New Trends in Organizing Women Workers: Women in the Work Force

Thanks can everyone hear me okay that better does that make any difference okay I'll just project before can you hear me now okay my name is John said my name is Camille call Tosti and I work for an organization called Labor notes which is based in Detroit and it's a it's really an educational center for trade union activists we provide information and education to unionists across the country and one of the main things we do is we publish this newsletter and this is available for you tonight you can get a free copy from the table and I think some have been passed out this comes out once a month and it covers different labor issues around the country then we also published some books and do training sessions and weekend schools and things like that for trade union activists so if anyone has any more questions about labor notes and what kinds of things we do feel free to ask me those during the question and answer part tonight I'm going to really talk about women workers and I'd like to begin with this whole idea of the year of the woman many media analysts are dubbing 1992 the year of the woman more when more women are running for public office than ever before 105 women are running for the US House of Representatives and 11 are running for Senate and so-called women's issues are at the top of the political agenda that is issues like the environment education daycare parental leave health care abortion rights all the things that have traditionally been for the women's area of expertise and survey show that women candidates have as a group more liberal policies on these questions than do most male politicians still we've heard the talk of the year of the woman before the press called 1980 a breakthrough year for women in politics but in the end only two additional women were elected to the House of Representatives and none to the Senate and to have representative members of women and people of color in the government we still need far more than the five new women in the Senate and 20 in the House who are expected to win this year even multiplying the number of women in the Senate by five that is increasing the numbers from two to ten would leave that institution 90% male nevertheless I think that there are changes taking place right now that women should feel really good about and many of these changes have occurred within the past year or so following Anita Hills courageous testimony regarding Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and in case you can't tell from that statement I very much believed Anita Hill and if you want to ask me any questions about that feel free to do that again in the question and answer part I believe that her testimony did more to raise consciousness on the issue of sexual harassment and I'm the issues of women's economic and political position than probably any other single event in the past ten years this hearing in front of an all-male Committee which was grossly unsympathetic to the treatment she experienced graphically communicated a key underpinning of sexual harassment the imbalance of economic and political power between men and women in our society women were really energized by her testimony because they were very angry at the way Hill was treated linier Co a Democrat from Pennsylvania decided to take on Republican Arlen Specter one of the senators who was most vocal in his refusal to believe Hill likewise a woman from Chicago named Carol Moseley Braun was propelled into the Senate race as a result of Hills treatment interestingly a US News & World Report poll published in April of 1992 showed that a stunning 61% of those surveyed thought that the country would be governed better if more women held political office in 1984 only 28% of those polled held that view this year has also seen other changes that perhaps even more than electing individual candidates will help the majority of women improve their lives one example is a new law that was passed in the state of Maine Maine has passed landmark legislation to prevent sexual harassment this law which is really the first of its kind requires all employers who have six employees or more to conduct training to prevent harassment at work that is you have more than six employees you have to train everyone in the workplace on how to prevent sexual harassment Connecticut Maine Rhode Island Vermont Wisconsin and the District of Columbia I'll put in place family leave policies very similar to the federal legislation that President Bush recently vetoed legislation that allows parents and usually mothers six weeks of unpaid leave to care for a newborn or an ill family member I should add that this this notion of six weeks of unpaid leave is very very conservative on an international level most countries offer much more than this in Sweden for example you can have six months and much of that is paid a recent poll conducted by the MS foundation for women in New York found not surprisingly that the economy and jobs are the greatest worry among most American women a majority of the 1,400 women surveyed 51 percent reported that they have fallen behind during the last year by even larger majorities 78% favored the passage of equal pay laws that is laws that would require equal wages for work of comparable value comparable worth laws 74% of those surveyed want laws passed to end discrimination in employment and promotion and 69 percent support a law requiring employers to have a family leave policy Marie Wilson the president of the MS foundation explains the survey findings this way she says we found that women of this country while they are worried about economic security are firmly anchored in their roles in the workforce and family they are also United across race and class and their desire for government to live up to its responsibilities to help them function well in both roles by 1995 more than two-thirds of preschoolers and over three-quarters of school-aged children will have working mothers yet only 4,600 companies out of 6 million US firms provide childcare assistance and much of this is minimal its referral and information services or lunchtime childcare seminars only 850 employers in this whole country provide on-site or near site childcare this ms survey was the most comprehensive study of the attitudes and needs of American women ever undertaken while the voices of different women strike slightly different notes they are generally in agreement on a broad set of policies to improve women's lives more than anything the poll found that women want to hear about policies that will improve their economic well-being and women are ready to organize and to vote for these goals not surprisingly women who are more economically secure with higher incomes and more education tend to be most concerned about