Women at work; meeting the challenge of job and family

Carolyn J. Jacobson

WOMEN AT WORK Meeting the Challenge of Job and Family

Women are entering the workplace in record numbers. Even so, the fastest growing place for women is in the ranks of the poor.

Today, they face many of the same challenges that confronted women who entered the workforce a decade ago: the continuing struggle for pay equity, finding work in jobs traditionally filled by males, guaranteeing job safety, and balancing home obligations with work.

And union women, whom AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland described as the people "who are really drawing the water and hewing the wood" in the labor movement, continue to strive for wider representation in elected positions in unions in proportion to their ranks in organized labor.

Since the mid-1970s, the U.S. civilian labor force has grown 21 percent. Working women account for more than 62 percent of the total growth, as their numbers have risen from 37 million to 50 million. In 1985, women comprised nearly 44 percent of the civilian labor force, compared with 40 percent in 1975. The only industrialized country whose female labor force participation rate surpasses America's is Sweden, where the rate is 80 percent.

A record 54.5 percent of U.S. women over age 15 were working or looking for work in 1985. In the prime working age group 25 to 54, nearly 70 percent were in the labor force.

"By the end of the next decade fully 60 percent of all working women are expected to be in the labor force, including almost 80 percent of those aged 25 to 54," the Women's Bureau of the Labor Dept. predicted.

"Women work because it is a permanent economic necessity," said President Joyce Miller of the Coalition of Labor Union Women. "Now it takes two incomes to support a family."

However, many working women are the sole providers for their families. The number of families maintained by women grew more than 84 percent between 1970 and 1984. This is a result of more marriages ending in divorce and more women having children without marrying.

In March 1984, 10.3 million families--16 percent of all U.S. households--had as their principal support women who were divorced, separated, widowed or never married. The single female heads of households have higher unemployment, lower educational attainment, more dependent children and lower earnings than other labor force groups. These factors help explain why there is a high incidence of poverty in these families.

Last year, government statistics showed that 13 million women, of whom 4.2 million are non-white, were living in poverty. In 1983 more than 40 percent of the people in families headed by women--12 million mothers and children--were poor, up from 8.2 million in 1973. The number of poor people in families headed by women jumped by 25 percent in the past four years.

Diana M. Pearce, director of research at Catholic University's Center for National Policy Review, noted that "the trend is that women, particularly those maintaining families, are disproportionately poor at the same time other groups are moving out of poverty."

The notion that women work for "pin money" is a myth. The fact that women remain in the workforce for an average of 34 years and typically hold full-time jobs, should convince skeptics that most women workers aren't temporary employees.

Women have made considerable progress through legislation over the decade. Yet many gains were set in motion before "the Reagan counter-revolution" began in 1981.

These advances include passage of the pregnancy disability law, active enforcement of anti-discrimination laws and aggressive federal affirmative action programs. The Carter Administration endorsed many goals and priorities of the women's movement, including the campaign for the Equal Rights Amendment.

In contrast, the Reagan Administration has not only rejected the legitimacy of the women's movement, but holds its agenda in contempt. In its place, the Administration embraces the right-wing issues of Phyllis Schlafly and the Moral Majority.

President Reagan's approach to women's rights is "the big show." To date, his only visible contribution to furthering women's rights has been his appointment of Sandra Day O'Connor to the Supreme Court and other prominent conservative Republican women to key posts. Yet, even former United Nations Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick publicly complained of the sexism that greeted such appointments and her own discomfort at Cabinet meetings dominated by males.

While the President's policies have produced substantial tax reductions for the wealthy a House Ways & Means study last year found that taxes for a single-parent family of three, living at the poverty level, had risen $500 since 1980 even after adjustment for inflation.

Because women comprise three-fourths of the elderly poor in the United States, deep Reagan cuts in food stamps and Medicare are particularly hard on those who are old and female.

In 1984 more than three out of five women maintaining families had children under 18. Where both parents work, the primary child/home responsibilities still lie with the women.

Reagan has consistently sought to require all recipients of Aid For Families with Dependent Children to seek employment. At the same time, he has seriously hampered their ability to work by cutting funds for inexpensive child care and for job training.

Today, child care must compete with programs for the elderly and services for battered women for a share of state block grant money. In 1981, the largest federal program grant money to states for child care was cut 21 percent. The Administration has pushed through additional reductions in related programs. Further cutbacks will come this year under the Gramm-Rudman law.

By reducing AFDC funds for job training, the Administration ignores the significant fact that most AFDC households are headed by single women, two-thirds of whom are high school dropouts usually without job skills or work experience. Also, for the past five years the Administration has proposed the elimination of the Work Incentive Program that was established in 1967 to provide job conseling, training, job placement and support services to AFDC recipients seeking permanent employment.

The Administration has succeeded in making even part-time work less attractive, andoften economically unfeasible to AFDC recipients, by cutting provisions that enable women to maintain benefits while they work. A not uncommon situation exists in Kentucky where a mother with two children is disqualified for AFDC financial aid if she works more than 25 hours a week at the minimum wage.

In mid-1985, the unemployment rate for women over age 19 was 6.7 percent, or 3,148,000, as compared to 6.5 percent or 3,891,000 for males over age 19.

