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| Singing at Evergreen State College Labor Center
summer school |
Berger-Marks awards $78,814
to women organizers & groups
Two organizers and seven groups – a union, three university programs,
a research institute and two community groups -- were awarded Berger-Marks
grants totaling $78,814 at the Foundation’s Board meeting in early
April, 2007.
This marked the first time applicants submitted grant proposals online,
and the process proved successful in streamlining decision-making and
record-keeping at Berger-Marks. More
information about Berger-Marks grants.
We congratulate the following grantees and anticipate exciting results
from grant-supported work. We’d also like to thank others who submitted
proposals for women organizers and organizing/research projects that
our limited funds can’t cover.
2007 grants to organizers
Jeanne Carpenter,
CWA Local 7901
External Organizer in Portland, Oregon
CWA (Communications Workers of America) Local
7901 represents over 1,300
members working in private and public jobs in southwest Washington
and Oregon. Carpenter, as the local ’s first full-time
organizer, has an impressive track record of mentoring and training
member-organizers. She also is active in Portland Jobs with Justice
and is the chair of the Oregon AFL-CIO Organizing Committee. She has
helped members organize Cingular call centers and 17 Cingular retail
stores in the Portland area.
Cathy E. Schwegmann, The Newspaper Guild-CWA
Lead Organizer for St. Louis Newspaper Guild-CWA Local
36047
Schwegmann has recently been working to strengthen existing
union membership at the St. Louis Newspaper Guild-CWA
Local 36047. She has encouraged state and local school district employees
to become members and helped organize nearly 500 new members in the
Missouri Departments of Health and Senior Services and Social Services
alone. She also spearheaded a drive that brought security officers into
the union.
2007 grants to organizations
AFSCME Council 26
Representing federal workers in the Washington,
DC metropolitan area
The Council,
a coalition of 19 locals in federal agencies, has 2200 members. It
organizes and empowers federal workers both within existing locals and
by organizing at new workplaces, while participating in the struggles
of the labor movement at-large. It won an equal pay class action law
suit that gave female custodial workers upgrades and a cash lump sum,
and has been active in negotiating mid-term agreements over changes in
working conditions, health and safety advocacy and individual grievances. It
is launching
an internal organizing campaign to sign up new members.
Evergreen State
College
Labor Education & Research Center
Evergreen
is a publicly-funded college in Olympia, Washington. The Labor
Center,
which has two full-time staff members, is about to celebrate its 20th
birthday and champions programs that examine the causes, consequences,
and solutions to economic injustice, racism, sexism, and homophobia.
Its upcoming Summer School for Union Women and Community Activists will
reach out to immigrant workers and community women as well as union members.
Jobs with Justice, St. Louis Area
A coalition of nearly 90 community,
labor, student and faith-based groups fighting for economic justice,
Jobs with Justice helps
build unity and quick responses when action is needed. It has five full-time
and part-time organizers on its staff and also won a
grant in 2006 for staff training.
Cornell University Institute for Women & Work
The grant funded a
session of Cornell
Institute for Women & Work's March 30, 2007 conference,
Sisters on the Frontline: Organizing Women,
Building Power. The session focused on "Women "Organizing
Women," the Berger-Marks Report.
2007 Academic/ Research grants
Institute for Women's Policy Research
Democracy and Society Programs
This Academic/ Research grant is geared to helping IWPR with
a research project they’re launching to explore the values, motivations,
experiences, and obstacles of women involved in union organizing. Since
2002, IWPR has done work on women’s activism and public vision
aimed at building stronger supports for and connections among women activists
from all kinds of movements. Their previous research found that women
in virtually all forms of organizing confront specific obstacles to
activism based on gender.
Penn State University
Dept. of Labor Studies; School of Nursing
The grant will help researchers, including visiting faculty
from the University of Arizona, look into employment problems faced
by non-union registered nurses (RN's), and their attitudes towards unions.
The researchers already have done groundwork exploring
the unionization of nurses. With 94 percent of nurses being women, it
could be the largest occupation for women in the U.S. workforce, and
at least four out of five nurses don’t
have unions to help with the many problems they face.
South Florida Interfaith Worker Justice
Miami, Florida
SFIWJ is an association
of over 200 religious leaders throughout Miami-Dade and Broward Counties,
dealing with the crisis of the working poor. In 2006 it partnered with
the Service Workers International Union to help 400 janitors, more than
half of whom were women, gain union rights. In 2007 the staff is growing
to four people, as the need to help in union organizing campaigns “grows
greater each week.” SFIWJ
is trying to boost involvement from women clergy and deepen their ties
with women workers, after more than doubling the number of women on
the board.
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