combining work and family less economically secure women are more worried about just making ends meet in many ways the survey results are predictable in addition to guaranteed health care pay equity flexible working schedules and family leave policies a majority of the women surveyed see increased job training and opportunity domestic violence and rape prevention and increased availability of and financial assistance for childcare as top priority items for the government but women also know that laws and policies while they are extremely important are not enough let's take the example of sexual harassment today many laws and company policies are on the women's side but harassment still goes largely unreported and most harasses remain unpunished only 1% of all sexual harassment victims actually filed formal complaints fear of retaliation and a legitimate sense that the policies and laws are slow and ineffective prevent women from coming forward women are very angry and Nita Hill explained after her hearings last year we are angry because this awful thing called harassment exists in terribly harsh ugly demeaning and debilitating ways we are angry because for a brief period of time we believed that if the law allowed for women to be hired in the workplace equality would be achieved we believed that we would be respected as equals now we realize that this is not true we have been betrayed this powerful beast sexual harassment and sex discrimination is used to perpetuate a sense of inequality to keep women in their place sexual harassment works it keeps women down it prevents women from seeking promotions or from entering higher paying fields that are dominated by men sexual harassment limits women's power in the workplace so to end sexual harassment and other forms of sex discrimination we need not only to establish effective laws and to elect legislators who represent women's needs but we need to win real power for women at work only then will women be able to control their lives I'd like to talk just a little bit now about workplace inequality and some of the the things that confront women in the workplace when a woman looks for a job her sexuality may be on the market block often women are hired on the basis of what they look like this is especially true for jobs that involve contact with the public a receptionist for example should be pretty a department store clerk should be attractive and while airlines are no longer allowed to specify age height and weight requirements for flight attendants prospective applicants are still evaluated by their appearance women's jobs tend to repeat the work they do in the home that is cooking cleaning caring for the sick serving food it can be difficult to limit work boundaries secretaries for example may be expected to make coffee run personal errands and buy gifts where do the favors end in the workplace most positions of authority are filled by men the person who does the hiring and firing is a man the supervisor is a man the plant or office manager is a man and usually the union steward is a man too women feel subordinate position and take orders from men despite affirmative action games women remain concentrated and low-paying dead-end jobs almost half of all women that is 43% of all women workers in this country are in jobs that pay below poverty level wages compared to 27% of all male workers which is still a very high percentage two of every three minimum wage earners are female women workers employed full-time year-round average about 65 cents for every dollar made by a white man and while this ratio is an improvement over past years the gap between the gap between men's and women's wages has narrowed largely because men's pay has fallen not because women's salaries have increased one important reason for women's lower wages concerns the segregation between men's and women's jobs 77 percent over three-quarters of all women workers are employed in female dominated occupations that isn't occupations where 75% of the workers are women examples of these are clerical work retail sales food work food service nursing housecleaning teaching and occupations dominated by women are generally lower paid than comparable male-dominated occupations the US Department of Labor lists 467 job titles women are concentrated in 20 of those titles for african-american women over half are in clerical or service jobs only 18 percent of all African American women are in managerial or professional positions and these are largely nursing and teachings or the traditional women's to emphasize this point I just want to throw out a few more statistics and a few more examples 99% of all secretaries in this country are women 9 to 7 percent of child care workers are women 95 percent of nurses are women 81% of cashiers are women on the other hand 2% of construction workers are women 3 percent of mechanics are women and seven percent of engineers are women women's jobs offer few chances for advancement and few benefits and they are often non-union where women have one union contracts however conditions including pay and benefits work rules and protection from sexual harassment have improved unfortunately economists predict that job choices for women aren't likely to improve in the near future nearly 90 percent of jobs created in the 1990s will be in the service sector or in the low-wage what's often called the pink collar ghetto in addition part-time and temporary employment is going to increase these jobs continue to go largely to women to immigrants and to people of color currently 62 percent of temporary workers are women and they average about 59 percent of the wages earned by permanent employees well this is a very dim picture and I started off talking about the year of the woman at this point I want to shift directions a bit and discuss some remedies for discrimination what are the kinds of things women are doing to fight back the most important step of course involves increasing women's pay and this can be accomplished in at least two ways that I'm going to talk about one is winning pay equity and pay equity or a comparable word means winning equal wages for work of comparable value another way is by winning affirmative action that is getting more women into some of those higher paying male-dominated jobs I'm going to take each of these remedies one at a time pay equity requires that workers be paid according to skill effort responsibility and working conditions not according to gender winning better wages for women in what are traditionally women's jobs will be one important step towards increasing women's power in the workplace and improving women's ability to control their own lives I have a quote here from from a friend of mine diana kilmury who's the vice president who's one of the international vice presidents of the Teamsters union