers in the South face challenges similar to that of other workers, but more severe because of the Southern economic development model and because of anti-Black racism. They are overrepresented among the working poor because many Black workers receive low wages and insufficient work hours. The insufficient work hours often come with erratic, just-in-time scheduling that make it extremely difficult to plan one’s life outside of work. It is hard to organize childcare, for example, if one has no clear idea when one will be working and needing childcare. Schedule changes can also mean workhour reductions that reduce workers’ income.  Some Black workers are “lucky” in that they can work 50 hours a week or more to help them make ends meet. But this amount of work is another way that their work life steals from and interrupts their life outside of work. Many Black workers in this study report that they experience racial discrimination at work. The workers report that race can affect the discipline and assignments they receive, and that racism can limit their opportunities for upward mobility. The Black workers in this study see unionization as a means to address the many issues they experience in the workplace. They believe that unionization would improve their pay and benefits, opportunities for upward mobility, and reduce racial discrimination. They also believe that unions would help them make their workplaces safer and allow them to have a greater voice at work. The policy implications from this research are clear. Southern states should repeal so-called “right-to-work” laws which undermine unionization, and Southern states and the federal government should instead enact policies to increase the extremely low unionization rate in the South. Southern policymakers should also increase their minimum wages and pass fair scheduling laws to prevent workers’ jobs from disrupting their life outside of the workplace. The well-being of Black workers in the South can be effectively monitored and aided by a strong HBCU infrastructure. Policymakers should work to adequately fund these institutions that are so important to the development of the Black Southern workforce. If policymakers follow the recommendations in this report, there will be significant economic improvements in the lives of Black Southerners, who compose a major segment of Black America and who compose a major segment of the South. These policies would contribute to the economic development not just of Black America, but of the South. The economic development of the South will improve economic outcomes for the entire country.