Minority women face even higher unemployment rates and have a greater employment disparity than do their male counterparts. The unemployment rate for minority women over age 19 is 12.8 percent; for minority men in the same age group, the rate is 11.1 percent. These numbers do not include people who have been discouraged from seeking employment or are underemployed.

Women with children under age three, many of whom are the sole supporters of their families, are twice as likely to be unemployed.

Because working women are concentrated in the service sector or soft industry jobs, they are less susceptible to the boom or bust trends of business. While women were not noticeably affected, many men in heavy industry lost their jobs in the 1982 recession. This resulted in the unemployment rate for women dropping to slightly below the male unemployment rate.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s women's groups spearheaded many state rafifications of the federal Equal Rights Amendment. Although 35 states ratified ERA, it fell short of final passage by three states before the June 1982 deadline. The Reagan Administration provided no support for the ratification drive.

The Reagan approach to equal rights for women is a statute-by-statute approach that effectively weakens the drive for women's equality. Commenting on this approach, author Gloria Steinem charged that "Ronald Reagan is the most anti-equality President in history."

The Administration is now attempting to water down or abolish a 1965 Executive Order that established the Office of Federal Contract Compliance. The order forbids job discrimination by federal contractors and sets guidelines for affirmative action.

The EEOC, established in 1965 to investigate complaints brought under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, has radically changed its mission. The Reagan EEOC has said it will move away from class action suits on employment discrimination. In 1980 the commission accepted 322 suits on employment discrimination; in 1984 the number decreased to 216. The rate of settlements also has declined from 32 percent in 1980 to 14.4 percent in 1985.

Concerned that a backlash is brewing, the Administration has made some efforts in recent months to reverse the declines.

Since it began work in 1981, the Reagan EEOC has successfully completed litigation of class action suits brought to court by the Carter Administration. But similar cases filed with the commission now are being denied because like the previous suits, they are based on statistical evidence of discrimination, which the EEOC is reluctant to accept as legally valid.

Reagan's EEOC chairman, Clarence Thomas, said: "I personally have problems with cases that rely on statistical evidence of discrimination." In an attempt to move away from class action suits, the commission has said it favors smaller cases with easily identifiable victims and tangible evidence beyond statistics.

It is this sort of reluctance to act that prompted AFL-CIO General Counsel Laurence S. Gold to characterize the Reagan approach to discrimination as "no enforcement of the laws on the books. In the past, federal enforcement pushed the law along and provided real protections for women and minorities. That's not true anymore."

Although the Administration has placed a high priority on scrapping affirmative action plans across the country, it is far from reaching its goal.

The chief proponent of this policy is William Bradford Reynolds, head of Justice Dept.'s Civil Rights Division. Reagan had nominated Reynolds to the third highest spot in the department, associate attorney general, but he was rebuffed by the Senate Judiciary Committee for laxity in enforcing civil rights laws.

Reynolds and the Administration suffered another defeat earlier last year when dozens of states and cities rejected his request to dismantle their affirmative action plans. The Administration is, no doubt, less than pleased that private industry, with the exception of small firms, also has not dismantled such programs that were put into place in the 1970s.

The so-called independent U.S. Commission on Civil Rights under Reagan has become nothing more than a mouthpiece for the President's social agenda. In addition to opposing school busing and affirmative action, last April the commission urged Congress and government agencies to disavow the principle of pay equity, which calls for all workers to be paid equally for work of comparable value even if the jobs are quite different.

The two Carter holdovers on the commission dissented, accusing the majority of preparing a "distorted" report that based its conclusion on inaccurate data and the use of faulty terminology.

The dissenters asked for an audit of the report by the General Accounting Office, a standard procedure. The GAO agreed with the dissenters. It found the report filled with "inaccuracies" and "errors" and noted that the commission had defined the concept of "comparable worth" differently than do its supporters in concluding the idea could not work.

The commission subsequently rejected the GAO audit.

One area where the Administration has been sensitive to women is in its actions on sexual harassment.

Surveys have shown that well over half the female workforce has experienced sexual harassment at some time during their careers.

The Reagan EEOC continues to uphold the position that such harassment constitutes sex discrimination under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. To its credit, the Reagan commission has held firm to the principle established by its predecessor and continues to actively pursue and litigate sexual harassment cases.

With about 44 percent of the workforce made up of women, safety and health issues that affect them have gained much attention in recent years.

Women who entered nontraditional jobs especially in heavy industry or those involving use of chemicals, prompted increased research into health hazards.

However, in the first sexual harassment case that has reached the Supreme Court, the Justice Dept.'s brief supports a narrow view of employers' strict liability. Unfortunately, women have at times become victims of the very research that set out to protect them against workplace hazards. Employers, seeking to insure themselves against lawsuits charging birth defects or miscarriages due to workplace hazards, began creating policies that automatically excluded hiring women of childbearing age or terminated their jobs when they became pregnant.

In a 1984 case, Hayes v. Shelby Memorial Hospital, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals court ruled that an x-ray technician who became pregnant could not be fired because of her pregnancy unless the hospital could prove substantial risk to the fetus. Conversely, the court said the hospital must be able to prove that a male x-ray technician is not at a health risk as well.

