How women organizers used Berger-Marks grants
Groups & research funded by Berger-Marks
Women organizing women:
special report
 |
| Unite for Dignity leadership training |
Thirteen groups & organizers
win $84,496 in ’09 grants
Hundreds of women and many organizing campaigns will benefit from the innovative training and help offered by the groups Berger-Marks Foundation supports for 2009. That includes innovative strategies to help bring unorganized women, especially immigrants and community leaders, closer to the labor movement.
Some of the excellent training and outreach offered by these groups might help you and the campaigns you’re involved in. And check out the web site aimed at educating everyone on specific workplace rights.
While this year’s grants highlight training, there's also direct support for organizing. Two women media workers who cut their teeth organizing at their own workplaces are waging exciting campaigns in the face of hardship -- one award-winning journalist just won a first contract after the company thought it got rid of her with a layoff. But enough intro – here are the grants:
Grants to organizers in '09
Ann Marie Ditchey:
Taking on new challenge to organize Washington Post web, commercial and other workers
Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, TNG, Local 32035, CWA
As a member of the mobilization team at the Washington Post, Marie Ditchey has lots of experience with contract campaigns. The grant will now help her meet new challenges for the Post's Newspaper Guild unit. First, she's helping launch "an extensive organizing project" among the 200-300 web site employees who are moving into new offices. They now have the right to be covered by the union contract "in a process we negotiated for website integration."
Second, she says, "the Post unit is undergoing yet another early retirement buyout. We will be losing many members, stewards, and unit officers in this open shop. So, our other critical organizing goal is to rebuild membership and leadership." She will also focus on boosting membership within the commercial side of the workforces, where she has a good recruitment record.
Rebecca Rosen Lum:
Launching New union for freelance journalists in California
CWA, Local Northern California Media Workers Guild No. 39521
 |
| Rebecca Rosen Lum |
"The workplace is changing and we are changing with it," says Rebecca Rosen Lum, who won a Berger-Marks grant to help create the first-ever freelance unit linked to a Newspaper Guild-CWA local union.
"As newsrooms are shrinking, many former journalists prefer to remain in journalism and work independently, knowing how critical this work is to a democracy," explains Rosen Lum. "That's a brave thing to do; for many, that means laboring without health coverage or financial benefits."
She knows the job shouldn’t require so much bravery. “I believe mightily in the honor of work and the right of all working people to organize,” asserts Rosen Lum, who helped unionize the Contra Costa Times when she worked there.
The union began signing up enthusiastic reporters right away. Arts and music writer Jesse Hamlin told Business Wire that he joined “because I wanted to stay connected with other writers and editors, to share information and ideas and to work collectively to get a fair shake for the work we do.”
Karly Safar:
Campus organizer at University of Tennessee earns renewed support
United Campus Workers- CWA , Local 3865
 |
| Karly (second from right) rallies against budget cuts |
Karly Safer won renewed support for her drive to organize wall-to-wall for the Communications Workers of America's United Campus Workers at the University of Tennessee. She began organizing there as a student. This is a continuation of a grant she won in 2008.
Karly recently helped plan and turn out people for a campus rally of 400 workers, students and community members to protest looming budget cuts of $75 million, that would endanger close to a thousand jobs.
Although she is only working part-time she is involved in every aspect of the campaign. On any given day you might find her leafleting faculty on the Chattanooga campus, helping union supporters reach out to their co-workers, coordinating phone banks or working on strategic mapping, She’s personally visited hundreds of workers and helped steer the union to its best year yet for membership growth.
“Karly is absolutely incredible,” says one local union staffer. “Her rapport with the workers on our campus is something special, and I am so thankful, honestly, that we have gotten the privilege to work with her.”
Sara Steffens:
Courageous reporter fights back, wins first contract
California Media Workers Guild, Local TNG-CWA 39521
 |
| Photo credit: D. Ross Cameron |
Sara Steffens, an award-winning reporter at California's Contra Costa Times, became convinced that she and 200-plus co-workers at the Bay Area Group News Group-East Bay (BANG-EB) needed a union to get fair wages, job security and benefits. BANG-EB is a nine-newspaper unit of MediaNews that includes the Oakland Tribune and other dailies across the bay from San Francisco. Steffens served as co-chair of the employee committee and helped convince two out of three co-workers to sign union cards. But management decided to play hard-ball, and its aggressive attacks cut deeply into union support. The union narrowly won the election on June 13, 2008, and within a month the company laid off 29 workers, including Steffens. The union is challenging the layoffs at the NLRB.
