Not only do female unionized workers earn more, but this great op-ed in the Anchorage Daily News by a single working mother gives us personal account of why unions can be a pretty damn big feminist issue:
I became a single mother of an 8 year-old son while I was serving in the United States Army. This was a very frightening experience for me. My son's dad was not around to help raise him. After I left the Army, I found a job working for a company where women had no opportunity to advance. I was fortunate to then land a union job. I started work with a 90-day probation period, and on my 89th day I had an accident for which I was fired.Even though I didn't have grievance rights, my union fought for me. The accident wasn't my fault, but my employer argued I was responsible. Because of my union steward, however, the mediator decided to reinstate me. To begin with, the accident wasn't my fault, and the mediator also pointed out that there were four men who were involved in accidents in their first 90 days and weren't fired. Would I have gotten my job back if I didn't have a union fighting for me? Was this worth every penny of my dues? You're darn right it was. I love my job and I raised my son with no worries. I earn a fair day's pay, decent benefits and have job security. Shouldn't everybody have this?
The op-ed was written in efforts to get Alaskan Senator Lisa Murkowski to support the Employee Free Choice Act, which she has recently said she would consider negotiating.
Read more here about why the Employee Free Choice Act is a feminist issue and take action here.
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Not to derail the importance of this argument; I just wanted to say that I first read this as "Onions are a Feminist Issue" and it made me very confused.
I will hopefully think of more insightful commentary soon.
I'm so glad this issue is on Feministing!
So much of the media attention on this issue revolves around the Right's claim that the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) would rob workers of the right to the ballot. That's nonsense!
Currently, once workers file with the Labor Board to hold an election, employers usually have about 30 days to hire law firms (if they didn't already) to hold captive audience meetings where they use lies, manipulation, and scare tactics to convince workers to vote against the union. Workers active in the organizing drive may be disciplined or fired.
I work in organizing for a labor union, and every time we have a campaign, the boss threatens workers with layoffs, threatens immigrant workers with document checks and deportation. Then, after workers vote in the union, the boss stalls to keep workers from baragaining a first contract. The kinds of activities employers engage in are not only illegal; they unconscionable.
EFCA would allow workers to organize once a majority has signed authorization cards, and provide for limits around employer tactics to prevent bargaining a contract, among other things. These changes are critical to workers who want to build a union!
I'm always hopeful that women see their interests in a vital workers' movement. After all, we are all workers, and because so many of us are single mothers and family breadwinners, we need to start seeing labor's wins as our wins.
That said, it's time the labor movement align itself with the feminist movement. Too often, union leadership is male and white, while membership and the workers we seek to organize are predominantly women and people of color. And too often, labor involves itself in politics and policy debates in a way that completely diregards the gendered elements of those fights.
Yep, unionized workers might earn more but whether they will keep their job or not... Let's see what will happen to GM and Chrysler (and Ford, for that matter) in a couple of years.
I'm not very up on unions in the US, but I'd hope they'd would be fighting pretty hard for as few losses as possible, as they currently are in many sectors in the UK.
I'm trade union (Unison) rep in London and feeling uninspired by going home on a Friday night to read employment law to advise a member, so thanks for the union promotion and for reminding me why it's important Vanessa!
"Yep, unionised workers might earn more but whether they will keep their job or not... Let's see what will happen to GM and Chrysler (and Ford, for that matter) in a couple of years."
I hear a lot about GM, Chrysler, and the auto workers union, all very anti-labour. I keep pointing out what companies the American companies have been losing ground to over the years. Sure, foreign auto makers now have plenty of US plants with US workers, but the core of their business is, and always has been in their home countries, where unions and labour laws are MUCH stronger than they ever have been in the US. It's simply silly to include the UAW in the same sentence as the failings of GM or Chryler, when a company like VW is doing so much better.
This is Awesome, As a Union Ironworker I am thrilled with the protections and opportunities my union provides, I don't see any women in my trade but any that apply would be given the exact same opportunities to prove themselves.