The danger of birth defects from workplace sex mutagents, such as radiation or lead, is real for both sexes because sex mutagents can harm both the female egg and male sperm. Preconception sex mutagents can cause birth defects and miscarriages just as readily as post-conception fetal damage.

Where women are at a significant risk, unions have fought for their right to transfer to new positions without loss of wages, seniority or benefits. The Auto Workers have such a case pending in federal district court in Milwaukee. The UAW is challenging the "fetal protection" policy of Johnson Controls Inc.'s Globe Battery Division that calls for the removal of all women capable of bearing children from areas of high exposure to lead.

Employers, seeking to avoid lawsuits based on Title VII, have become more cautions about publicly announcing discriminatory policies. Many, however, continue to use these policies informally. Ultimately, the employer must realize that the workplace must be made safe for both sexes.

In 1970 Congress established the Occupational Health & Safety them safe and healthful working conditions. OSHA, however, has sustained substantial budget cuts since the 1980 election, and has had trouble enforcing federal standards.

Reagan has cut the number of OSHA inspectors 16 percent since 1980, leaving just 1,089 to cover the nation's 5 million work sites. The agency's citations for willful violations of law have decreased by 92 percent since 1980. Citations for serious violations fell by 47 percent, and fines collected slumped 78 percent. This isn't surprising in light of a 1980 remark Reagan made to Business Week magazine. "I question seriously the need for OSHA," he said.

As the country shifts from an industrial to a services-oriented economy--out of the factory and into the office--new job safety and health hazards emerge. Office work, once considered safe and clean, is now known to involve serious health hazards.

President John Sweeney of the Service Employees noted that the problems facing office workers today "are no less serious than the problems faced by industrial workers in the 1930s. In fact, they are even more insidious because of their subtlety."

These hazards are especially relevant to women, because about 20 million are office workers. Much of the new technology used in offices involves video display terminals. The number of VDT users today is estimated at 10 million, mostly women. By 1990 that number is expected to quadruple to 40 million. VDTs, the office equipment of the '80s, raise the threat of many new hazards. Some are already well documented, while others need subtantial study before workers can be assured of safety.

Three deep concerns surrounding VDTs and office work are stress, ergonomics and reproductive health hazards. Stress results from many factors, including the conversion of the office into an assembly-line operation complete with computer-driver quotas. Ergonomics addresses the already documented problems of eyestrain, backaches and carpal tunnel syndrome, which often result from equipment designed without regard for the workers. Concern over reproductive hazards arises from clusters of birth defects and miscarriages among VDT operators.

Stress has been cited as the largest, most subtle and most ignored health problem. Studies have shown that occupations in which women predominate, particularly clerical and cashier work, have the greatest incidence of job-related stress. A report by the National Institute of Occupational Safety & Health (NIOSH) said VDT operators have a higher level of stress than any other group of workers studied, including air traffic controllers.

In 1980, the Framingham Heart Study found that female clerical workers developed coronary heart disease--clearly identified as stress-related--at almost twice the rate of other women workers, including housewives. Furthermore, this study found that female clerical workers with children and blue-collar husbands developed coronary heart disease at nearly twice the rate of all men workers.

The Teachers responded to overwhelming reports of stress among AFT members related to fear of physical or psychological assaults by negotiating assault-leave clauses in contracts and providing paid days off to recover from attacks.

The SEIU and employers established labor-management committees in San Francisco to discuss workplace stress factors and to implement changes.

The Graphic Communications Union has initiated a job stress project that has been used in several cities successfully. It includes a series of six workshops designed to help members understand stress, make note of its causes in their workplaces, and recommend changes to an advisory committee.

Beyond the stress factor, ergonomics has emerged as a new issue for office workers. The problems are real for millions of VDT operators who work with machines that were not designed with the worker in mind.

Poorly designed work stations result in backaches, eyestrain and other ailments. Carpal tunnel syndrome is most severe in occupations where women predominate, such as keyboard operators, cashiers, meat wrappers, as well as poultry, garment and bakery workers. The syndrome is a debilitating nerve condition that can result in complete loss of hand motion if not treated properly. Other hand disorders, such as tendonitis, are common in similar jobs where women predominate.

Certain VDT problems can be easily corrected. Equipment should have glare-proof screens as well as height adjustable keyboards, work areas and chairs. Most important, it should be designed with the worker in mind. Employees who must use repetitive hand motion should be given frequent regular breaks.

The Communications Workers, which estimates that one-half of its 524,000 members use VDTs, developed voluntary guidelines for VDT work in its 1983 negotiations with AT&T.

The Newspaper Guild has extensive collective bargaining provisions dealing with ergonomics. Its contract clauses provide rest breaks from the VDT and eye exams, as well as radiation protection.

Another concern for VDT users is potential reproductive hazards. Clusters of disproportionately high incidents of miscarriage and birth defects have touched off fears among VDT operators.

The computer industry and management have contended that radiation emitted by VDTs poses no health threat to operators. Unions insist that more conclusive research is needed, particularly on the effects of low-level radiation and stress that may lead to birth defects.