End of story for Sara? No way. When they laid her off, she became the anti-union consultants’ worst nightmare. Workers were scared but hanging together, inspired by her courageous organizing. Steffens won a grant from the Berger-Marks Foundation to keep on building the union as an organizer with The Newspaper Guild-CWA Local 39521, and the grant was renewed in 2009.
 |
“I know that our unit will need broader membership to remain effective,” Steffens told the Foundation. “Our goal is to systematically reach out to everyone in the bargaining unit” to dramatically boost membership. Since she believes that ”Solidarity will be key to maintaining our bargaining strength,” she reached out to freelancers, nearby guild units, and the public, and some turned to her for help organizing their own jobs.
Steffens’ tireless organizing and outreach is paying off, as more members have joined the new union, attended meetings and events, and weighed in on key issues and bargaining strategies. This is in the face of hard times that struck Bay Area newspapers with a vengeance, with layoffs, an unpaid furlough and more cut-backs in benefits.
On May 28 the new union won its first tentative agreement, and the vote to approve it on June 2 was nearly unanimous. As one Board member puts it, “Sara has been doing amazing work.”
Alanna Stone:
Grant helps launch drive to bring in new members at unionized companies
The Newspaper Guild of New York, TNG Local 3/CWA Local 31003
 |
Alanna Stone, the staff organizer who helped 736 Research assistants at the State University of New York join the CWA in December, won a grant to launch a vigorous drive to bring in new members at unionized companies.
Stone organizes for the Newspaper Guild of New York TNG Local 3/CWA Local 31003. Armed with grant support, she is working with rank and file union officers to identify potential new members and units at companies they represent. From there she’s helping get campaigns off the ground. Potential members have jobs ranging from reporting, editing and photography to online and IT work.
Stone is convinced that a major drive will strengthen the union’s bargaining clout and improve the lot of all the workers
. Before Ms. Stone came on staff, she chaired the Newspaper Guild unit at WQXR-FM, a New York Times-owned station, where she did a great job signing up new members.
Grants to groups in '09
Arise Chicago:
Grant helps train 12 women to lead workshops for immigrant victims
 |
| Executive Director Rev. C.J. Hawking |
| Chicago Immigrant Rights March |
“Low-wage women workers, especially immigrant women, are experiencing wage theft at epidemic levels,” says Arise Chicago. Many are forced to work off the clock, get less than the minimum wage, or in some cases, aren’t getting paid. Through its Workers’ Center, Arise Chicago has helped workers recover wages totaling $3 million in six years.
Berger-Marks is helping the group train 12 women workers in leadership, public speaking, and organizing skills so that they can reach into churches and community organizations to train other women to know their rights on the job. Each will conduct three Workers’ Rights workshops using Arise Chicago’s Workers’ Rights Manual, which is also available online, in Spanish, Polish, and English. They expect this training to help over 650 women learn their rights and design collective actions.
The Workers’ Center attracts women workers partly because four of its five staff members are women, and they host a group by and for working women called Tejiendo Sueños (Weaving Dreams). Executive Director Rev. C.J. Hawking is believed to be the only clergy person in the country who has a Master degree in Union Leadership and Administration.
CanMyBossDoThat.com, Sponsored by Interfaith Worker Justice:
New website gives the facts workers need to fight for rights
 |
| Anne Janks |
CanMyBossDoThat.com is a new website that gives workers the facts on their rights, targeted to each situation, along with resources, self-defense tools, and referrals for enforcement. The site aims to answer specific questions, by state, industry, type of employment and size of employer. It should be a valuable reference for unions and the public, and even offers flyers workers can download to share information with their co-workers. It’s non-profit and accepts no advertising.
Director Anne Janks, the only paid staff person, spent 23 years organizing and representing workers before founding the site because she found nothing this comprehensive and useful on the Internet. Janks had worked with Interfaith Worker Justice, the initial sponsor of the site, to organize poultry workers and helped draft and edit its state workers’ rights manuals. She is a member of UAW Local 1981.
Our grant supports research and the creation of content for topics of special importance to women workers, including Family Medical Leave, breast feeding protections at work, maternity/paternity/adoption leave, and gender and marital discrimination.
Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA):
Latina woman gets leadership training to benefit union, family, community
 |
| Dr. Gabriela Lemus, Exec. Dir., LCLAA |
At least one Latina worker will use this Berger-Marks grant to get trained in leadership skills and perspectives by the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA). Since it was founded 35 years ago, LCLAA has been promoting social, political and economic justice for Hispanic workers and their families throughout the Americas.
LCLAA planned three Regional Leadership Development Conferences to offer training that not only addresses the challenges of globalization, but also links the bigger issues to ways workers can organize their communities around those issues. One will include a youth leadership forum. The goal is to base worker solidarity on an understanding of how politics, security, gender and the economy are interwoven.
As Exec. Dir. Gabriela Lemus points out, such training is especially valuable to Latina union members who are new to the movement. Latina workers often struggle on low-paid jobs while they are relied upon to care for their families, including aunts, uncles, in-laws and other older relatives . Developing their organizing expertise not only helps their families and communities but also is valuable to unions –most new workers organized over the last 20 years have been women and people of color. Fully 30 percent of new members were the 120,000 Latinos who joined the labor movement. Lemus is the first woman to ever head the organization.
