We’re all feeling it — the weight of the COVID-19 pandemic and what it means for our loved ones and collective future, but we cannot ignore the many ways in which the coronavirus crisis is a gendered one, especially on Equal Pay Day – Tuesday, March 31st, 2020.
Source: momsrising.org
The wage gap is just one of many examples of the burden women of color bear by living in a white supremacist and patriarchal society.
Source: nationalpartnership.org
Election 2016- What’s At Stake!
CLUW will be holding its 1st STRATEGIC NATIONAL EXECUTIVE BOARD (NEB) PLANNING MEETING/RETREAT April 7-10, 2016 at the Tommy Douglas Conference Center
(formerly the National Labor College and now the Amalgamated Transit
Union Headquarters) at 10000 New Hampshire Avenue, Silver Spring, MD
20903. It is designed to educate, mobilize and develop a progressive
action plan to turn up and turn out the women’s vote for the 2016
election.
The NEB meeting is being held in conjunction with a 1 day CLUW
Educational Conference to educate and prepare women unionists and their
supporters about the election. Delegates will be addressing how to put
the resolutions
recently adopted in November at CLUW’s 18th Biennial Convention into
action and will participate in two strategic planning sessions.
CLUW
will be hosting CLUW’s Biennial Working Women’s Award Celebration and
Reception on the evening of April 7th to recognize women who have been
staunch supporters of equal rights and equal pay. Click here for flyer and order information.
Our theme is ELECTION 2016-WHAT’S AT STAKE! Come get CLUW’d in because CLUW knows what’s at stake! For more details please access the links below:
2016 NEB Reservations & Transportation Info
2016 NEB Registration Form & Tentative Agenda
MAKE YOUR ONLINE RESERVATIONS HERE! Rooms are still available so reserve now!
by Sara Rosenblum
CLUW intern; rising senior at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts
With the 2012 historic election behind us that brought a record number of Congresswomen to the Hill, Sayu Bhojwani added a cautionary reminder that, “Optimism has to be tempered with intentionality … Do not assume that demographics is destiny.” Bhojwani, who is the founding Director of the New American Leaders Project, imparted this bit of wisdom to a group of almost 1,000 young progressives at the Generation Progress National Summit on July 17th. This quote has been floating around my head ever since, along with a striking piece of information that I have been coming across all summer: women must be asked, on average, six times before agreeing to run for office. This past Tuesday, July 30th, I joined four Congresswomen, Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick (D-AZ), Rep. Marcia L. Fudge (D-OH), Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-NM), Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), and host Elizabeth “Liz” Shuler, Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL-CIO, and Women’s Campaign Fund National Board of Directors Member, as they led an inspiring conversation with a room full of women labor leaders at the AFL-CIO, addressing the necessity that we, as women, as a labor movement, and as a country, have to elect more women into office.
It would be highly beneficial to the labor movement and the women’s movement to elect more women, and especially labor women, into office. With only 17% of Congress made up of women, we have a long way to go. Findings from a Women and Labor Policy Study (2012) created through the collaboration of the Women’s Campaign Fund (WCF), the National Organization for Women (NOW), and our very own Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW), found that women in Congress voted in favor of working family policies at higher rates than their male counterparts in the years between 2001 and 2010.
In the Senate, women support working family policies significantly more often than their male counterparts, at 73.9 points vs. 51.1 points. When broken down, both Democratic and Republican women in the Senate voted in a way that supported the labor movement and working families more so than their male peers. Voting patterns of Senate Republicans show that Republican women vote in favor of laws that help working families better than Republican men 90% of the time.
The gender disparity in the House was more pronounced than the Senate. The average score for all congresswomen was 70.8 vs. 51.46 for men over a ten year period.
Imagine the progress Congress could make on working family initiatives if only we had a more representative group in office. That is exactly the belief held by the national organization that sponsored Tuesday’s event, the Women’s Campaign Fund (WCF) and its She Should Run project. WCF is dedicated to encouraging and supporting women who want to run for office. Siobhan “Sam” Bennett, President and CEO of the Women’s Campaign Fund, explained that WCF is a non-partisan network that endorses women candidates who advocate for women’s health. She Should Run provides support, guidance, resources, and research to help women decide to run for office, as well as to help them run a successful campaign.
The four guest speakers at the event, Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ-01), Rep. Marcia Fudge (OH-11), Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham (NM-01), and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (HI-02), had been elected with the support of the WCF. These four women spoke to about 30 labor union women, and several male supporters, about the continuing problem of demographics in Congress.