Last June, the SEIU, the 9 to 5 National Association of Working Women and Dr. Irving J. Selikoff of the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine launched a major study that will involve, 10,000-12,000 office workers nationwide. The study addresses pregnancy hazards related to VDT use. Other office problems including ergonomics, chemical toxins and stress will also be studied. Further research on VDT use is currently being conducted in Canada and Sweden.

Patterned after labor's "right-to-know" campaign on toxic hazards, a coalition of unions and women's groups initiated an effort in 20 state legislatures to pass VDT standards and guidelines. Results have been slow, but the campaign has worked to educate the public on the problems.

New Mexico is the first state to issue guidelines on ergonomics. In Oregon, both houses of the legislature adopted a VDT bill, but it was vetoed by the governor. Other states with at least minimal guidelines or standards for workers are Rhode Island, California, Colorado and Maine.

As a result of these efforts, employers have begun to adopt guidelines calling for improvements in VDT terminals and work stations. Equipment manufacturers are redesigning machines, and their second- and third-generation models are being built with key improvements that address the concerns of unions.

The phenomenal influx of women into the labor force in recent years brought with it a marked change in employment patterns. Large numbers of women entered various new occupations, including managerial and administrative positions.

Yet, a significant wage gap continues between men and women. From the early 1960s until 1979 women earned only 59 cents for each $1 men were paid. The gap has been narrowed to 64 cents in recent years.

The driving force behind the narrowing of the gender gap in wages is the simultaneous decline of the male-dominated manufacturing sector, which pays higher wages and growth of the lower-paid service sector where women predominate. It is not the small gains women have made in their earnings.

Although the gap has narrowed, it is clear that there is little reason to believe that a solution to the poverty in which many women are trapped is around the corner.

While the breakdown of barriers to men's jobs which began in the 1970s has resulted in some women moving into these higher-paying jobs, this explains only part of the gradual narrowing of the wage gap.

There has been a dramatic increase in the number of women at the top of the job pyramid, but there are relatively few jobs at the top. The bulk of the jobs still are on the bottom.

In 1983, more than half of all full-time women workers were employed in sales, service or clerical jobs that offer limited promotional and salary opportunities.

In sales, where women make up a large percentage of the workers, they earned less than 50 percent as much as male sales clerks in 1983.

Commissioner Janet Norwood of the Bureau of Labor Statistics noted that while "employed women are clearly moving into higher-paying jobs, the actual numbers engaged in those occupations remain relatively low."

Although the number of women lawyers increased more than fivefold over the last decade, she pointed out that there are still fewer than 100,000 in the legal profession, and they make up only 15 percent of the total.

In 1983, women accounted for 99 percent of secretaries, 97 percent of typists, 96 percent of registered nurses, house cleaners and servants, 92 percent of bookkeepers and bank tellers, 87 percent of cashiers, 82 percent of elementary school teachers, 75 percent of food service workers and 70 percent of retail clerks.

According To Dollars and Sense Magazine, "There were fewer than 75,000 full-time women lawyers and judges and fewer than 50,000 full-time women physicians, compared to nearly 650,000 full-time women typists. The result of this crowding into dead-end jobs translates into full-time year-round women workers with a high school diploma averaging less pay in 1983 than fully employed men with fewer than eight years of elementary school education."

Women lawyers are still found in such lower-paying specializations as domestic relations and trusts and estates, rather than in litigation or negligence law. Women physicians are mainly in family practice and pediatrics, as opposed to surgery and internal medicine. In 1983 their earnings lagged behind male elementary school teachers at 87 percent, among lawyers at 88 percent and among computer programmers at 81 percent.

Only eight of every 1,000 employed women hold high-level executive, administrative or managerial jobs, and women occupy about 455, or 3 percent, of the 16,000 seats on boards of the 1,000 largest corporations listed by Fortune magazine.

Pay Equity

Work done predominantly by women has been and still is consistently undervalued. This imbalanced must first be identified and corrected through a series of steps. For instance, registered nurses--skilled workers of whom 96 percent are women--have an average annual income of $18,980. By contrast, unskilled male workers in a number of occupations have average earnings of $21,840 a year.

To correct this kind of injustice, pay equity calls for job evaluations that take into account an individual's responsibility, knowledge, skills required and work environment regardless of sex. Pay scales would then be restructured to reflect true job values rather than institutionalized sex discrimination.

Opponents of pay equity, including the Reagan Administration, scoff at the concept. They contend that it would destroy the historic relationship between marketplace supply and demand, bankrupt employers and create unnecessary bureaucracy.

President Reagan has condemned it as "a cockamamie idea...that would destroy the basis of free enterprise."

Reagan's Civil Rights Commission has labeled the pay equity standard "profoundly" and "irreversibly flawed." The EEOC has refused to act on a study it commissioned that found substantial wage discrimination does exist against women.

President Gerald McEntee of the State, County & Municipal Employees, whose union has been in the forefront on this issue, charged that the Reagan Administration "has transformed the EEOC from a catalyst for change in efforts to remove bias from the nation's wage scales into a focal point of opposition to pay equity."

Phyllis Schlafly, a dogmatic opponent of the Equal Rights Amendment, called pay equity "a conspiracy theory of jobs." She insisted that "not a shred of evidence has been produced" to support the contention of sex-based wage discrimination.

