Women & Worker Power: An AEOO Curriculum
“The Woman worker needs Bread. But she also needs Roses.” — Rose Schneiderman, 1911
We ended the year by focusing on the growing phenomenon of labor organizing, including at big multinational companies like Starbuck’s and Amazon — and importantly a change toward more inclusive union leadership by women and people of color.
We’ve noticed that women, beginning with Rose Schneiderman and her famous bread & roses, tend to widen labor issues beyond worker wages and benefits to issues that involve the whole community.
What are the obstacles we women face in the educational realm, the health care and public service realm — and in the wider union organizing realm? And what new hopeful approaches do women leaders see? We put together a great panel of labor activists to answer these questions — for our last Zoom of Our Own webinar of 2022!
Keep scrolling to watch the replay and access resources for further learning.
Meet the Speakers
Theresa Mitchell Dudley has evolved from being a substitute teacher, to an elementary classroom teacher, eventually landing as a middle school teacher. Her union activism includes service as a building representative, Membership Committee, and PGCEA board member, vice president and president. Theresa now serves as MSEA board member and represents MSEA as an NEA Board of Directors Member. She is the mother of Joyce and Alfred Dudley.
Afifa Khaliq is Director of Programs at SEIU Florida Public Services Union. She has been a part of a creative core team that is setting new trends and redefining labor, politics, economy, and social justice. Afifa is an unapologetic and proud Muslim. She is a founding member and secretary of the South Florida Muslim Federation. She is also the Chair of Emgage Florida, a Muslim civic engagement organization.
Patti Maciesz is a parent, artist, and organizer based in Oakland, California. Her work with Bill the Patriarchy and The Invisible Labor Union evolved during the Pandemic to working with Hand in Hand, a network of domestic employers. Recognizing their relative privilege, they work closely with the National Domestic Workers Alliance to value the care work done in the nation’s homes, whether by hiring with fair pay and benefits or by calling attention to the discount that all care work is given in society at large. Maciesz resists the invisibility that envelopes mothers and the essential work of making a home.
Rickey Gard Diamond — author of Screwnomics: How Our Economy Works Against Women and Real Ways to Make Lasting Change and the “Women Unscrewing Screwnomics” column at Ms. magazine, and founder of AEOO — moderated the conversation.
DEFINITIONS
Labor Union
An organization formed by workers in a particular trade, industry, or company for the purpose of improving pay, benefits, and working conditions. Officially known as a “labor organization,” these may be called a “trade union” or a “workers union.” A labor union’s structure is democratic, with members paying dues and voting for representatives to negotiate with employers and make decisions for the common good.
Collective Bargaining
The process of negotiation between union representatives and corporate or state employers. Most often successful, such group bargaining results in an agreement that determines working conditions for a contracted period of time. Union protests and bargaining won higher wages, more reasonable hours, safer working conditions, health benefits, and aid when injured or retired. They also helped end child labor.
Who is the AFL, CIO, IWW, CtW?
Unions organized by US workers to have a long history and their acronyms are meaningful. In 1794, American shoemakers formed the first trade union. These proliferated around local trades and crafts. A worker “turnout,” was organized in 1834 in Lowell, Mass, by young women textile workers to protest cuts in wages. In 1886, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) united many trade unions, and in 1905 the International Workers of the World (IWW) formed to represent industrial workers. Steeped in Marxism and anti-capitalism, its delegates included Eugene Debs and Mother Jones; its members were often jailed.
In 1911, Rose Schneiderman, president of the NY Women’s Trade Union League, gave her famous Bread and Roses speech, launching the radical quest for a 40-hour workweek. Black workers organized for the first time through a rival Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) formed in 1938. In 1955, the AFL and CIO united. Change to Win (CtW) was formed by seven large unions, led by the Teamsters, who left the AFL-CIO in 2005 to increase organizing, By 2007, a failure to grow membership returned four unions to the AFL-CIO. Though workers typically apply to a national labor union to form a local chapter, in recent years, workers at Starbucks and Amazon have formed their own independent unions.
Federal Dept. of Labor
This cabinet position and department was created in 1913 after a half-century of organized campaigns to create a “voice” for union rights and worker protections. Its bureaus, like Immigration and Naturalization (shifted to DOJ in 1940) and Occupational Safety and Health Admin (established in 1970) have often been politicized.
Right to Work Laws
The federal Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, also known as the Labor-Management Relations Act said no worker can be made to pay dues to a union that benefits them through collective bargaining. However, to offset union costs, non-union members are to pay agency service fees. or a portion of dues, to help cover union costs. However, states established the right to create what are called “right to work” laws and remove any obligation to pay agency fees even when non-union members benefit from union collective bargaining. Twenty-eight states now have such laws.
BOOKS
Women have Always Worked; A Concise History. Alice Kessler-Harris. University of Illinois Press, 2018.
On the Line: A Story of Class, Solidarity, and Two Women’s Epic Fight to Build a Union. Daisy Pitkin. Algonquin Books, 2022.
The Other Women’s Movement: Workplace Justice and Social Rights in Modern America. Dorothy Sue Cobble. Princeton University Press, 2004.
YouTube video of Chapter Six, “The Intimately Oppressed,” from A People’s History of the United States. Harold Zinn. Harper Collins Publishers, 1999.
ARTICLES & VIDEOS
Zinn Education Project; Teaching People’s History. Women in Labor History. Includes Louise Boyle, Hatti Canty, Emma Goldman, May Chen, Dolores Huerta, and many more.
The Untold Story of Women’s Leadership of the Labor Movement
A Radical Gathering video: Reigniting Labor Power with Afifa Khaliq
C-Span Roundtable video on Covid 19 and Schools with Theresa Mitchell Dudley
Hand in Hand; the Domestic Employers Network
Liz Shuler, President of the AFL-CIO, NBC commentary on exploitation of musicians and creative workers.
