Black America is in an economic recession.

Despite headlines that celebrate a strong, expanding national economy, the stock market tells us nothing about how working people are actually doing. Black workers especially are facing a harsher reality: unemployment rates that consistently hover far above every other racial group, overrepresentation in low-paying and high-turnover jobs, and policy changes that threaten workforce protections and erode hard-won economic gains. The latest research “on racial equality shows clear signs of a recession among Black Americans”; history tells us that “Black people, particularly Black women, are among the [hardest hit during] economic recessions.”

As the current administration slashes federal jobs, which are dominated by Black workers, and Black unemployment climbs, we are seeing conditions in Black America that mirror the height of the pandemic in 2021. When traditional employment routes tighten, Black workers are forced to look elsewhere for work — often in temporary (“temp”) and gig work.

Every day across Pennsylvania, more than half a million workers show up for temp jobs that pay poverty wages and offer no benefits, zero job security, and no clear path forward for career growth.

In Philadelphia, this recession is acute. In our convention centers, hospitals, and warehouses, these workers — who are predominantly Black — are doing the same jobs as permanent staff, with the same skills and responsibilities, but for approximately $6 to $10 less per hour and with none of the stability. What’s known as the “temp trap” is the latest iteration of an American economy that has always exploited Black labor for profit. From slavery to industrial exploitation to today’s gig economy, the systems have changed in name but not nature.

Although Philadelphia’s past and present are fraught with discrimination, displacement, and persistent disparities, our story is also one of resistance, mutual aid, and power-building. In fact, the city is steeped in the legacy of the Black cultural and organizing tradition.

The recurrent racial recession … won’t end until Black workers possess the organized power to change it.

Fighting from our roots: organizing for black worker power as inheritance

Black labor organizers have always understood that worker power — for all — requires confronting racism head-on. In the early 1900s, Ben Fletcher led Local 8 of the Industrial Workers of the World’s (IWW) Marine Transport Workers industrial union in Philadelphia, establishing a desegregated union with a strong organizing program despite the virulent racism, anti-unionism and anti-immigrant politics of the era. A. Philip Randolph called him “the most prominent Negro labor leader in America.”

Fletcher organized Black workers alongside immigrant and white workers to fight for higher pay and better working conditions. He also resisted an entire economic system that thrived on racism and xenophobia, knowing those injustices would always stand in the way of true freedom for everyone. Just as Fletcher and his generation confronted structural racism, organizing in shipyards and steel mills, today’s Black temp workers are ready to transform the systems and economies that keep us all powerless.

The recurrent racial recession ends with redistributed economic power

The economic recession hitting temp workers isn’t abstract. It’s the nearly 600,000 Pennsylvanians who work these jobs and can’t afford rent. It’s families choosing between groceries and medical care. It’s an entire class of workers taking on essential jobs — loading trucks, stocking shelves, serving food, cleaning sports facilities — stuck in permanent economic insecurity.

The temp staffing industry has created a second-tier economy where Black workers are concentrated at the bottom: no protections, no advancement, no power. This is the recurrent racial recession. And it won’t end until Black workers possess the organized power to change it.

Unequal laws, systems, institutions, and cultural norms — and their architects — have always worked to constrain Black economic and political power. At the same time, our city was meant to represent the “cradle of liberty” in the U.S., symbolism that never rang true for Black Philadelphians, who have endured centuries of economic exploitation, exclusion, and engineered insecurity. Black workers in this city are owed more.

The Philly Black Worker Project builds power alongside Black workers in the city to win economic justice in Philadelphia. As the recession slashes jobs for Black and low-paid workers, many turn to the temp and gig economies just as they did during the pandemic. But these unregulated industries trap workers in cycles of wage theft, health and safety violations, and labor abuses. To fight back and end the recession for Black workers, we must organize and raise the floor in the temp industry.

We stand on the shoulders of Black organizers, like the Washerwomen of 1881, who understood the power of Black women workers, organized en masse, and transformed working conditions throughout the region. We’ve learned from the city’s profound, centuries-long lineage of Black activists who knew that worker leadership is non-negotiable in a healthy economy, including Ben Fletcher, who fought and won through multiracial solidarity.

Today, we fight to transform extractive industries of marginalized workers like the temporary staffing sector into ones that prioritize workers’ lives and livelihoods over profits. We can’t wait for national policy to save us, so we’re building power locally.

From Cecil B. Moore and Roxanne Jones to James Forten and Ben Fletcher, the spirit of our fight for worker power today is an inheritance from the generations of Black freedom fighters in Philadelphia who refused to accept what little we’ve always been given.

Through the All Due Respect campaign, we’re organizing Black workers across industries, bringing temp workers together from hotels, classrooms, and production lines to share experiences and build collective strength. We’re enforcing labor laws strategically, ensuring existing protections actually work for Black workers and don’t just exist on paper, while pursuing new enforcement mechanisms through community oversight.

More broadly, we’re practicing mutual aid, just as Black communities have from the days of enslavement through Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era to today; providing direct financial support for workers facing crisis, instability, or retaliation and sharing various resources throughout the year. And we’re building coalitions, uniting in solidarity with immigrants, justice-impacted Philadelphians, labor unions, faith leaders, and other social justice advocates.

The standard Philly can set: reclaiming our place as the “city of hope”

Philadelphia has a place in the fight for Black liberation. This fight, however, must be driven by Black workers. From Cecil B. Moore and Roxanne Jones to James Forten and Ben Fletcher, the spirit of our fight for worker power today is an inheritance from the generations of Black freedom fighters in Philadelphia who refused to accept what little we’ve always been given — endlessly resisting oppression and reimagining freedom.

We are raising the economic floor in our city and proving that Philadelphia can have an economy where Black workers have real power, especially and intentionally for those in temp work who have been invisibilized. We’ll set the standard: that all workers deserve dignity and respect, not just jobs; that we’re owed more than survival; that we want a future, not just a paycheck.

We’ll reclaim Philadelphia’s labor legacy, proving that a city built on Black exploitation can become a place that centers collective liberation. This Black History Month, we recognize that our struggles today were inherited from the past — and so too is our unwavering commitment to the struggle for equality and freedom.

Philadelphians fight from our roots. And those roots run deep.

Brittany Alston is the founder and executive director of The Philly Black Worker Project. Kendra Bozarth is a writer, editor, and storyteller building narrative power for grassroots movements.

The Citizen welcomes guest commentary from community members who represent that it is their own work and their own opinion based on true facts that they know firsthand.

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