But statistics continue to show a significant wage gap. In 1985 women averaged only 64 cents for every dollar men were paid. In 1981, a committee set up by the National Research Council to study occupation classification concluded that:

* On the average, women are paid 20 percent less than men who hold equivalent jobs.

* Women do different work than men and the work they do is paid less.

* The more an occupation is dominated by women, the less it pays.

* Substantial discrimination does exist, though not necessarily by intent.

While the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 represented substantial gains for women, they failed to correct institutionalized wage scales that undervalue the work women perform.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has cited a continued concentration of women in low-paying service sector jobs. In 1984, 80 percent of the women in the workforce filled 20 percent of the Labor Dept.'s 427 job classifications. The most common occupations for women were in expanding, low-paying dead-end jobs--secretarial, bookkeeping, nursing and cashier work.

Rep. Mary Rose Oakar (D-Ohio), a leading congressional advocate of pay equity, pointed out that "secretaries, 90 percent of whom are women, earn approximately $4,000 less a year than a truck driver. Private household workers, 95 percent of whom are women, earn less than one-half of what janitors are paid. Most child are workers--usually women--are paid less than dog pound attendants, typically men."

The National Committee on Pay Equity found that a women with a four-year college degree can expect an average salary equivalent to that of the average male worker without a high school diploma.

In fact, Census Bureau figures show that in 1984 the median income of a year-round, full-time female worker was $15,422. Her male counterpart earned $24,004.

Critics of pay equity argue that until women choose nontraditional jobs, they should expect to receive low wages. But Winn Newman, CLUW's general counsel, stressed that suggesting to women who don't like the wage gap that they get another job is like "telling someone who has been mugged to move to another neighborhood."

In the early 1980s, courts and state legislatures began to see the light. By the end of 1983, 25 state legislatures and several municipalities had passed pay equity laws, resolutions or ordinanaces covering government employees. As of mid-1985, all but five states had bowed to political pressure, labor negotiations or lawsuits and were examining or had examined the issue of pay equity for state workers.

Minnesota led the way. In 1979, with strong support from AFSCME, the legislature ordered a review of pay scales. After finding that women were paid 25 percent less than men for jobs rated higher in responsibility and accountability, legislation was enacted in 1982 requirring equal pay for state employees in jobs of comparable value.

This landmark measure led to pay equity raises averaging $1,600 for 8,000 workers. The impact on the state payroll was lower than had been expected. The state spent an additional $22 million, which constituted a 4 percent increase in the payroll.

In 1984, Minnesota led the way again by requiring all local governments to study and correct their pay systems. Minnesota expects full correction of pay scales to be implemented by 1987.

In a precedent-setting 1981 case involving women employees of Oregon's Washington County, the Supreme Court reversed its earlier interpretation and ruled that claims for sex-based discrimination can be brought under Title VII, even though no member of the opposite sex holds an equal but higher paying job. The court ruled the employer could have a justifiable wage differential only if the differential could be proven to be based on seniority, merit, quantity or quality of production or any factor other than sex.

On the basis of this decision, prison matrons won the right to sue the county for disparate wage scales. The scales were established by the county after it completed a survey of jobs in the community. The prevailing wage was paid to male guards, female guards were paid less.

Thus, County of Washington v. Gunther opened up the possibility of claims based on comparable work as contrasted to comparable worth.

It was organized labor that took the next step toward achieving pay equity.

With Gunther established, AFSCME took the state of Washington to court in 1983, noting that job evaluations conducted by the state documented that jobs in which women predominated by 70 percent were underpaid by an average of 20 percent when compared to jobs in male-dominated fields.

Federal District Judge Jack Tanner found the state guilty of "pervasive" discrimination and ordered it to pay about $860 million in pay equity raises and back pay to some 15,000 state workers. Clearly, the precedent for this ruling comes from the Gunther decision, but the state of Washington ruling went one step further by accepting job evaluations as valid evidence.

But pay equity critics got a chance to celebrate last September when the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco overturned Tanner's decision as it ruled that the 1964 Civil Rights Act "does not obligate (Washington State) to eliminate an economic inequality which it did not create." Writing for the three-judge panel, Judge Anthony Kennedy said, "The state did not create the market disparity and has not been shown to have been motivated by impermissible sex-based considerations in setting salaries."

Despite the appellate court reversal, the state agreed to an out-of-court settlement with AFSCME. Under the agreement, nearly 35,,000 state employees in predominantly female jobs will share $101 million over the next six years. The first installment provides for $46.5 million in pay increases during a 15-month period ending June 1987.

Additional pay equity increases amounting to about $10 million will be awarded annually through 1992.

Depending on their job classifications, the agreement calls for most workers to get raises ranging from 12 to 14 percent spread over six years.

In California, AFSCME negotiated a three-year contract valued at $12 million for Los Angeles city workers. The union intiated the negotiations by conducting an extensive analysis of Los Angeles wage scales and documenting pay inequities.

Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley called the agreement a historic step that will "send a message to cities across the country."

