About a decade ago, Richard Trumka, then president of the AFL-CIO, told a crowd gathered at Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles that ​“the theme of this event is mass employment, not mass incarceration.”

A year earlier, the AFL-CIO had committed to addressing mass incarceration as a labor issue. In his speech at the jobs and reentry organization, where he was introduced by labor leader María Elena Durazo, Trumka described why: ​“When some people are forced to work for close to nothing, all workers’ living standards are pushed down.”

Then, Trumka repeated the refrain ​“it’s a labor issue because,” followed by explanations about mass incarceration’s impact on families, communities, the economy and voting, among others, until finally: ​“because labor rights and social justice and civil rights are intertwined.”

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