Rep. Fudge started off by speaking about the unique abilities and perspective union women could bring to the table if more union women ran for, and won, congressional seats. Rep. Fudge, whose mother organized a union at her job, spoke of the tough nature of union women, who are often familiar with male dominated environments, and who have been through a lot. “People want to know that you will fight for them,” Rep. Fudge commented, and, undoubtedly, this is something union women know how to do.
Rep. Kirkpatrick continued the conversation by elaborating on the many ways in which our society promotes an image of the public and political realm as male dominated. She told the story of a young girl who ate breakfast on a place mat with the faces of our past and present U.S. Presidents on it every morning. With no women faces on her place mat, she did not, at first, believe her father when he told her that she could one day be a U.S. President. Stories like these give a lot of insight into the statistic that women need to be asked to run for office. Rep. Kirkpatrick went on to quote Hillary Rodham Clinton, who often says, “women are the largest untapped reservoir of talent in the world”. By encouraging women to be involved in politics, and by asking women to run for office, we can really make a difference to change the status quo and reverse the societal endorsements of a male-dominated political realm.
Rep. Lujan Grisham spoke next, adding that, in addition to having to be asked around six times on average before considering running, there are unique obstacles that women face when deciding to run for office. When a woman candidate must consider her responsibilities as a mother or daughter before deciding to run, this often leads to the woman candidate entering the race later than her running mates. When Rep. Lujan Grisham first ran for office, she had entered the race late, and was 19 points behind her running mate. It was the Women’s Campaign Fund who first supported her and provided her with her first check.
Rep. Gabbard finished the meeting by talking about why women candidates are attacked in different, often more harsh ways than their male peers. This is because of who we are representing, Gabbard believes, since, as we saw in the statistics, women are often the voice of many populations. “It’s not about us,” Rep. Gabbard said, “but about the people we are fighting for.”
These four inspiring women illustrate the power we, as women, have to change the game on the Hill. With more women running for, and winning, congressional seats, we might finally be able to take the “con” out of “Congress” and replace it with the “pros” of “Progress”.
Read Martha Burk’s blog on the nation’s largest creator of low wage jobs. It’s not Walmart or Mcdonalds, and you’re contributing!
ncwo:
We’re all hearing a lot about anti-choice legislation right now. From Texas to Ohio to Virginia, anti-choice lawmakers are restricting access to abortion and other health care services, especially for low-income women.
DC is not immune to this. According to the National Women’s Law…
by Sara Rosenblum
CLUW intern; rising senior at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts
Starting with a video created by Bev Grant about women in the labor movement entitled “We Were There” that covered those in the room with goosebumps, and ending with an equally powerful overview of the current state and future of the labor movement, six women, representing the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW) and other labor related organizations and unions, made quite an impression on a group of progressive young interns last Thursday, July 11th. This presentation was part of the National Council of Women’s Organization’s (NCWO) “New Faces, More Voices” series, a weekly program for roughly 30 summer interns at local women’s organizations in DC that connects and engages these college students and recent graduates with important feminist and activism related topics through workshops.
The presentation began with a brief history of the labor movement, comparing the current climate and an overview of CLUW presented by our very own Carol Rosenblatt, CLUW Executive Director. She cited from Donald L. Bartlett and James B. Steele’s book “The Betrayal of the American Dream” and described the book as “the story of how a small number of people in power have deliberately put in place policies that have enriched themselves while cutting the ground out from underneath America’s greatest asset – its middle class.” This, of course, impacts on the labor movement which included 17.7 million workers in 1983 and 14.4 million workers now. She also emphasized that being a union member has had a real economic advantage to women. According to the AFL-CIO’s Department of Professional Employees in 2011 union women earned weekly wages that were 26% more than non-union women.
Carol painted a picture of the intersections between the labor movement and the women’s movement. Quoting Karen Nussbaum currently with the AFL-CIO and a founder of the women’s organization 9 to 5 who noted that organized labor represents the largest movement of women in the US., yet Carol stated that labor does not see itself as part of the women’s movement. CLUW, Carol explained, seeks to bridge the gap between women and labor. She outlined CLUW’s activities including CLUW’s long standing support of health advocacy and reproductive choice particularly since most of the labor movement is silent on this issue.
Next Carolyn Jacobson, the founder of CLUW’s Cervical Cancer Prevention Works Project and current secretary-treasurer and one of the founders of the Berger-Marks Foundation, spoke about the foundation, which was created in honor of Edna Berger, the first female lead organizer for the Newspaper Guild-Communication Workers of America of the AFL-CIO. Shortly after Berger’s death, a group of women, Carolyn included, helped to create a scholarship fund in her honor. Edna’s husband, Gerald Marks, a musician and song writer (most famously the writer of “All of Me”) caught wind of their project and left most of their family estate and royalties to the foundation. The Berger-Marks Foundation seeks to help working women organize and lead, and offers several opportunities for union and organizational grants, with a special focus on women.
