The Fractious Relationship between Social Work and the Labor Movement: What Historical Research Tells Us about Current Developments

During the U.S. Progressive Era, social work emerged and labor rights expanded. Jane Addams wrote on the need to support labor rights, including trade unions engaged in organizing during this time. Social work pioneers were involved in labor initiatives including Sophonisba Breckinridge, Women’s Trade Union League; Julia Lathrop, American Association for Labor Legislation; Grace Abbott, Child Labor Division of the U.S. Children’s Bureau; and Francis Perkins, worker safety and eventually Secretary of Labor (Hyde, 2022). From the 1920s through the 1940s, a radical trade union organizing effort among social workers arose from the work of Progressive Era labor activists and allies. Known as the “rank and file� movement, this mobilization effort drew attention to the economic crisis of that time, with social workers (re)discovering the financial and political roots of the Depression (Spano, 1982).

In the Reconstruction Era and Black Power Movement, Black communities led efforts to combat labor exploitation and exclusion, predating the social work profession's recognition or responding to a profession ignoring their needs. Black freedmen in the Freedman's Bureau were pivotal during Reconstruction, securing job placements for Blacks and fighting against labor exploitation and employment discrimination in pursuit of employment equality (Oubre, 2012; Du Bois, 1935). Black freedwomen advocated for the right to control their labor conditions, challenging post-emancipation attempts to dominate Black female labor (Farmer-Kaiser, 2010). Later, the Black Panther Party prioritized equal labor and employment in their Ten-Point Program (Hilliard, 2008; Newton, 2009). The Panthers also demanded that the federal government either provide jobs for Blacks or let Black communities control production to ensure full employment and improve living standards (Bloom & Martin, 2013). These principles inform many contemporary labor initiatives involving Black and Brown communities.

Despite this rich history, the social work-labor relationship largely is overlooked. Further, social workers remain reluctant to embrace unionization for themselves, even when current working conditions suggest labor organizing as a needed remedy. Economic analyses by social workers, crucial for understanding client conditions and rooted in labor praxis, typically are pre-empted by mental health or surveillance-based interventions. Social work’s prioritization of “professionalism� and “professional development� often is viewed as contradictory to labor union involvement or support.

This roundtable will (1) convey key historical moments when social workers supported or engaged in labor issues and union organizing; (2) assess why this legacy is marginalized in social work scholarship and practice; (3) examine racial, gender, and class schisms that impacted historical and current social work – labor alliances; (4) discuss why the social work-labor alliance is critical to addressing current economic hardships experienced by practitioners and clients/constituent groups. Presenters will share scholarship on social work - labor movement initiatives in the Progressive Era, among Black activists, within the Rank & File movement, and by a contemporary AfroBoricua (Black Puerto Rican) labor organizer. Collectively, we will critically assess historical and current relationships between social work and labor, attending to how racism, sexism, and classism within social work shaped this relationship, and delineate a research agenda on the social work – labor alliance.