The South is the largest and fastest growing region in the US. It is tremendously diverse in both those who call it home and in the places that make it up. The South is home to many of the nation’s boom cities, like Nashville and Houston, and has become a hub for manufacturing, among other industries. Automakers and green energy firms have invested heavily in operations in the region in recent years.  

State and local policymakers like to point to their communities’ friendliness towards business investment, touting cheap land, ready labor, and lucrative subsidies gussied up as tax breaks.

It’s difficult to label the results for workers and state economies an unalloyed success. 

Nine of the 15 states with the lowest GDP per worker are in the South, and whatever prosperity has been created hasn’t been shared equally, even in star cities. Racial disparities remain. Job growth hasn’t kept up with population growth for more than two decades, putting people in a squeeze when hunting for employment, and calling into question the wisdom of work requirements for public assistance programs like Medicaid. The labor force participation rate in the South is the lowest in the nation, and in most states, the minimum wage is stuck at $7.25 an hour.

Improving job quality in America requires raising the floor where it is lowest. This month’s Resource Roundup focuses on what that looks like in the South and the challenges faced by working people there. The Economic Policy Institute recently released a new report, showing how community benefits agreements can ensure that workers share in economic development investments. And in the Oxford American, learn about the economic history of one South Carolina city through the story of the author’s family. Finally, union leader and EOP Job Quality Fellow Ben Wilkins discusses innovative efforts to organize service workers in the South, in an article for New Labor Forum.

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Economic Policy Institute

Community benefits agreements can turn Southern manufacturing investments into good jobs and shared prosperity

Too often, the needs of workers take a backseat in economic development. Community benefits agreements (CBAs) offer a mechanism for fostering economic inclusion, especially when state and local government won’t — or can’t — step up.

Coalitions made up of residents, advocacy and labor groups, and community organizations, like churches, can use points of leverage to secure a range of commitments from companies, writes the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). These commitments could include local hire requirements or wage standards, for instance. A notable CBA with New Flyer, a bus manufacturer in Alabama, resulted in the company agreeing to union neutrality. Workers at the plant later successfully organized and ratified a contract. 

Read the report on the promise of CBAs here, authored by EPI’s Sebastian Martinez Hickey, Jennifer Sherer, and Emma Cohn.

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Oxford American

The Legacy of Rock Hill, SC’s Bleachery 

Manufacturing isn’t new to the South. Long before today’s auto and aircraft assembly plants, industries like textile and furniture manufacturing took advantage of the region’s cheap labor, hostility to organized labor, and proximity to natural resources.

Rock Hill, South Carolina, positioned itself in the early twentieth century as a modern city in a “new,” industrial South. But beneath the veneer, an old order remained, writes University of Mississippi professor Darren Grem. 

At plants like the textile finishing facility where Grem’s grandfather worked, white workers held the better jobs and black workers got the worse ones, despite substantial unionization. By the time the Civil Rights Movement and antidiscrimination lawsuits brought greater fairness to the plant, Rock Hill’s industrial era was coming to an end. 

Read Grem’s full essay in the Oxford American

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By a JQF Fellow

New Labor Forum

The Long Road to Recognition: Southern Service Workers Find Their Power

In the South, drives to organize workers have historically been stymied by anti-worker policy and the weaponization of racial divisions. The Union of Southern Service Workers (USSW) is showing a new path forward for contemporary labor organizing, one which takes into account the lessons of history. 

USSW recognizes that workers in the South often are not familiar with the right to organize, and that service workers face significant barriers to solidarity, like high turnover rates at worksites.  

USSW’s approach is therefore one of building solidarity between workers across the service sector, rather than solely at individual worksites, writes Job Quality Fellow Ben Wilkins, who leads the organization. The union also works to build alliances with local organizations and is active in supporting advocacy on community issues beyond the workplace. 

Learn about how USSW supports worker solidarity in the South in Wilkins’ article for New Labor Forum.