Mothers need flexibility at work so they can continue to work effectively while raising a family. And they need the ability to exit and enter the workforce without the huge pay cuts given to those considered on “the mommy track.”
ACTION: Mothers want—
- Government incentives for flexible work options.
- Fair wages and benefits for part-time positions.
- Fair wages for mothers returning to the workforce.
Not Your Father's Union
by Anna Burger, Secretary-Treasurer, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and Chair Change to Win
It’s not just your father’s union anymore. In fact, it’s probably your mother’s, or sister’s, or daughter’s.
Women are a higher percentage of union members now than anytime in American history, making a difference in their lives and in our society as a whole.
Just as the work force and workplace changed, unions are changing too and so have their priorities. No longer is it just about wages and benefits—now it’s much broader, from childcare to comp time— helping women with the tools they need as they juggle work and family.
As a mother, and as a top officer of America’s fastest growing union, I see that the changes happening in the workplace are having a profound impact on women’s ability to balance work life and family life. And while union evolution has brought about several advancements, we have only begun to respond to the astonishing changes in our economy.
When I was a kid growing up in Pennsylvania, the daughter of a disabled truck driver and a nurse, a strong union movement made it possible for my brother and sisters and I to have a decent way of life. My parents were able to own their own home, and I was able to go to college, thanks to a higher prevalence of union jobs and the better standard of living they represent. Then, one in three workers was part of a union. Now, it’s one in twelve. And working families like the one I grew up in are having to choose between sending their kids to school or paying for healthcare; buying gas or paying their rent.
My union, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), is leading the way in using union power to help workers adjust to these changes. The majority of SEIU members are women, and they know full well the difficulty in juggling work and family demands in a difficult economic situation.
We are, in essence, recreating the entire workplace landscape. Once simply an employer-employee relationship, union members are now negotiating on behalf of their entire families, making a difference not only in their lives but in their communities.
Union members now seek benefits that deal with the meshing of work and family life. Parental leave, sick leave banks, comp time, and flextime are common in SEIU contracts. But that’s not all. Workers are creating new rights that address real-life family and community needs.
- SEIU nurses have negotiated limits on mandatory overtime, a common hospital practice that wreaks havoc on nurses’ family lives and puts patient safety at risk.
- SEIU members have won the right to use paid leave to attend parent/teacher conferences and other school-related activities with their children.
- SEIU members worked with employers to provide a wide range of childcare, recreation, education, and special needs funding for more than 10,000 children in New York.
- Last year in California, SEIU women members led a coalition that won unprecedented legislation providing better levels of paid maternity and paternity leave and flexible work and family programs.
- Hundreds of thousands of janitors, home care workers, nursing home employees, and others have access to affordable health insurance today simply because they formed a union with SEIU.
- And in changing work environments like home based childcare, our union is creating new models of unions to give working families a voice and improve their lives and the services they provide.
But even with these hard-won victories, more and more workers are without healthcare, pensions, or other benefits. Two things must happen to reverse this trend: One, unions must replicate on a mass scale the strategies described above, and two, unions must launch dramatic new organizing campaigns to bring millions more workers into the union fold.
Progressive change has never happened in our country from the top down. Uniting workers to have a real voice in their jobs will ensure that progress happens from the workplace up.