So I got a call the other day asking if I'd like to appear on a labor-oriented radio program to talk about the Employee Free Choice Act and women. Of course I said yes, and if you're interested, you can listen to the whole program here.
I meant to blog this earlier, but today is Blog for Equal Pay Day. Specter kind of took over the news cycle, but I do have a few things to say about this.
Women still make only 78 cents to every dollar men make. From the National Women's Law Center via Change.org:
Women are far more likely to live in poverty than men. Women working full-time, year-round are paid only about 78 cents for every dollar earned by men. African-American women earn 69 cents and Latinas earn 59 cents for every dollar paid to men. This wage gap cannot be dismissed as the result of "women's choices" in career and family matters. In fact, authoritative studies show that even when all relevant career and family attributes are taken into account, there is still a significant, unexplained gap in men's and women's earnings. Thus, even when women make the same career choices as men and work the same hours, they still earn less.
*”On average, unionization raised women’s wages by 11.2 percent – about $2.00 per hour – compared to non-union women with similar characteristics.”
Jill at Feministe was kind enough to run a guest post from yours truly on the Employee Free Choice Act, unions, and why they're feminist issues. I'm going to give you the beginning here, but ask you nicely to read the rest over there since she gave me the platform.
So our economy is falling apart, right? And the government keeps bailing out these massive financial firms while talking Very Sternly to the auto company CEOs about how they need to restructure and cut costs. Of course, the number one cost CEOs and reporters love to talk about is the “labor cost,” all the while nicely avoiding mentioning that “labor cost” is what real people make in wages and other benefits.
Unions, in other words, are a convenient bogeyman, yet they do and have done more to improve the living standards of American workers than anything else. And 44% of union workers are women. According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research:
“If the share of women in unions continues to grow at the same rate as it has over the last 25 years, women will be the majority of the unionized workforce by 2020.”
There’s a bill in Congress right now that you’ve probably heard of called the Employee Free Choice Act. Briefly, the bill would allow three things: it would allow workers to form a union simply by signing a card—the so-called “card check” provision; it would provide binding arbitration for employers and workers when they cannot agree on a contract; and it would strengthen penalties against employers who seek to intimidate workers trying to form a union.
And I believe it should be a feminist issue.
My EFCA piece over at Global Comment.
In his press conference Tuesday night, Barack Obama took pains to emphasize that comprehensive solutions were needed to the economic crisis, and that working families were suffering and needed help to create real wealth.
Congress has before it a bill that would help lessen the inequality in America and support those working families by helping workers organize into unions. That bill is the Employee Free Choice Act, H.R. 1409, introduced on March 10 by George Miller of California, with a who’s who of congresspeople as cosponsors.
Economist Mark Price of the Keystone Research Center in Pennsylvania says,
“Unions make sure that as productivity rises the wealth which this increased productivity creates shows up in the paychecks of workers. Unions do this because they give workers more bargaining power and that bargaining power translates into higher wages.”
Price also notes that a stronger labor movement is key in creating a sustainable economy once the crisis is stabilized. “Like the need for increased financial regulation, a stronger union movement is critical to making sure that when the economy does recover that recovery produces widely shared gains.”
EFCA, as it is known, is shaping up to be the biggest battle over organized labor since 1947, and big business is pouring millions into advertising and lobbying against the bill—including Citigroup and other bailed-out businesses. The irony of using taxpayer dollars from working people to defeat a bill that aims to help working people is not lost on EFCA supporters.