The list of successful bargaining and litigation cases has grown to prominence from being virtually non-existent in the late 1970s. In 1981 San Jose, Calif., municipal workers ended a nine-day strike when the recieved pay adjustments from the city totalling $1.5 million.

Last year, the SEIU negotiated a two-year contract for San Francisco workers that provides $28.2 million in pay equity adjustments.

SEIU locals are suing Los Angeles County on charges of segregating 40,000 workers by race and sex in hiring, wage scales and promotions. This is the first pay equity case being pursued that includes race discrimination.

In Massachusetts, AFSCME was successful in persuading the governor to address comparable worth for state employees at the bargaining table.

In Iowa, AFSCME has negotiated a comparable worth study that is expected to upgrade the wages of 63 percent of the AFSCME-represented workers--46 percent of whom are in female-dominated jobs.

Pay equity cases are pending in Michigan, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and California, and studies are being done in many other states.

In the private sector, change is happening more slowly. But at Yale University, clerical and technical workers represented by the Hotel Employees & Restaurant Employees won a pay equity clause in their contract last year. The agreement provides a 35-percent wage increase over the 42-month contract and a new 17-step pay scale.

Pay equity negotiations are pending in many states. Unions, led by AFSCME and SEIU, and women's groups have been at the cutting edge of the campaign. The AFL-CIO convention in 1985 reiterated labor's commitment to pay equity and pledged a continued effort to bring change through collective bargaining, legislation and legal action.

The struggle is still very real.

Women and Unions

The 1985 AFL-CIO study, "The Changing Situation of Workers and Their Unions," found unions running "behind the pace of change."

The American workforce added 1.3 million new workers per year in the 1960s and 2.1 million per year in the 1970s. But the labor movement's membership remained static. Organizing gains were offset by job losses in basic industries. Union membership declined in the 1980s. The proportion of eligible workers who join a union has fallen from about 45 percent to almost 28 percent since 1945. Using the percentage of the entire workforce, which includes executives, supervisors and the self-employed, the decline has been from 35 percent to under 19 percent.

Although more than 50 percent of all women work outside the home, only 13.2 percent of those in full- or part-time jobs were union members in 1985. In 1977, 15.7 percent were union members. Comparable figures for male workers showed a drop from 29.6 percent in 1977 to 22.1 percent in 1985.

Even so, the proportion of male workers in unions has not kept pace with the proportion of female workers in unions.

A 1985 paper titled "Union Maids: Unions and the Female Work Force," by Richard B. Freeman and Jonathan S. Leonard, noted that with the rising participation of women in the workforce, the female proportion of union members increased from 19 percent in 1956 to 41 percent in 1983.

In 1956 only 15 percent of female workers were union members compared to 31 percent of male workers. In January 1985, 16.2 percent of women workers over age 24 were in Unions, compared to 26.4 percent of male workers.

Today, two of every five union members is a woman. More than 7 million women belong to unions, compared with 4 million a decade ago.

Women are beginning to emerge in leadership positions in the labor movement, but not yet in proportion to their numbers in the workforce. They do fill high level staff positions in the AFL-CIO, as well as in affiliate unions. Leading women include Joyce Miller, president of the Coalition of Labor Union Women and a vice president of the Clothing & Textile Workers, and Barbara Hutchinson, a vice president of the Government Employees. Both serve as AFL-CIO vice presidents. Women are also top-level assistants to both AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland and Sec.-Treas. Thomas R. Donahue.

Women presidents of affiliated unions include Linda Puchala of the Flight Attendants, Colleen Dewhurst of Actors' Equity and Patty Duke of the Screen Actors.

The nation's largest local union is also headed by a woman--Sandra Feldman, president of the 85,000-member Teachers Local 2 in New York. And Betty Tianti was installed as president of the Connecticut AFL-CIO last fall.

With the gains in female membership, union officials have become more sensitive to women's concerns, Joyce Miller points out. Male union leaders recognize "that there is a potential for oranizing women," she notes.

Freeman and Leonard noted in their study that the biggest organizing gains in women workers have been in the public sector and white-collar occupations.

From 1973 to 1983, "the proportion of females organized in the public sector more than doubled to attain near equality with the proportion of males," the study said. In the private sector during the same period, the decline in proportion of unionized women was less than among men.

The study also found that "women are as organized as men among white-collar workers. Because of female concentration in white-collar jobs, however, women constitute 58 percent of white-collar unionists."

In new organizing campaigns women are more likely to support unions than are men, Freeman and Leonard found.

An AFL-CIO survey of more than 200 recent representation elections conducted by the National Labor Relations Board found that unions won 50 percent of the elections in which women made up 75 percent of the bargaining unit buy only two-fifths of the elections in which fewer than half the workers were women.

A BLS survey showed that in 1985 women workers under union contract had median weekly earnings of $347, compared with only $262 for nonunion women. Union pay scales for women even topped the rates of nonunion male workers, whose median weekly earnings were $315 last year.

The male-female wage differential was about the same for union and nonunion workers.

The Freeman-Leonard study indicates that unions have brought marked gains for women in white-collar jobs. They also have done better for women in the public sector than in the private sector, particularly in blue-collar jobs.

