Some athletes resumed game play only after having talks with league officials over ways to support the push for policing reforms and to honor victims of police and vigilante violence. Basketball, baseball and tennis league games had to be postponed. Now, in the wake of the August shooting of Jacob Blake, who was critically wounded by a white police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the union leaders say they are following the lead of professional athletes who last week staged walkouts over the shooting. In July, organized labor staged a daylong strike with workers from the service industry, fast-food chains and the gig economy to call out the lack of coronavirus pandemic protections for essential workers, who are disproportionately Black and Hispanic.

The death of Floyd in Minneapolis set off an unprecedented surge of protests and unrest from coast to coast this summer.

The broader labor movement has been vocal since the May 25 killing of George Floyd, a handcuffed Black man who died after a white police officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for nearly eight minutes during an arrest over counterfeit money. It was signed by several branches of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the Service Employees International Union, and affiliates of the National Education Association. “The status quo - of police killing Black people, of armed white nationalists killing demonstrators, of millions sick and increasingly desperate - is clearly unjust, and it cannot continue,” the statement says. They said the walkouts, if they were to move forward with them, would last for as long as needed.

In a statement first shared with The Associated Press, labor leaders who represent teachers, autoworkers, truck drivers and clerical staff, among others, signaled a willingness Friday to escalate protest tactics to force local and federal lawmakers to take action on policing reform and systemic racism. NEW YORK (AP) - Ahead of Labor Day, unions representing millions across several working-class sectors are threatening to authorize work stoppages in support of the Black Lives Matter movement amid calls for concrete measures that address racial injustice. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated. This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated.

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