Spencer GrantGetty Images
It started with a scrap of notebook paper.
My fellow preschool teachers and I were sitting on cold metal folding chairs outside the auditorium while the private school’s director—a man who earned quadruple our salaries—prattled on about why he couldn’t pay us when students were absent. It was 2019, and I had a job I loved, teaching adorable, nose-picking preschoolers. The kids were hilarious, but our working conditions weren’t so funny. While the director spoke, I quietly passed a notebook around the room that read, “Email Address (personal, not work!!).”
After that came a flurry of emails and late-night meetings in which we were finally discussing, together, all the issues we had been fuming about individually. We decided to unionize, but learned that we would first need at least 30 percent of our coworkers to sign union cards before an election could take place.
Once the director got wind of our activities, he started interrogating teachers and holding meetings euphemistically called listening sessions, promising us that “we’re on the same team!” It was a classic union-busting trick. We needed to pay our rent and “teamwork” was not an accepted currency.
Then, I was fired. I got the text message while sitting on my living room floor, surrounded by my coworkers. I was seven months pregnant and unemployed.
In the end, we came tantalizingly close to getting enough cards signed, but our efforts ultimately failed. Most of us moved on from the job after that: some to graduate programs, others to unionized public schools. A few, like me, left the profession altogether, saying goodbye to a job that meant the world to us.
Nearly three years after our own union dreams fell apart, I was pushing my son on the swings when I spotted my old co-teacher, who had been the first to sign her union card. I greeted her, and we discussed the labor actions occurring at the Staten Island Amazon warehouse. Though hopeful, we knew that the odds were stacked against them.
So when they won their historic union fight, I recognized the once unthinkable feat for what it was: a turn in the tides for the labor movement.
The workers there face a grueling environment, where fear is a potent tool, workers’ every moves are monitored, and racial inequities abound. Meanwhile, women at Amazon report harassment, patronizing management, and inequitable advancement opportunities.
For many women across multiple professions, the working conditions at the corporate behemoth may feel all too familiar. We make on average just 83 cents for every dollar that men earn (with Black, Indigenous American, Latina, and Asian American and Pacific Islander women earning well less than that average), scramble for nearly-impossible-to-secure childcare, face alarming levels of sexual harassment, and see promotions go to the less qualified man in the cubicle (or on the Zoom screen) next to us.
So maybe it’s time for women to look for a new path forward.
We’ve unionized before. In fact, the idea that unions could stand up for teachers is hardly a revolutionary one—many of our public school peers are already part of strong, active unions. But still, with just 10 percent of all women in the U.S. workforce having union membership (a symptom of the politics of female-dominated care work, like home health aides and preschool teachers, combined with misogyny), too many of us are left to fend for ourselves.
We know that union membership cuts the gender pay gap in half, because when wages are collectively bargained by the union, suddenly it becomes a lot harder for employers to pay women less than their male counterparts. Collective bargaining can also help women (and men) secure important benefits like better paid parental leave.
Unions can also be a game changer for problems like sexual harassment by recalibrating the balance of power between women and their managers, who are often the source of the abuse. Collective bargaining agreements almost always include “just cause” language, ensuring that workers aren’t let go without good reason or due process. This protects workers against retaliation for reporting harassment, a problem experienced by 75 percent of victims and a huge deterrent for speaking up.
Though the Amazon victory was just one union in one warehouse, my profound hope is that their triumph is enough to be a spark that will reach women in fast-food joints, strip malls, and cubicles. Maybe some of these women will start a conversation with the women working next to them. They might reach out to an established union or decide to start an independent union like the workers at Amazon. But either way, they will know that union organizing is their legal right—and more dire now than ever before.
The other side is willing to play dirty (I mean, they fired a pregnant preschool teacher), but Amazon workers were facing down the man who shot himself into space for giggles. And if they could go up against that and win, then maybe we can do it too.
This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io
I Was Fired After Trying to Unionize My Preschool, but Here’s Why I Still Believe in Unions
Newspaper Updates PH
0 comentários :
Post a Comment