Carol Anderson, associate director of the Education and Leadership Training Department of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), spoke about women in leadership positions, the trials and tribulations she and others have had as union leaders in the past and present, and the importance of minority and women leaders in unions of the future. She also described AFSCME’s role in pressing for equal pay through comparable worth law suits on behalf of their female members, arguing that women’s work should be valued at a higher level. Some of these suits brought significant financial settlements. She also mentioned the union’s Next Wave group that is for young workers who determine their own agenda of priorities and organize conferences to address their needs.
Lillian Walker Shelton, the Solidarity Organizer at DC Jobs with Justice, spoke about how change is made in labor policy and how her position fits into union work and labor advocacy. She also described some of the campaigns she has been involved in, such as efforts made to secure a contract for Verizon employees and to ensure a living wage for Walmart and other “big box” employees in DC.
Lastly, two women spoke specifically about young workers and unions. Michelle Wyvill, who works for the International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers (IAM) and is a member of the AFL-CIO’s Young Workers Advisory Council, explained that in 2009 the AFL-CIO adopted a resolution to involve young people in the movement. She outlined some of the steps that have been taken in the past few years to move forward with this goal, including the creation of the Young Workers Advisory Council, the Young Workers Leadership Institute, as well as several other more specific young worker groups. Sarah Lewis, a policy analyst for the AFL-CIO working on young workers’ issues, spoke of the ironic situation of young people today who need unions even more than in past years, yet who are joining at much smaller rates. With education costs skyrocketing, and huge debt following, as well as a high level of unemployment, the desperate need for the union involvement of young people has become glaringly clear.
With negative media all around us, and an absence of labor movement history in many education systems, I have become increasingly alarmed at the lack of awareness about the current labor movement and unions within my generation. I have had a number of discussions with friends who, upon hearing of my internship at CLUW, tell me that they are unsure what to think of labor unions. After the presentations, a similar concern was voiced by a fellow intern. She explained that she often hears worries about unions being too powerful, among other negative concerns, and it is apparent that only these negative media images of labor unions are making it through to much of our generation. After this presentation I know, and I feel strongly that the women that joined me for the workshop last week also feel, that we are better able to communicate to our peers a truer picture of the labor movement, unions, and their relationship to and importance in current events.
From left to right: Sarah Lewis, Michelle Wyvill, Lillian Walker Shelton, Carol Anderson, Carol Rosenblatt (not pictured: Carolyn Jacobson)
By Sara Rosenblum
CLUW intern; rising senior at Wheaton College in Norton, MA
There is a widespread misperception concerning the federal protections granted to the LGBT community. Nine out of ten voters falsely believe there to be a federal law in place that defends the rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people against discrimination in the workplace. Though the existence of this misinformation is a startling fact, it is not more startling than the reality that the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which seeks to prohibit sexual orientation and gender identifying discrimination in the workplace, has not made it into federal law despite its 10 appearances in Congress since 1994. On June 17th, 2013 I joined representatives of the Trans People of Color Coalition, the National Center for Transgender Equality and their members and allies, for a lobby day in support of ENDA, showcasing the fight of transgender individuals for equal rights within the context of the gay rights movement.
The gay rights movement has gained a lot of momentum in recent years. Since 1988, the number of Americans who support same-sex marriage has snowballed from a 13% approval rating in 1988 to nearly 60% of Americans supporting it today. Just last week, on the 28th of June, the Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a federal law which allowed states to leave same-sex marriages unrecognized and same-sex spouses unable to claim the benefits that are provided to heterosexual couples.
Transgender rights, on the other hand, have had a different plight. A study by Norton and Herek (2012), members of the Psychology faculty at the University of California, found that although heterosexual American’s attitudes towards transgender individuals are strongly correlated with their feelings towards lesbian and gay individuals, positive feelings towards transgender individuals are dramatically less. Moreover, there have been efforts to exclude transgender individuals from ENDA, so as to increase its chance of passage, despite the fact that transgender individuals experience discrimination at higher rates than gay and lesbian individuals. The transgender rights movement is slow rolling as of now, but is the trans-rights movement, like the gay rights movement, rounding the corner of progress?
On Monday, I spent close to nine hours with five other Pennsylvanians of differing ages, sexual orientations, gender identities, and stories, lobbying our state representatives. The lobbying was empowering, and the inter-generational conversation showed an array of experiences that started to construct a history of the transgender movement for the past 70 years.