YAY! This is awesome! I am so glad you guys are covering class/feminist issues because the connections is so obvious but also so important to highlight. Sad news: Obama has no plans to support this bill. Happy News: maybe that will make the labor movement stop relying on Dems and maybe, just maybe, get back to some real radical unionism?
I'm keeping my fingers crossed, and I hope Obama stops worrying that the right is going to paint him as a socialist if he comes out strongly pro-union. Give in to those tendencies, B!
Unions, perhaps unsurprisingly, really vary in quality. I've seen two cases with people that suffer PTSD from an on the job incident with different unions. One went to bat, and got the guy a different position within the company (where they wouldn't be exposed to the reminders of the event or potentially the same incident again), another is still out of work and his shop steward is next to useless in helping him out.
Personally, I think a lot of areas would be better off without many union rules. Nursing shifts and assignments can get bad, and sometimes hurt still-learning new grads, due to rules about who gets preference for open positions and seniority.
But what area of life isn't a mixed bag, anyway?
Honestly, while unions can do great things for women, I am not so sure I would call it a feminist issue. I think it's too much a mix of positives and negatives, and there can be additional issues of power relationships that come from within the union in addition to from the business. They're probably a net-benefit, but I personally don't consider them an important feminist issue.
Tell that to the domestic workers (nannies, housekeepers, and elderly attendants) all over the country trying to organize to be recognized by labor laws and eventually unionize. I think they would definitely disagree.
I would be happy to tell them that I think unionization has mixed results, and that while there may be a net-benefit, I do not consider it a particularly feminist issue.
They might disagree, but I don't think there's anything objectionable there. As far as I know, it might be great for them and the best possible choice. I still really don't see it as a feminist issue, whether good or bad.
I would point out that when unions fight for it's members, their track record seems to show they don't check what gender the member is before deciding how hard to act.
With female friends & family in unions ranging from the California Teacher's Associating to United Steelworkers, I've never heard any of them complain, what with their their higher pay, benefits, and better job security.
I have had conversations with plenty of men in their 20s and 30s where reservations (and the "mixed results" line of thought) have been expressed. I've never had it satisfactorily explained to me, though, and the reasoning I do hear seems to all sound suspiciously similar.
The fact that unions have mixed results doesn't mean that it's not a feminist issue; it means that feminists should fight for better unions.
Just wanted to note that under the new structure, Chrysler is in a partnership with Fiat, but is primarily owned by the UAW. I think the break down gives the union about 55% controlling interest in the company. Furthermore, the strength of particular locals is dependent on the total numbers of the international union. Union membership has reached pre-Great Depression levels, and workers are feeling the indirect consequences of this. As union membership decreased, so did benefits and average wages. Unions help to raise the wages for the lowest paid jobs first, which means that most entry level positions and jobs considered "not real jobs," like those in the service industry--which is now about 80% of the job market--will have better wages. The effect of unions in the 1950s lead the creation of the middle class and the American Dream. Nowadays, the average worker makes less, adjusted for inflation, and in order to make ends meet, must work more hours, more jobs, or more workers per house hold. Unions also have standardized wages, so that women will always be paid the same as men in whatever job. By increasing union membership, unions have more strength and leverage when it comes to bargaining for workers' rights. About ten or fifteen years ago the United Food and Commercial Workers Union went on strike against a grocery chain in San Diego. The strike cost the chain about 70% of their profits. Due to the relaxing of anti-trust policies in the last thirty years, all of these regional companies are bought out by conglomerates. The same strike would now cost the conglomerate that purchased the San Diego chain less than 1%. So, while workers continue to oppose collective bargaining for better benefits, companies have no problem doing with it. I really appreciate this being listed as a feminist issue, because the one thing I have found lacking in most feminist discussions is the plight of women workers in American and other countries, particularly the third world.
