NEW LEADERSHIP GUIDE FOR UNION WOMEN

Friday, June 20, 2008

(PAI)
NEW LEADERSHIP GUIDE FOR UNION WOMEN

    WASHINGTON (PAI)--Prompted by twin findings that female-run units are more successful at winning union organizing drives, but that female organizers often “burn out,” a Michigan State professor has written a new leadership guide for union women.

    “Strategies for Promoting Women’s Leadership by Prof. Michelle Kaminski, “is designed to help any educator or unionist lead a workshop for union activists in a small-group setting,” said the Coalition of Labor Union Women, which is promoting it. “People will not only get valuable ideas, but also talk about how they can carry them out in their unions.”

    The guide was inspired by a report last year from the Berger-Marks Foundation, run by The Newspaper Guild/CWA. The foundation trains and pays for training of female organizers. The foundation also has taken a special look, in a report last year, at problems facing those organizers.   Besides burnout, they include unions’ reluctance to accommodate the work-family balance that hits union women harder than union men.

    The organizing guide is in line with the AFL-CIO’s goal, set several years ago, to increase diversity among both union leadership and staff, including organizers. It includes handouts showing the “union difference” in pay and benefits between union and non-union women, along with seven strategies for the groups--which are supposed to be no larger than 30 people--to discuss.

    “The leadership should look like the membership.” While that’s our goal, the labor movement overall has not yet achieved that. Women make up 44 percent of union members, but when you look at the top leadership, we don’t see women in 44% of those positions,’ the guide says. That includes unions such as AFT (60% women members, 39% female leaders), AFSCME (52% women, 38% female leaders), the Service Employees (50% women, 32% female leaders) and the Communications Workers (51% women, 12% female leaders).

    “As far as we know, none of the largest unions in the U.S. have as high a percentage of top women leaders as they have women members. AFSCME comes the closest. If you look at your union, do you see the same percentage of women leaders and women members?” the guide asks.

    The guide covers strategies women can use to mobilize workplaces and increase their own influence in unions.   Some are: Emphasizing specific issues women could use unionization to push, citing female organizers--such as Mary Harris “Mother” Jones and Dolores Huerta--as role models, establishing mentoring programs and networking (such as through CLUW) and getting the union to commit to increasing diversity.

    Information about the guide is available from CLUW: www.cluw.org. ###