UE Convention Resolutions
Advance Women’s Rights
Women make up 45 percent of the world's workforce. Yet women account for 70 percent of global poverty. Women in developing countries work an average of 60 to 90 hours per week. Worldwide, women earn an average of 75 percent of men's pay in nonagricultural work. In the U.S. women are working longer hours to make ends meet. Inequality has reached levels not seen since the 1920s. To cut labor costs and increase profits, companies intensify their exploitation of women. In ten years, 80 percent of women in industrialized countries and 70 percent of women globally will work outside of the home. The global economy needs to advance the issues of workers and their families.
The right to be free from sex discrimination in the workplace is one of the five labor rights considered essential by the International Labor Organization (ILO). When we fight for women's rights, we fight for the rights of all. This was a lesson UE learned in its earliest days leading the fight for pay equity for women. Few working women have paid sick leave, although 72 percent of women with children under the age of 18 are in the labor force. The U.S. lags far behind other industrialized countries in providing childcare. Women rely on Social Security more than men because they disproportionately work their whole lifetime in low-wage jobs with few benefits and live an average of seven years longer. Unions are an effective weapon against discrimination and poverty. Women in unions typically earn much more then women in unorganized workplaces. Unions close the wage gap based on gender and minority status for their members.
In 2009, President Obama signed into law the "Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act" permitting women to file discrimination charges up to 180 days after their last wrongful paycheck. Forty-six years after the Equal Pay Act passed U.S. women make only 78 cents to the dollar what men make. African-American women make only 69 cents on the dollar, while Latinas earn only 59 cents. According to the Department of Education, women are still funneled into "pink collar jobs" and are "overwhelmingly clustered in low-wage, low-skill fields." Two thirds of working women earn less than $30,000 a year. If parity was truly achieved women would receive $210,000 more over their working lifetimes.
Healthcare is a major concern for women. The Connecticut Foundation for Women found that women have higher out-of-pocket medical expenses and are more vulnerable to medical debt. Only 42 percent of firms now offer healthcare, and cost shifting means more out-of-pocket expenses. Half of all bankruptcies are due to medical bills, and 56 percent of those who file are women.
Since the affiliation of the Connecticut Independent Labor Union / Connecticut Independent Police Union as UE Local 222, the union has embarked on a campaign to raise the miserably low pay of school paraprofessionals, 95 percent of whom are women, and who earn substantially less than any other public employees in the state of Connecticut. In the short time UE has represented paraprofessionals in Connecticut, the union has been successful in making pay equity a key part of the work, including obtaining healthcare benefits for paraprofessionals in Wallingford and dependent coverage for food service workers in Suffield.
Women workers experience the denial of family medical leave and shared leave, and the refusal of reasonable requests for shift changes so they can care for themselves and their families. While these are problems that can impact all workers, the main task of caregiver (whether it be of small children or elderly parents) usually falls to a woman. This means that the average woman spends only 27 years in the workforce, while a man spends 40 years. This, in addition to women's longer lifespans, adds up to a calamitous fate at retirement. While a male could expect approximately $21,000 in annual pension payouts, for a woman the figure is a mere $12,000. One half of working women have no retirement. Over 20 percent of women over the age of 65 live below the poverty level, with single women of color and Latinas having double this rate.
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 71st UE CONVENTION:
- Calls on locals and regions to educate members to bargain for women's equality and to fight women's oppression in all aspects at their workplace;
- Calls for a high-quality federal day care program and calls upon locals to renew the fight for employer-funded childcare, available for all shifts, in their respective contracts;
- Calls on the union at all levels to demand pay equity for women, recognizing that organization and collective bargaining are the best and most lasting ways to achieve this goal;
- Calls on the union at all levels to demand quality affordable healthcare for all and adequate retirement benefits;
- Calls on all locals and regions to educate their members and women's organizations to support workers' rights by demanding that companies, the U.S. government, and international financial institutions adopt and enforce core workers' rights;
- Supports legislation to create a welfare system which does not penalize women for staying home to take care of children and offers genuine job assistance with a living wage and quality childcare;
- Supports the right of all women, regardless of economic status, to choose whether to continue or terminate a pregnancy, to have access to free, confidential, and effective birth control and family planning services, to be protected against forced sterilization, and not discriminated against because of women's health issues;
- Calls on the union at all levels to educate members on the workplace menace that is sexual harassment, and to combat harassment, intimidation and sexist attitudes wherever found; and supports strengthening workers' compensation laws in all states with improved provisions on injuries sustained from physical attacks in the workplace;
- Calls on locals to press for company-paid training programs for all workers, allowing women to upgrade their skills, and calls upon locals to fight for the rights of women to enter jobs that have been traditionally reserved for men;
- Calls on the union at all levels to actively provide training, encouragement and support for women to become active at all levels of the union, including leadership, and fight any aspect of women's oppression within the union.