Burnout nearly took Erica Iheme out of the labor movement twice. “Our organizing culture excludes the most impacted,” Iheme said on the July 7 episode of Black Work Talk. In her work with Jobs To Move America, she’s about changing that to allow people to bring their full selves to the work—and practice an organizing model that brings community partners to the table instead of just going to them with “asks.” She’s based in Alabama, and put that model to the test in building community support for the workers organizing at the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer. The faith/labor/community blitz she helped organize gave hundreds of local people an in-depth understanding of why the union drive was important. “It was part of a 10 – 15-year campaign to make union organizing commonplace and successful across the South,” she told BWT co-hosts Steven Pitts and Sheri Davis.
Episode Guests
Erica Iheme is based in Birmingham, AL and works as deputy director of Jobs to Move America, an organization dedicated to ensuring that government uses the power of public funds to create a just, clean, and worker-centered economy. She has 17 years’ experience building unions as an organizer all over America in several industries including hospitals, public sector, early childhood education, higher education, and homecare. Outside of organizing and research, Erica is a wife, mother, artist, and community builder. She earned a BA and an MA in Urban Planning from Alabama A&M, a Historically Black University in Normal, Alabama.