I have been a member of the CWA (Communications Workers of America) for
roughly 17 years, and sadly, our very own Morton Bahr is one of the only
major union leaders supporting Lane Kirkland. Since I know Bahr personally,
it ain't any big surprise.
While, like many union types who have been holding low level
positions on the shop floor for years, I think the change over of leadership
is over, over due, it is with great scepticism that I view any real renewal
in the union movement coming from simply a change at the top.
And one of the problems with seeing change is in the summary presented
here. While I don't necessarily disagree with any of the facts, and
certainly the organizers for 32 BJ (janitors) have been very active nation
wide, the summary presented in fact illustrates the subtle problems which
continue to dog the union movement.
-- The summary mentions women and feminism only in the context of the
community -- and ignores the fact that women are the only segment of the work
force in the united states which has shown an increase in union membership!
Aside from the government workers who have been unionized in the last 15
years -- into unions with male leadership (I guess we're smart enough to pay
dues, but not smart enough to figure out how to spend the money), nurses have
been organizing into unions all over the country. In 1986, while we were on
one of our smaller strikes here in NYC with the phone co., my sister in law
was striking her hospital in Buffalo to bring the CWA in as their union for
the nurses in her hospital. Three years later, on long Island, she went on
strike at another hospital to help bring in another union there -- just
before the phone co. started its last long strike of 5 months in 1989. It
became a family joke that my brother was running a strike fund for all the
women in the family.
In fact, the union movement for all its changes, and the left along with
it, still thinks of unions in terms of men and organizing men -- totally
ignoring the fact that women spend about 28.5 years in the wage labor force
to men's just over 31 ... ignoring the fact that as a whole, women are a much
higher percentage of those jobs which need to be unionized, as opposed to men
who make the vast majority of management in this country.
One argument I personally get sick and tired of hearing, is that women
don't work in large groups, they tend to be more isolated. Well, then how
the hell did carpenters get organized or all these other groups who work in
isolation -- some one or group of ones saw these MEN as worth being
organized. In 1833, 1500 women outworkers -- shoebinders who worked over a
couple hundred square rural miles (individually on their farms), organized in
Lynn Mass. protesting in kind (store orders) and low wages. Now, of course,
they were not allowed into the male organizations, and after they won the end
of payments 'in-kind' their organization was broken by black listing -- but,
from that point on, women shoe binders were paid in cash.
Another point, whenever new organizing tactics are presented, the word
'minority' is always invoked to show the progressiveness of 'new' organizers.
Does anyone out there besides me know that African American males are a
higher percentage union organized than Caucasian males (leaving aside all the
lumping together problems with these categories)? Since the mid 80's many
transit unions -- like new york's own twu, have had a significant portion of
their leadership coming from minority males.
I think that it is about time that we admit that unions in this country
both have had large female and minority populations existing in racist and
sexist unions since the very beginning of the movement. Since the American
Federation of Labor was formed in protest as a split off from the Knights of
Labor after the Civil War when the Knights voted to allow women members to
vote and to admit non-white members. Since the Women's Trade Union Education
League went down south and organized black women tobacco workers while the
Cio was busy fighting with the Communist Party. Since the IBEW only admitted
women telephone operators with half a vote paying half dues because with
women outnumbering male technicians, there was a danger they would take over
the union. .......... Let's face it, shaking hands with a few community
groups is not taking an active stand against, and dealing with the divisions
which continue to exist in the working class in this country. As long as the
Internation Ladies Garment Workers Union is run by mainly men, the CWA with
over 55% female membership only has one woman at a national union level, and
my very own Local 1101 (the largest CWA local in the country)-- with an over
50% female membership - - still actively keeps an all male leadership only
promoting their own kind only -- then a couple of new faces at the top of the
AFL/CIO is not going to change a whole hell of alot. As long as activists in
the unions do not conciously begin to discuss the divisions, the divisions
are not going to heal. Setting up a few equity committees, and a little
happy propaganda, doesn't change a thing. In fact, it makes the unions
almost as bad as the companies they supposedly oppose; like NYNEX publishing
pictures of women up a pole with tools, at the same time they have so many
gender discrimination cases filed that EEOC in New York has dedicated special
personnel just to NYNEX.
fuming -- and tired of the same old debate, maggie coleman
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