After decades of underinvestment, the U.S. South is seeing a surge in philanthropic support. According to a report by the National Center for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP), between 2011 and 2015, foundations across the U.S. invested only 56 cents per person in the South for every dollar spent per person nationally. For structural change work, that number was even lower, at 30 cents per person.
Grantmakers for Southern Progress, however, found that over the past nine years, there has been a growth in the number of regional and national foundations that are investing in the South. In addition to this increase in both public — largely through COVID-related relief — and private funding, industry and manufacturing is booming. This progress, however, has not extended to workers in the South.
The latest numbers for the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found that in 2021, the number of wage and salary workers belonging to unions has continued to decline, with South Carolina having the lowest union membership rate at 1.7%. A recent report by Bloomberg Law found that in July, real wages in Southern states fell by more than 4% on average — twice as fast as those in New England. This, combined with the lower rates of union members and a lack of formal worker support — has resulted in a system in which workers wield very little power.
A new philanthropic fund is looking to change that. Launched in 2011, the Labor Innovations for the 21st Century (LIFT) Fund began as a collaboration between labor and philanthropy to support worker centers and local labor unions in order to build power and advance policymaking efforts. Now, the LIFT Fund has launched a new initiative: the Southern Workers Opportunity (SWO) Fund.
Backed by major philanthropic and labor organizations, including the Ford Foundation, James Irvine Foundation, Open Society Foundations, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Surdna Foundation, AFL-CIO and SEIU, the SWO fund will invest in ecosystems that will increase worker power, improve the economic livelihoods and social conditions for workers in the South, and help build a democratic economy that fully values workers as people first.
“We know that there’s been a disinvestment in the South, and there’s been an unprecedented amount of federal government recovery funds that have been going to low-wage workers,” said Jennifer Epps, executive director of the LIFT Fund. “We believe this has led to an opportunity to really figure out how you gain economic prosperity not just for the few, but particularly for Black and brown workers who have been left out of opportunities.”
The fund’s goal is to raise $20 million. Among other supporters, the Ford Foundation is investing $7 million in multiyear grants that will range between three and four years. Both AFL-CIO and SEIU will each contribute $1 million to the fund. Open calls for grantees have begun, and grants will be awarded later in the fall.
A voice in the workplace
In recent years, a number of manufacturing companies have moved their operations to the South. Last year, for example, Toyota announced it will open a new $1.29 billion battery manufacturing plant in North Carolina. Working conditions, however, remain inadequate, particularly for women, people of color, and low-income households, according to labor leaders.
“What’s happening now is that we see a lot of companies and industry going into the South because they know that… workers rights have been undermined so much that they’re able to pay folks low wages that they wouldn’t be able to do in other places,” said Alphonso Mayfield, president of SEIU Florida Public Services Union.
Christian Sweeney, LIFT Fund co-chair and deputy organizing director at AFL-CIO said, “In our country in general, the labor laws and all employment laws have really shifted to favor employers, and so our strategy is to build power to get employers to do the right thing by helping to support campaigns and organizations that support workers’ rights.”
The Southern Workers Opportunity Fund will rely on dual strategies to advance its work. First, the fund is focusing on ensuring there is a coordinated effort among those who are dealing with workers, including community organizations, faith organizations, labor unions, and others.
This is particularly important because, as NCRP’s report points out, one of the most significant barriers in southern grantmaking is a lack of trust both by grassroots leaders and foundation staff and trustees. SWO’s organizers want everyone who interacts with workers to be supported and part of a connected ecosystem so that, according to Epps, everyone “has been given the space and time to really plan and strategize on how they can work together to really make the changes that we know need to happen and that have been slow to happen in the South.”
SWO’s second strategy is to invest in metro areas in the South, including places like Jackson, Mississippi, and Birmingham, Alabama. These are cities that already have a number of community organizations, worker centers, and workers who are striving to do better, but that don’t necessarily have the funding to take full advantage of these opportunities compared to other regions.
“Our analysis is that one of the things that’s different about the South compared to other regions is that in other regions, there’s a whole ecosystem of organizations that support workers rights,” said Sweeney. “There are worker centers, there are NGOs, there are clergy groups that help workers to get the power that they need to assert their rights.”
Ford’s funding will all be general operating support to ensure that organizations have the flexibility to do what they think is needed and to cover core operations, while at the same time, being able to respond to the changing needs on the ground.
“We think that the best way to approach this is to ensure that workers — all workers — that are being left out of all these opportunities can make sure that their voices are being heard,” said Jose Garcia, co-chair of the LIFT Fund and director of the Future of Work(ers) program at the Ford Foundation. “I think it’s really necessary for this to happen in this particular moment in history.”
A legacy of oppression
It isn’t difficult to pinpoint why workers in the South struggle more than in other regions. “We know the history of the South, and we know the history of racism. We know the history of slavery. We know the history of Jim Crow in the South,” Epps said.
Mayfield added that structural racism has been baked into laws and legal structures, and workers in the South were left out of the National Labor Relations Act. Mayfield also pointed out the barriers that were put in place to keep Black workers and white workers separate, while also giving more power to employers over the rights of workers. “After decades and decades and generations of that, there are a lot of systems of oppression that have been built to try to keep workers from having power,” he said.
During the New Deal era, for example, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which included laws that guaranteed minimum wages and overtime pay, deliberately excluded domestic workers, the majority of whom were Black women.
LIFT Fund’s Sweeney added, “The legacy of slavery has meant that the South has been underdeveloped for workers in terms of workers rights [and] workers wages. That goes all the way back to slavery. It continued during Jim Crow and, to some extent, continues today. You’ve got a region where the economy was structured to keep wages low, and to keep workers disempowered.… That legacy, unfortunately, continues to this day.”
“As the South goes, the rest of the country goes”
It is crucial to remember that the South is not separate from the rest of the nation, and what happens there affects the whole country. Improving workers’ rights in the South will not only benefit the region, but will impact the U.S. as a whole.
“As the South goes, the rest of the country goes,” Mayfield said. “If we can figure out how to empower workers, then we can figure out a strategic beachhead that gives them the ability to earn a living wage and have agency over their lives and careers through organization and through themselves individually, then that helps the rest of the country.”
NCRP’s report supports this sentiment, adding that the South is and often has been a “proving ground” for some of the most regressive public policies and rhetoric in the nation. Lack of investment in southern structural change work not only affects workers in the South, it puts marginalized people across the country in harm’s way. NCRP noted as an example that wages for working families in the Midwest are too low because of anti-labor legislation that has been exported from Southern states.
At the same time, the South has also been a hotbed for social change. It was the South that birthed the Civil Rights Movement, and it’s in the South where workers rights, which have been eroded throughout the country in recent years, can begin to advance. There is a great deal of innovation and activity from workers and communities, Garcia said, and called on philanthropy to join other funders increasing resources in the South.
“For many, many years, there has not been a lot of investment in organizing the South. It’s not been a really consolidated investment,” Mayfield said. “So the fact that LIFT is actually looking to lean in here and help to develop a cooperative relationship between both community and labor to be able to grow power for workers is unbelievably important.”