Hundreds of low-wage workers from across the South gathered in Greensboro, North Carolina, on Feb. 1 for a “worker power” summit. The event was held on the first day of Black History Month and the 65th anniversary of the historic sit-in that occurred just a few miles away on Elm Street, where four Black North Carolina A&T students sat at a Woolworth’s counter and changed the course of history.

Time and time again, the South has shown the world that it is nothing to play with, and in North Carolina, history is still being made. 

The state has become a stronghold for the Union of Southern Service Workers (USSW), a first-of-its-kind cross-sector union offering membership to fast food, retail, warehouse, care, and other service industry workers in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama. In a region of the country where historically racist right-to-work laws and preemption laws silence low-wage service workers and keep them unprotected and mired in poverty, it is no easy feat to organize a multiracial, multigenerational labor movement. Yet, the movement continues to gain steam, organizing strikes; sounding the alarm on wage theft committed by chains like Waffle House; supporting Garner, North Carolina, Amazon workers in their effort to organize the first unionized warehouse in the South; and broadly fighting for fair wages and safe workplaces. After an onslaught of racist, xenophobic, and downright deadly executive orders from the Trump administration, USSW’s summit felt like the most hopeful place in the country.

Inside Greensboro’s Meridian Convention Center, workers shared how they were gaining traction or otherwise winning fights against multinational corporations and billionaires. Despite harassment and intimidation from Amazon, a North Carolina employee voting in the union election later this month told summit attendees that the corporation “didn’t have a chance” against his union because it was organized by “a preacher who fights demons and a 70-year-old woman who fought cancer.” 

Unlike previous years, partner organizations attended the summit, and migrant workers in the crosshairs of anti-immigrant and anti-worker laws took center stage. Included were farm workers fighting wage theft and unlawful terminations with North Carolina’s worker-led organization El Futuro Es Nuestro and construction workers demanding heat protections and fair wages with Florida’s member-led organization WeCount. A Wendy’s worker and member of California’s first-in-the-nation fast food council detailed how she and her immigrant co-workers successfully organized to close a Wendy’s in Oakland where they experienced violence and sexual harassment. A WeCount member from Honduras received a standing ovation when he stood on stage and told the crowd of hundreds of workers, “Without my hands and your hands, nothing gets built in this country.”

USSW is a powerful example of what can happen when workers are given the tools, training, and confidence to organize their workplaces against all odds.

This was made clear during the height of the pandemic, when countless USSW gig and service workers had no choice but to work unprotected, risking their lives for poverty wages. In the following years, there’s been a resurgence in collective action among workers, though low-wage workers’ circumstances remain largely the same. Righteous anger is a radicalizing force that can fuel movements, especially when paired with political education and opportunities to build solidarity across age, race, industries, and other factors often exploited by employers to keep workers siloed. USSW is a powerful example of what can happen when workers are given the tools, training, and confidence to organize their workplaces against all odds. 

Despite the surge in union activity over the past few years, U.S. union membership rates are at a record low. North and South Carolina have the lowest membership rates in the nation, along with the unique distinction of being the worst states for workers. According to Jermaine Evans, this is all by design. 

The gig worker from South Carolina explained during the summit that because of right-to-work laws, many in the South believe that unions are illegal or a “northern thing.” In the 1940s, southern states began enacting right-to-work laws that made it illegal for union membership to be a condition of being hired and prohibited the collection of union dues from non-union workers. These laws are rooted in Jim Crow and continue to disproportionately impact Black people in the South, home to the highest share of the country’s Black population and a region routinely ranked as pro-business and anti-worker. 

For Black USSW members like Evans, who make up a majority of the union’s membership, there is no untangling racism from anti-worker laws. During the summit, Evans explained that he came to this realization while incarcerated. 

Upon entering prison in 1999, Evans was a teenager who’d never had a job. When a furniture company from South Africa partnered with his prison to offer work to men inside, Evans jumped at the chance. His first paycheck had “deductions on top of deductions,” including for his prison “room and board” and “savings” that the company said would be paid upon his release. Still, Evans said he was grateful for the chance to earn money and help provide for his family. But over time—and as he did a lot of reading about workers’ rights—he realized he was being exploited. The furniture company left South Africa after apartheid ended, setting its sights on cheap, exploitable prison labor in the American South.

“The way they exploit you is through ignorance,” Evans said, later noting that the $5,000 in “savings” the company took from his paychecks was ultimately paid to probation upon his release from prison in 2010.

Low-wage workers are up against powerful forces, especially now that the Trump administration is back in the White House. In just a few short weeks, the new administration has destabilized the country, rolling out large-scale immigration raids, beginning a tariff war, implementing a chaotic federal funding freeze that for a time blocked states from accessing Medicaid reimbursement portals, and gutting federal workforces—a move that will impact vital services for vulnerable people. While workers’ chants of “si se puede” and “when we fight, we win” filled the air in Greensboro, the uncertainty and danger posed by the Trump administration hung over the summit like a dark cloud. 

Mama Cookie, a home health care and fast food worker in Durham, North Carolina, has, in many ways, become the face of USSW. She told the crowd that under the Trump administration, “We are all going to suffer.” Before detailing how California fast food workers won their fight for a $20 minimum wage, Fast Food Council member and Jack in the Box worker Anniesha Williams said a prayer, asking for protection from the Trump administration. As a descendant of the enslaved, Williams said her strength to endure and fight for her rights comes from her ancestors. 

As one USSW member said: To organize in the South is to organize in the belly of the beast. While many across the U.S. are currently overcome by fear and overwhelmed into inaction, USSW’s low-wage workers don’t have the privilege. The stakes are too high, and many who spoke out at the summit are already navigating nightmare conditions, facing eviction with their children or choosing between heart medication and housing. For them, the only way out is through. 

Toward the end of the worker speak-out, David Williams, a Dollar General worker and member of the economic justice organization Step Up Louisiana, implored workers to continue speaking out against injustice—no matter the cost. 

“You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t believe things could change,” Williams said, urging everyone to believe that another world is possible. We just have to be willing to fight for it. 

Editorial Team:
Lara Witt, Lead Editor
Carolyn Copeland, Top Editor
Rashmee Kumar, Copy Editor