Women's blue-collar jobs predominate in the lower-paying apparel and garment industry, while blue-collar men are chiefly employed in the traditionally higher paid auto and steel industries. Thus, despite collectively bargained contracts, unions have made limited progress in altering institutionalized wage differentials.

In organizing campaigns, unions are aware that bread-and-butter issues may not always be a strong enough motivating force for women in certain white-collar sectors. Some white-collar, professional and technical workers place improvement in the scope and content of thier jobs ahead of improvement in wages, benefits and working conditions.

"They want more participation in decision-making," observed Anne Nelson, director of the Institute for Women and Work at Cornell University. Organizers now emphasize these issues and employ new and creative techniques appropriate to the particular bargaining unit. The AFL-CIO's recent report on "The Changing Situation of Workers and Their Unions" acknowledges this point and encourages organizers to devote more resources to this challenge.

Recent successful organizing campaigns involving large numbers of women illustrate this different approach.

The SEIU District 925 organizing campaign and fight for a first contract at the Syracuse, N.Y., office of the Equitable Life Assurance Society is one example. The battle centered on issues involving new office technology. The union won substantial protections in the area of health, including breaks during the day from work at video terminals and periodic safety checks of the machines.

The use of new organizing techniques also came into play at the Yale University campaign for clerical and technical workers. The organizing victory led to the negotiation of a first contract in January 1985 by the Hotel Employees & Restaurant Employees. The 2,600-member unit, predominantly, female, was solidified by a three-year drive, culminating in a 10-week strike that focused attention on the low-level wages in historically female-dominated jobs.

AFSCME has organized large numbers of female employees by stressing the need to correct wage and benefit disparity in predominantly female classifications.

The Hospital & Health Care Employees are for the first time mobilizing to organize women who work in private homes and do not meed each other, nor report to a central location.

Since early 1983, a union coalition of the SEIU, Food & Commercial Workers and the Food & Allied Service Trades Dept. has been conducting a nationwide drive at the Beverly Enterprise nursing home chain. Employees at these facilities are mostly women. In early 1985, the union victory rate was 70 percent.

But labor's foes have not been idle. In recent years, "union-busters" have developed specialized strategies appealing to women to keep unions out of the workplace.

Unions are finding that in some cases women entrants to the labor force are difficult to organize because they feel grateful just for having a job. Another roadlock to organizing is the large number of part-time workers. One of every four women in the labor force works part time.

CLUW's Role

The Coalition of Labor Union Women was founded in 1974 to seek affirmative action in the worklace, to strengthen the role of women within their unions, to encourage political and legislative activities and to organize unorganized women.

Although increasing numbers of women hold union office, many still are in lower level positions. CLUW works to assist women in gaining skills to move up in their unions. Its 1979 study, "Absent from the Agenda," examined the participation of women in union leadership roles. It found that women faced substantial barriers, including discrimination, lack of training, lack of encouragement and lack of a substantive agenda to give them a stronger voice in the labor movement.

An outgrowth of the study in 1982 was "Empowerment," a looseleaf handbook to help women learn more about their unions, gain applicable skills and develop specific problem-solving techniques.

In 1981 the Women's Project of the AFL-CIO Dept. for Professional Employees developed a training and resource guide, "Handbok for Union Staff Women." A companion training curriculum for staff development followed.

Using materials from both of these projects, CLUW developed a series of leadership training programs called "Color Me Union" for individual unions and other labor bodies to include in their education programs.

Leadership programs for union women are offered at the George Meany Center for Labor Studies, regional summer schools cosponsored by the AFL-CIO and the University-College Labor Education Association, and in separate projects by universities and unions.

A book published in 1981 by the late Barbara Mayer Wertheimer, "Labor Education for Women Workers," has been used throughout the labor movement in developing training programs. Another resource is CLUW's "Effective Contract Language for Union Women," which provides model clauses that focus on women's issues.

CLUW has grown from 10 chapters and 5,000 members in 1974 to 75 chapters and more than 18,000 members in 1985.

CLUW's Center for Education & Research is undertaking two new projects, the Future of Work Project and the Collective Bargaining Claringhouse new and emerging women's issues.

CLUW's goal is to bring together representatives of the labor movement, women's organizations, civil rights organizations and public policy decision-makers to develop research and education policies and strategies that will address these concerns.

The project will document collective bargaining progress in four major areas: pay equity and wage parity; job access, training, promotion and upgrading jobs; child and dependent care programs that assist working parents in coping with work and family responsibilities, and policies to correct the adverse effects of automation on women's job skills, pay, promotional opportunities and health.

Organized labor has long been a leading force in the fight for women's rights in the legislative arena. It actively lobbied for the 1963 Equal Pay Act and the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Both pieces of legislation were milestones in the continuing fight for equal rights.

It was a coalition of union and women's groups that spurred passage of the Pregnancy Disability Act in 1978 after the Supreme Court ruled that discrimination because of pregnancy did not amount to sex bias.

Two major victories for women in the 98th Congress--expansion of pension rights for women and improved enforcement of child support obligations--had the strong backing of organized labor.

The AFL-CIO has been on record in support of the federal Equal Rights Amendment since 1973. Although the ERA did not become the 27th amendment to the Constitution, unions were highly active in coalitions that succeeded in getting 16 states to adopt their own equal rights statutes.

