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When women of color take the lead in organizing co-workers into labor unions, they are extremely successful, a 2007 study found. A new “love letter” to black women picks up on that data and urges that they rise in the labor’s ranks to benefit all U.S. workers.
The hard and intimate work of personal care assistants allows those with a disability or illness to live an active life. While $15 an hour doesn’t come close to compensating for all their work, it’s a start.
Her employer, a Chinese businesswoman, yelled at her, made death threats and cut her position without warning. In a haze of desperation she remembered a card in her wallet that another Filipina domestic helper had given her to call in an emergency.
Unlike in real life, telenovelas are promoting a prominent role for the female domestic worker in the predominantly middle class and wealthy families that employ her, a Cinderella story of sorts. But that is just a fairy tale.
“It’s been hard,” says a domestic worker who is struggling to organize and bring the country in line with the region. “The women are afraid and they have been told that if you’re a labor organizer you’re going to get killed.”
Construction work might seem worlds away from a U.S. cabinet perch, but both represent fields where women are creating new opportunities for others to follow. While the shift is too slow, we can speed things up. Here’s how.
Lower-income child care centers have caregivers who in addition to caring for the children are also required to be the janitors. As elite pre-K programs know, that’s inappropriate for students who are building neurological connections at a rate of 700 to 1,000 every second.
Their ranks are small but growing, and they want their government to join an international labor treaty. “If we organize, we can help each other,” says a 25-year-old housekeeper who started working when she was 10 and earns $75 a month.
(WOMENSENEWS)– In the case of Ellen Pao vs. her venture capital firm employer, the jury has ruled against her. Still, San Francisco was riveted by the testimony in her gender discrimination and retaliation case against Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers. And despite the outcome, Pao exposed male bias in the venture capital sector, where a recent study found that in 2013 women made up only 6 percent of partner positions, a steep decline from 1999. Whether one believes Pao or her employer, by coming forward and telling her story of inappropriate gender-based workplace conduct, Pao spotlights the issue of persistent sex discrimination in the workplace more than 50 years after federal civil rights laws prohibited such conduct.
Their case concerns civil-rights violations of low-wage workers, most of them women. It also tests whether–in line with a recent NLRB decision–the world’s largest hamburger chain can be taken to task as their employer.