and actually the first woman to hold that job she's also a truck driver and she recently said you're not going to see a huge number of women driving trucks and she drives those big 18 wheelers I want the jobs that women already do to be adequately valued and they're not well we're all out there making a living when a woman goes into the grocery store the roast beef isn't any cheaper because she's a woman someone said it's ok to pay a woman 65 cents on the dollar so long as you charge her 65 cents on the dollar in the 1970s researchers researchers discovered something that's very obvious to most of us that attributes of jobs that are dominated by women attributes like taking care of people typing organizing an office we're consistent consistently undervalued compared to the attributes of jobs that are dominated by men men's jobs are characterized by difficult working conditions such as working outside physical effort and mechanical ability some people think that it's impossible to compare different jobs but it isn't employers do this all the time when they use job evaluations to set pay and for different occupations within their company in Ontario Canada employers are required by law to conduct pay equity evaluations Ontario has the most advanced pay equity laws of any place in the world in 1987 the Ontario Pay Equity Act was the first law anywhere to require both private and public sector employers to pay equal wages for work of equal or comparable value the Act increased the wages of thousands of women workers very soon the government of Ontario is expected to pass amendments to the pay equity Act that will broaden the law to cover four hundred and twenty thousand more working women in the end this means that about two million women will be covered by the law the wages of about two million women will have increased dramatically unfortunately there is no similar law in the United States the closest we come can be found in the state of Minnesota where public sector employers are required to follow pay equity in the United States pay equity battles have been fought in three different arenas in the courts in state and local legislatures and in contract bargaining between unions and management there's overlap of course between these different arenas because most court cases and government actions were initiated by unions one of the earliest court cases was filed on behalf of women prison guards in Oregon who made much less than male prison guards another early case was filed on behalf of women's state employees in Washington against the state Washington state conducted a pay equity study and found out that jobs equal in skill effort responsibilities and working conditions were paid less when filled primarily by women for example a clerk typist job received almost the same of rating points as a warehouse worker but was paid 10 salary grades lower but Washington State refused to act on its own study so the Union there which is the same Union here the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees took the state of Washington to court and the Union won a settlement in 1983 of almost a hundred million dollars over nine years to increase the pay of women workers now some of these early suits scared employers in the public sector and several states began taking some minimal action in order to prevent lawsuits the first pay equity strike was in 1981 against the city of San Jose California as a result workers want a very good settlement in San Francisco a study found that women and minorities were paid an average of 42 percent less than men the Service Employees International Union negotiated with the city government for pay equity raises but these were vetoed by the mayor so the Union organized a ballot initiative a referendum that would give voters the chance to approve pay equity raises for city employees and it passed by 61% and Santa Barbara 25 women clerical took matters into their own hands and did their own study they took their findings to their union and used the slogan if you wear a skirt the city pays you dirt they wish they received raises of 25 percent over three years in 1987 the Oregon Public Employees Union pulled off nine days of rolling strikes but it's days when certain departments certain of the State Department's would strike for limited periods of time in the end they also won pay equity increases for 5,000 union members now all of these examples are from the public sector and in fact the greatest pay equity successes in this country have been among public employees this is primarily because the public sector has a higher unionization rate than the private 37 percent of public workers in the United States are in unions as opposed to about 12% of private sector workers and it's much easier to win victories when you're organized still winning pay equity in the private sector is possible and the success of the clerical and technical workers union at Yale University shows this this is a union of office staff librarians lab technicians and others they're really a truly remarkable group of women when they first unionized in 1983 they promised to make pay equity a key demand they struck for 69 days held demonstrations rallies committed civil disobedience and had hundreds of people arrested there was a lot of publicity about this prestigious university that wouldn't pay its workers a living wage but you can't eat prestige in the end the workers won pay equity increases of 20 and 1/4 percent over 3 years they want a dental plan medical coverage for retirees and improved pensions since that time workers have seen their wages increased from an average of about $13,000 a year to $25,000 a year as important as the monetary gains are women workers at Yale have also won some control over their working conditions and they've learned valuable skills about organizing about winning games and standing up for themselves related to the issue of pay equity is the need to increase women's job opportunities and to win affirmative action games women need access to those higher paying fields dominated by men there's been some progress in some professions today about one third of medical school classes are women and between 40 and 50 percent of law schools are women but engineering and architecture are still primarily male the percentage of women in managerial and professional occupations has increased but slowly it was 18% of the female workforce in 1975 and 26% today however again 60% of these professional women are in teaching and nursing those traditional women's professions affirmative action in blue-collar or men's jobs like construction work has been dismal according to federal guidelines women should make up 20% of all building trades apprentices of all the people entering the building trades but in reality women come nowhere near these figures in 1975 