A retired transgender woman from Pittsburgh told us of her story growing up in Pittsburgh without any known exposure to other transgender people, and with only two related books in her local libraries, both of which had a permanent status of “missing”. Wanting to “avoid her life becoming a story of discrimination”, she hid her identity for 45 years. A 50-year-old transgender woman from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania also told of the lack of information available to her growing up. It wasn’t until the late 1990’s that she was able to find any resources to help with her transition. The story of a 20-year-old transgender man, who grew up in Texas, changed the tone of the conversation. The son of a self-identified “70’s feminist,” he did not start to question his gender identity until high school, as his mother raised him in what she hoped to be “the most gender-neutral environment possible”. When he came out, he was lucky enough to have parents that supported him through his transition. Not only that, but his father gave him his first hormone shot.
Shortly after this conversation, we met with a person on Senator Bob Casey’s staff (D-PA), a co-sponsor of ENDA, a young woman who had recently graduated from American University with a degree in gender studies. Both transgender women in our group had never heard of gender studies, and were excited to both share their experiences and hear of hers.
At the end of the day, I sat with the woman from Gettysburg and the woman from Pittsburgh as we discussed what the future might bring for transgender rights. With the countless stories of mistreatment and lack of protections, it was nice that the day brought some moments where a bit of progress was apparent. Though unsure of what the reception of ENDA will be in the 113th Congress, we became increasingly optimistic that this generation will be the generation of transgender rights: the “trans-gen(d)eration”.
By Anney Bolgiano,
past CLUW Intern, currently Programs and Policy Intern, National Council of Women’s Organizations
I’m tired of talking, writing and reading about the wage gap. I suspect a lot of us are. I’m a woman of merely twenty-one, and I imagine that for the women who have fought this battle since it’s earliest days, the frustration must be considerable. But while young women like myself may feel ready to tackle the next issue, the wage gap persists. And so, in the unforgettable words of Congresswoman DeLauro, we must be bold and unrelenting.
Monday marked the 50th anniversary of the Equal Pay Act and many people, especially women, were wishing we had a little more to celebrate. In 1963 women made 59 cents for every man’s dollar, and today that number has grown to 77 cents. That’s not enough for me. I won’t stop here.
The wage gap is too big to ignore, and for Women of Color, the numbers are even more alarming: African American women make 64 cents, and Latina/Hispanic women make 55 cents for every dollar earned by their white, non-Hispanic counterparts.
On Wednesday, June 5th, the National Women’s Law Center hosted a panel at the National Press Club to address the economic injustices currently facing women. The panel consisted of AnnMarie Duchon, Massachusetts public employee, Fatima Gross-Graves from the National Women’s Law Center, Ai-Jen Poo from Caring Across Generations and National Domestic Workers Alliance, Hilary O. Shelton from the NAACP, and was expertly moderated by Joy-Ann Reid, MSNBC on-air contributor and managing editor of theGrio.com. Each Panelist provided a unique perspective, and shed a different light on the issue. The program also included a special address by Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, of Connecticut’s third district.
AnnMarie Duchon brought an especially personal perspective to the issue. She has experienced gender-based paycheck discrimination in her job, as the associate director of disability services at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Because she is employed by the state, she was able to access the published reports of the pay of herself and fellow employees. Looking over these, she discovered she was paid less than a male counterpart with a nearly identical background.
She discussed this gap with her employer, and was simply told, “this is just the way things are”. Over the next few years, she kept her eye on the gap, and saw that when she and her male counterpart were promoted to the same position, the gap increased dramatically. AnnMarie wasn’t ready to give up; she created a graph, clearly illustrating the gap, and met with her employer again. This time, in the face of irrefutable evidence, her employer agreed to raise her salary, finally closing the gap between AnnMarie and her male counterpart. You can read more about the details of her story, here.
Most employees do not have access to this information, and in some workplaces they can be penalized for inquiring about, or sharing it. The Paycheck Fairness Act would help create transparent workplaces, disallowing employers from penalizing employees for sharing paycheck information with each other. AnnMarie discussed this in her own blog post, chronicling her experience:
"As a public employee in the state of Massachusetts, I confirmed that I was being paid less through published reports. But I’ve learned from the National Women’s Law Center that ¼th of private sector employees are prohibited from discussing salary information or where workers can be punished for simply discussing their salaries"
The discussion veered away from the mechanics of the Paycheck Fairness Act, to the root of pay inequity: the devaluation of women’s labor. This sentiment can surface in any field. At the opening of the panel, Joy-Ann Reid shared that she had once been told that women did not deserve fair pay in talk radio because, “women can’t do talk radio.”
