Will Groups Treat Workers ‘Morally’?

If you’re looking for a job this summer and you consider yourself something of a community organizer, you may be interested in the latest job posting by the North Carolina NAACP. The NAACP is looking to hire 50 community organizers to work in pairs this summer for 12 weeks. In the job listing, the NAACP explains that these individuals will be “highly-trained paid Moral Freedom organizers” and will work in local communities across the state to deepen and strengthen the Forward Together Moral Movement.”

An announcement like this one should be welcomed by many “moral minded” citizens who need work this summer. They should be very good paying jobs too, seeing that the NC NAACP is a proponent of increasing the minimum wage, to at least $10.10 by 2015. Knowing this, we would assume that they will be paying more than $7.25 per hour that is the current minimum wage. Also, according to their 14 Point People’s Agenda for North Carolina, the NC NAACP would also want to “ensure that all workers have access to workplace benefits such as paid sick days.” And, seeing that expanding unemployment benefits was a major part of the NC NAACP demonstrations last year, will the organizers be eligible for unemployment pay at the end of their term? Will the NAACP apply their “moral” standards for workers to their own employees?

Worrisome, is a job listing for Moral Freedom Summer Organizers on the Equality NC (ENC) website – ENC is an advocacy organization for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender North Carolinians and their posting looks like an extension of the NC NAACP job posting, but focuses on the Charlotte area.

ENC’s post reads just a little differently than the NAACP’s. Their applicants would need a bachelor’s degree or experience equivalent for the position and the ENC is more specific as to relaying to the applicant that the nature of the position is a contract. As we all know, contractors don’t usually receive sick pay, overtime, workers compensation, if they’re injured and usually aren’t paid by the hour. Many times with jobs like these, the worker ends up with the short end of the stick – often earning much less than minimum wage. After all, the NAACP’s job posting cautions the applicant, “Organizers can expect irregular hours due to the nature of community organizing.”

It’s important for applicants to know that the job will end on Aug. 2, just in time for the organizer to head back to school or perhaps the timing is perfect for a few left-leaning political campaigns looking for a well-trained, experienced and well-networked community organizer to hit the ground running in a well timed get-out-the-vote program. After all, both job notices focused on voter registration efforts. ENC actually called them “intensive voter registration efforts” and one of their listed responsibilities was to “meet voter registration goals.” The NC NAACP job announcement went even further. The organizer’s listed responsibilities included, will work with “partner organizations to carry out a voter empowerment plan, including coordinating volunteer teams to engage in intensive, long-term, issue-based voter registration drives, attend and document county Board of Election debates,  and monitor election changes.”

So what exactly do we have here? A genuine volunteer grassroots effort, or a well-financed campaign training program? Of course, it’s a poorly disguised campaign training program.

And who’s paying for the training? You can bet the political campaigns aren’t paying. It’s impossible to know where the NC NAACP gets its funding since the state group doesn’t report separately from the national organization, so we can reasonably presume that the funding is coming from the national labor unions and the usual ultra-liberal groups that move from state to state looking for a toehold. But, we can’t forget the homegrown money either. Anywhere you see the progressive Left you will find Z. Smith Reynolds funding. After all they are the mother ship of all progressive groups in North Carolina.

We’ll be looking at many other aspects of this story in the near future.