women were less than 1% of workers in construction today they're still under 2% so the progress has been pretty slow a founder of a group in Cleveland called hard-headed women which is an advocacy group for women in construction explains the problems caused by the small number of women on the job at a worksite she says we're usually a minority of one when we organize around an issue maybe it's getting pornography removed from the workplace or maybe it's fighting sexual harassment we're really organizing self-defense one way to fight this isolation is to pressure employers to hire more women another is for women activists to build alliances with male workers and a third is for women to take power in the union assuming that there is one by taking leadership positions women can direct the union's bide against sexual and racial harassment and discrimination and direct the fight towards affirmative action and other important women's and family issues but even affirmative action games may not be enough if sexual harassment and sex discrimination persist on the job gen Harrison for example thought that she had cleared the barriers of discrimination when she was hired as an assistant mathematics professor at the University of California at Berkeley but Harrison was denied tenure while eight male colleagues were promoted she sued and today is still engaged in a legal battle to become the fourth male mathematics I'm sorry the fourth female mathematics professor in the nation's top ten departments when Linda an african-american woman became an electrician she also thought that her financial problems were over and that she now had it made but sexual harassment drove her from her job on a daily basis co-workers tried to touch and grab her and they propositioned her for sexual favors the workplace was filled with sexually explicit posters and insulting cartoons many with her name scribbled on them the environment became so offensive that Linda spent all of her breaks in the restaurant despite complaining daily to her supervisor and filing several grievances with her union management did nothing now some people might accuse Linda of being overly sensitive you need to lighten up they may say they may think that the whole issue of sexual harassment has been blown out of proportion that it's not really a big deal but I can tell you without hesitation that the problem of sexual harassment is real and that is very serious as John mentioned in his introduction I've recently been involved in a very exciting project writing a handbook and conducting workshops for trade unionists on stopping sexual harassment the book features the firsthand stories of activists who fought against sexual harassment in their workplace and one not only do these stories provide powerful lessons for people who confront similar situations they also show how incredibly widespread sexual harassment is sexual harassment does not respect age race marital status appearance class occupation or any other variable the Bureau of national affairs estimates that forty percent of women are sexually harassed at work other studies estimate that up to ninety percent of working women experience harassment not surprisingly the woman the women who are most vulnerable to sexual harassment are the women with the least social and economic power women who are single mothers low-wage workers the sole support of the family women who really need the job or women who are breaking into fields formerly dominated by men unfortunately as I mentioned earlier 98 percent of those who experience sexual harassment refused to come forward they fear retaliation a victim of harassment has to weigh her disgust and outrage against her need to keep her job now fighting all that we're up against can seem like a very tall order but even as we count our many defeats it's important that we recognize the gains we've made and take encouragement from them the number of women in unions is growing according to the American Federation of Labor 23% of all african-american women workers belong to unions 15% of Latina workers and 14% of white working women are also represented by unions today about 15% of all US workers are unionized and belonging to a union still provides workers protections and opportunities that aren't available to the unorganized unionized women earn significantly higher wages than their non-union sisters on average Union women earn 417 dollars a week while non-union women earn only three hundred and twelve dollars unionized women workers are also more likely to have some parental leave benefits Union Union negotiated parental leave averages five to thirty days usually unpaid some unions and especially those with the high percentage of women workers have one longer leaves than this in 1988 for example both the ladies garment and the clothing and textile workers unions won up to six months of unpaid parental leave for their members 85% of whom are women in addition union members belong to an institution through which they can voice grievances improve their working conditions and gain control on the job through Union involvement women may also begin to take charge of their lives outside of work women may learn to speak up for themselves and to fight back wherever they experience injustice at the beginning of this talk I mentioned some of the political gains that women have made in the past year I also discussed some of the gains in achieving pay equity another important game takes us back to the issue of sexual harassment 15 years ago the term sexual harassment didn't really exist women coined the term to describe their experiences and their organizing change the law and transformed workplace relationships by the time of the Anita Hill Clarence Thomas hearings every senator even those who dismissed Hill out of hand had to take sexual harassment as an issue seriously they had to say that if hills charges were true if Clarence Thomas had behaved as he'll alleged he did then Thomas was unfit for the Supreme Court and that's quite a change and women have the ability to make even greater changes women can rebuild their unions they can gain control of their workplaces and they can take charge of their lives just like any other group in society women will improve their situation in only one way by organizing women will have to determine what forms of organization are necessary whether those be Union committees political organizations or other kinds of support structures and women must continue to organize on their own behalf whether or not men yet understand and support their efforts it is the persistent activism of the last 20 years that has led many men to sympathise with their sisters struggle and it is only through continued activism that greater unity between men and women will be achieved thank you are there any questions or comments yes