Organized labor continues to support the ERA, which AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland has stressed "is not for women alone" but is "a goal for all Americans and for the cause of individual human dignity."

In reintroducing the ERA to the 99th Congress, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) noted that "women cannot depend on the courts to uphold statutory protections against discrimination." He cited the Grove City College decision, in which the Supreme Court sharply narrowed its definition of discrimination in the distribution of federal funds to college students.

Through the use of collective bargaining to fight sexual harassment in the workplace, the labor movement has been the guiding force in sensitizing the public to the issue of sex-based employment.

Work and Family

The time-consuming and costly task of child care has traditionally fallen to women. As more of them enter the workforce, the need for accessible and inexpensive child care has become increasingly apparent.

In 1984, the House Select Committee on Children, Youth & Families reported that almost half of all children under age six had mothers who worked. The Women's Bureau reported that six of every 10 women--or about 19.5 million--with children under age 18 were in the labor force in 1984. Furthermore, almost 70 percent of all married women workers with children at home are employed full time. Despite the obvious need, the United States remains the only industrialized country in the world without a national child care policy.

Congress adopted comprehensive child care legislation in 1971 but it was vetoed by President Nixon. Gloria Johnson, education and civil rights director for the Electronic Workers, has suggested that new legislation has not been enacted because people still cling to the Phyllis Schlafly myth of the nuclear family: The husband works, the wife stays home and cooks, and their two children play with the family dog in the backyard. The reality, however, is that in the 1970s only 6 percent of American families fit that "standard." In 1985, one of five children lived in a single-parent home. By 1990, that proportion is expected to rise to one in every four children.

The limited progress made in securing child care can be attributed to unions and collective bargaining. Employers, absent a federal mandate or example, have been slow to respond to the need for child care. For the few employers who provide child care programs, the advantages include decreased absenteeism and employee turnover, heightened morale and motivation, and increased ability to attract employees.

The management-oriented Conference Board reported that only 1,800 of the nation's six million employers provide child care. Those that do tend to be large, high-tech corporations, banks, insurance companies and hospitals. Unfortunately, women predominate in occupations that are most resistant to employee benefits, least of all child care, according to the Congressional Caucus on Women's Issues.

The federal government's example to employers is unimpressive. More than 23 million children in the United States require day or after-school care. In 1982 there were federally supported day care slots for only 500,000 children--a number insufficient to cover the needs of parents in New York City alone.

Federal funding under the Social Security Act that provides primary support for state child care programs was reduced from $2.9 billion to $2.4 billion in fiscal year 1982. Consequently, 25 states spent less for child care in 1984 than they did in 1981, and 27 states served fewer children in 1984 than in 1981.

One of the few compensations government has offered is a tax break for child care, which can cost anywhere from $1,500 to $10,000 a year. the going cost is about $3,000 per child. Since the average single mother earned less than $9,000 in 1982, she would have had to pay one-third of her income for center-based child care.

In 1981, Dependent Care Tax Credit was placed on a sliding scale to allow lower-income families to claim credit for a larger percentage of thier child care expenses. But the problem is that these families don't have the money to pay for child care in order to get a tax refund. In addition, the tax credit is not refundable if it exceeds the total cost the family owes in federal taxes.

The Administration now wants to transform the tax credit into a tax deduction. A 1985 AFL-CIO convention resolution noted that this would make it "far less advantageous to lower-income families."

The Pregnancy Disability Act of 1978, which gave pregnant workers the right to claim disability benefits offered by their employers, represented a significant gain for working mothers. But the act is limited to employers who already provide sick or disability leave benefits. Legislation requiring all employers to provide disability and parental leave for birth, sickness of a child and adoption has been introduced in the House. But the proposed legislation falls far short of international standards.

Dana Friedman of the Family Information Center in New York says "the mid-1980s will be remembered as the era when corporations first understood how seriously women and family issues affect the bottom lines." Employers have been slow to respond, presumably because of costs. However, Business Week magazine noted that "the outlay for child care is more than offset by the savings from higher productivity and less turnover."

Unions have made breakthroughs in negotiated child care programs and benefits. The Clothing & Textile Workers launched union-sponsored day care centers in 1968, with the first financed jointly by management and employees in Virginia.

The Ladies' Garment Workers developed a jointly funded child care center in New York with employers contributing $32 of the $82 weekly cost for each child and the Agency for Child Development subsidizing 50 percent of the operating cost.

The SEIU and AFGE publish a quarterly newsletter on child care that focuses on relevant contract language, feasibility studies and reports on union advances.

Alternative work patterns such as flex-time and job sharing are being used by some working parents to ease child care problems.

Other work arrangement include compressed and shortened workweeks, staggered hours, rotating shifts, work pauses, creative leave clauses, voucher plans, paid sabbatical and extended parental leaves.

The best way to achieve adequate, affordable and accessible child care for all Americans is through legislation, which organized labor continues to support. However, prospects for its enactment in the near future are dim. Therefore, it's up to unions to pursue innovative strategies within and beyond the collective bargaining process to attain needed child care services.

COPYRIGHT 1986 AFL-CIO
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group