{"id":6121,"date":"2013-06-07T11:41:23","date_gmt":"2013-06-07T16:41:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/?p=6121"},"modified":"2014-01-28T13:07:26","modified_gmt":"2014-01-28T19:07:26","slug":"nice-work-women-and-unions-at-the-50th-anniversary-of-the-equal-pay-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/2013\/06\/07\/nice-work-women-and-unions-at-the-50th-anniversary-of-the-equal-pay-act\/","title":{"rendered":"Women and Unions at the 50th Anniversary of the Equal Pay Act"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The Equal Pay Act<\/a> turns 50 on Monday, June 10, 2013 and the Council on Contemporary Families<\/a> has convened an online symposium<\/a> representing the latest thinking from pre-eminent work-family scholars, business people, and advocates for low-wage workers and unions.<\/p>\n

In one of the ten briefs, CUNY\u2019s Ruth Milkman<\/a> reports how labor unions\u2014and women in them\u2014spearheaded the campaign for the Equal Pay Act, even though they made up only 18.3 percent of members at the time. If unions had had their way the language would not have been \u201cequal pay for equal work\u201d but \u201cequal wage rates for work of comparable character on jobs the performance of which requires comparable skills.\u201d Milkman explains, this was \u201cwording that would have forced employers to pay women in traditionally sex-segregated jobs as much as men with comparable skills in traditionally male occupations\u2026. Given the pervasiveness of job segregation by gender, this weakened requirement for equity ensured that the law had a far more limited impact.\u201d
\n<\/b><\/p>\n

How are women in unions doing? <\/i>Today, women make up 45 percent of all union members, but union membership rates have declined: In 1960 one in four workers was in a union; today, that is down to about one in ten, reports Milkman. The historic decline hit private sector unions, where male unions used to be strong, first and hardest, says Milkman<\/a>. But \u201cstarting in 2011, a wave of state-level legislation weakening collective bargaining rights for public sector workers has directly targeted teachers and other unionized female-dominated occupations.\u201d \u00a0This attack is a real problem since women union workers earn an average of more than $5 an hour more than nonunion ones and have more benefits and job security as well\u2014and nonunion workers in unionized fields benefit from this advantage.<\/p>\n

As a public sector worker–a professor at a state university–and a proud union member, I say thanks labor movement!<\/p>\n

For other NICE WORK posts on women in unions, read unions matter to women<\/a><\/i>, waiting for superwoman<\/a><\/i>, and woman\u2019s nation = workers\u2019 nation<\/a><\/i>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Equal Pay Act turns 50 on Monday, June 10, 2013 and the Council on Contemporary Families has convened an online symposium representing the latest thinking from pre-eminent work-family scholars, business people, and advocates for low-wage workers and unions. In one of the ten briefs, CUNY\u2019s Ruth Milkman reports how labor unions\u2014and women in them\u2014spearheaded […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1903,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21108,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nice-work","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1903"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6121"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7032,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6121\/revisions\/7032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}