When my mother was injured on the job, her employer claimed they didn't have to give her med insurance because she hadn't worked for them as long as required. Only the injury would be covered. This was a big deal because it was 100% coverage for dental except major, 100% coverage for doctors, and $1 prescriptions. I'd done as much research as possible, but after going through their (horribly organized) records I could only show 9 years, 10 months and 2 weeks. They require 10 years. It was the union that provided us with free use of their lawyer. It took months, and my mom had to pay COBRA in the mean time, but she got her insurance.
Historically speaking, unions absolutely are a feminist issue. Many of the original industrial unions were unions of women workers - especially because industrial employers, especially in textiles and garment manufacturing, sought out all or heavily female workforces. Hence, the "Bread and Roses" strike at the Lowell Mill where women workers held signs saying ""We want bread, but we want roses, too!", or the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire which killed 148 mostly female sweatshop workers and lead to the creation of the ILGWU (International Ladies Garment Workers Union). Heck, a lot of people don't know that Betty Friedan got her start as a radical journalist for the Communist-allied United Electrical Workers (UE), and that a lot of her early thought about gender inequality stemmed from her reporting about the structural inequalities built into the electronics industry - and the fact that she got fired from her job for being pregnant.
But beyond history, unions are a feminist issue because they are a vehicle for empowerment - not the faux empowerment that Madison Avenue tries to sell, but the real thing. As Dorothy Sue Cobble writes about in her books Dishing It Out (about waitresses' unions) and The Other Womens' Movement (about women in the labor movement), labor unions were and are critical vehicles for doing feminist work - waitresses' unions did a lot of work around re-defining the nature of work, women's work, and the double shift, thinking about sisterhood in the context of a cross-class alliance between women workers and women customers, and so forth; women labor activists fought hard to push feminist issues onto the union agenda - equal pay, maternity leave, child care, sexual harassment, non-discrimination in hiring and promotion, the double shift, etc.
Importantly, an active and feminist union is a institution where power is held directly - where your leverage over employers comes through collective action, through organizing workers to stand up for their rights, through establishing a grievance system that creates new channels for challenging inequality and discrimination, through striking to enforce your rights - without being reliant on outside structures like the government or the courts.
I've got a union card in my wallet, and there is no doubt they have helped to keep my wages high, but I have very mixed feelings about unions. I think I fall into the category of the '30-something males who don't like unions' mentioned by another commenter, but I do have specific reasons that unions make me feel uneasy:
(1) As a child, my mom had to relocate for reasons unrelated to work. Because she was a teacher with many years of experience, she could not get a job as a teacher because no school could afford to start her at the top of the pay scale. She worked 11 months out of every 2 years (the maximum for a 'temporary' contract) for about 12 years because she could not get a permanent teaching position. This might not seem like a union issue, but when a pay scale guarantees that a principal can only afford to hire new graduates and prevents other professionals from pursuing their careers, there is something wrong.
(2) In high school, I can remember breaking down in tears in front of a very gifted, sensitive teacher and asking him why some of his child-hating, incompetent, sexist, sadistic colleagues were still teaching. He couldn't tell me but I think it came down to the union closing ranks whenever someone accused a teacher of sexism, incompetence, or cruelty. There was one teacher who peaked down the shirt of every female student he ever taught - I'm pretty sure he's still teaching, thanks to his union.
(3) Working as a taxi driver a few years ago, I had union members block my car, shake it, and shout obscenities at me as I tried to cross a picket line to bring a 90-year-old woman to a kidney dialysis appointment at a hospital. That did not impress me. I now belong to that union and it makes me feel dirty.
Anyway, I know that these criticisms are not feminist-specific, but maybe it does illustrate why not everyone is thrilled when their favourite political cause gets allied to organized labour. I'm all for workers standing up for their rights and sticking it to their sleazy corporate overlords, but I worry that we might be exchanging one corporate, patriarchal power structure for a new one.