I sat in the First Amendment Room, at the National Press Club, listening to fifty years worth of struggle bubble up in one panel discussion. Perhaps Hilary O. Shelton’s comment, “the struggle is tremendous,” best captured my feelings that morning. But make no mistake, we cannot and will not rest until women, who today are primary breadwinners in more than 41% of families with children, are being paid fairly, and bright young graduates across the country do not graduate into gender-based wage injustice.
Yes, I am tired of talking, writing, tweeting, blogging, and reading about the wage gap. But I’m not giving up. I will wake up tomorrow ready to continue- boldly and unrelentingly.
Our Children and Grandchildren Should Not Wait Another 50 Years for Economic Fairness
By Arlene Holt Baker, Executive Vice President, AFL-CIO, Member, Coalition of Labor Union Women
The Equal Pay Act was landmark legislation. As Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi remarked in a press conference last Thursday, “He [President John F. Kennedy Jr.] knew it was a first step to end the ‘unconscionable practice'– in his words – of paying women less than men for the same amount of work. But in the course of 50 years, loopholes in the Equal Pay Act were carved out and exploited. Disparities affecting minority women widened. And the 'unconscionable practice’ persists.”
The increase of working women during the past 50 years is phenomenal. Now working women make up almost half of the total workforce in the United States. Their impact on the economy is enormous and their contribution to their family’s economic well-being is more important today than ever before.
But after 50 years, the average full-time woman worker’s wages have only improved by 18 cents compared with every dollar that a man earns. In 1963, the average wage for women was 59 cents compared with men’s earnings and today it is 77 cents. And for African American and Hispanic women, the numbers are even more devastating: For African American women, the pay gap is 64 cents and for Hispanic women, it is 55 cents compared with white non-Hispanic men.
Working mothers are penalized, too. A June 1 MomsRising e-mail message noted:
“A recent study found that with equal resumes and job experiences, mothers were offered $11,000 lower starting salaries than non-mothers (fathers, on the other hand, were offered $6,000 more in starting salaries than non-fathers). Another study found that women without children make 90 cents to a man’s dollar, mothers make 73 cents to a man’s dollar and single moms make only about 60 cents to a man’s dollar.”
Women who work full-time, year-round will typically lose $443,360 over their lifetimes because of the wage gap.
Many women and people of color work as teachers, librarians, restaurant workers and child care workers where salaries are low. Even when working in male-dominated fields that pay more, women still earn less. (See the Bureau of Labor Statistics report on salaries for men and women here.)
One way to address these problems is to urge passage of the Paycheck Fairness Act (S. 84/H.R. 377), which would close loopholes in our existing equal pay laws, prohibit retaliation against workers who ask about or share wage information and empower women to better negotiate salary and benefit increases. Last Thursday, the Coalition of Labor Union Women, AAUW (American Association of University Women), Alliance for Justice, the American Civil Liberties Union, Jewish Women International, MomsRising, the National Council of Jewish Women, the National Council of Women’s Organizations, the National Partnership for Women and Families, the National Women’s Law Center, UltraViolet and 9to5 participated in a multi-generational lobby day. They asked House and Senate members to cosponsor the Paycheck Fairness Act and urged House members to sign on to a discharge petition led by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) that would bring the Paycheck Fairness Act to the floor.
My 18-month old twin granddaughters, Logan Sophia and McKenzie, deserve to grow up in a world of fairness and equality. I wish for them what every grandmother wishes for their grandchildren: Happiness, success in school, finding a career that brings them satisfaction, fairness, justice and a voice at work.
A collective bargaining agreement is one of the best ways to fight discrimination in the workplace and close the gender wage gap. The Department for Professional Employees, AFL-CIO, said in its 2013 fact sheet: “Union preschool and kindergarten teachers earned 52 percent more than their nonunion counterparts, while for elementary and middle-school teachers, the union wage advantage was 36 percent.….In 2011, union women earned weekly wages that were 26 percent more than nonunion women.”
Please join me in recognizing the anniversary of the Equal Pay Act and contact your U.S. Senators and Representative and ask for their support for the Paycheck Fairness Act—a step in closing the wage gap.
Thank you.
Click here to add your name to the MomsRising petition:
On June 6th CLUW and many other advocates will be meeting with their members of Congress to urge passage of the Paycheck Fairness Act. 50 years after the Equal Pay Act became law we still are far from economic equality. The wage gap continues to put women “in the red.” Join us by posting your photo (wearing red) on facebook to show your support and share with us. Or send us your photo with a blog message and we will post it on CLUW’s blog.
Photo: Karen See and Carol Rosenblatt at the CLUW National Office.
Today is Equal Pay Day. Please, share to help people learn the union difference.
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