Pride At Work, AFL-CIO:
Helping lesbians and other women get training to become union leaders
 |
This national group represents lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) workers and their rights. It affiliated with the AFL-CIO in 1997 as a constituency group and has over 6,000 members and supporters, including straight allies.
Pride at Work mobilizes for “a labor movement that cherishes diversity, encourages openness, and ensures safety & dignity and solidarity for LGBT issues,” while also promoting union membership among workers in the LGBT community.
Despite the myths of affluence, recent studies confirm that lesbians and bisexual women are actually more likely to be poor than heterosexual women, and same-sex couples have high poverty rates. Transgender people, who are often denied employment or harassed at work, suffer an unemployment rate eight times higher than the general population.
But when they turn to unions for help, they sometimes encounter hostility. “Women have long known the difficulties of working within the organized labor movement, let alone getting elected into leadership. For lesbian, bisexual and transgender people these difficulties are compounded," says their proposal. Their program to support LGBT leadership relies on the strategies noted in the Berger-Marks-funded report, I Knew I Could Do This Work.
The Berger-Marks grant helps women participate in Pride at Work’s leadership schools, which offer intensive training to help rank and file lesbian, bisexual and transgender union members become leaders. They stress the value of organizing a base of support and strategic plans to overcome barriers.
STITCH:
Helping bring unions to immigrant women, & diversity to unions
 |
STITCH is a women's solidarity network founded to support women in Central America organizing new unions or fighting for leadership positions within unions. It brought that experience to the U.S. in 2006, with union training programs based on input from immigrant women. In 2008, STITCH won Berger-Marks support for a series of training workshops for immigrant women, where it adapted its curriculum from Central America and partnered with other groups.
In 2009, STITCH is expanding its reach into new communities and unions. In NW Arkansas and Mississippi, its training will encourage African-American and Latina food processing workers to join and become involved in unions. In NW Washington it is partnering with Casa Latina to train Latina immigrants on Leadership. It is also joining up with Wash. D.C. Jobs with Justice, SEIU, Acorn, Bread for the City, and Metro Health to train both social service providers and community leaders on how to better work with diverse communities, and overcome the barriers to unity.
In Miami, Florida, its weekend workshops will engage women from several unions. It plans to launch a Southern Worker Tour, partnering with farm union and support groups like Student Action with Farmworkers. The tour will educate workers on leadership, while educating community members about immigration and globalization and building connections between the immigrant rights movement, labor unions, and solidarity groups. STITCH also plans to participate in summer schools for working women.
See article on STITCH’s 2008 work
The Evergreen State College Labor Education and Research Center:
Grant gives scholarships to six women for summer school
 |
| Banner-making Workshop in ’07 conference |
Held on July 22-26 in 2009, Evergreen’s Summer School for Union and Community Women brings together some 50 women -- union members, community activists, leaders, and students – for 4 1/2 days of workshops. The goal is to help women develop skills around leadership, communication and strategic planning; gain insight into the politics of their organizations; and “grapple with critical issues of our times.” Motivated by the economic collapse and President Obama’s use of “change” as “ the watchword of the day,” they’ll explore what REAL change would look like for women.
Students will deal with questions like “How can women survive and thrive under current economic conditions while continuing to challenge gender inequalities through unionization and other forms of organizing?” They should come away with specific ideas about the kinds of campaigns that need to be waged in their industries and communities, and how to wage them.
See what happened at 2007 Evergreen summer school that we supported.
Unite for Dignity:
Training and support for low-wage women workers in south Florida
 |
| Leadership training graduates celebrate |
Unite for Dignity operates in south Florida, where pay is often rock-bottom for immigrants, and many suffer harsh treatment. The group grew out of an SEIU campaign in 1997 to organize local nursing home workers. It continues to work closely with unions and community groups, such as the Florida Wage Theft Task Force, to develop leadership and support organizing among immigrant women workers.
Berger-Marks is helping support Unite for Dignity’s "Community Steward" (CS) program, recently launched to train and support worker-activists so they can identify, develop, and lead organizing projects involving women. UFD’s latest project is to back UNITE HERE and the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center (FIAC) as they revive hotel organizing in South Florida. A cadre of housekeepers is beginning to survey and house-call other housekeepers. They are mapping the conditions, including wage-and-hour violations and the use of subcontractors and/or guest workers, for housekeeping services in luxury hotels.
These women workers are a multilingual, multicultural group that is often isolated and exploited. Potential new leaders will be offered Community Steward training. This groundwork could help the union reinvigorate its organizing, since it comes on the heels of winning key contracts at organized sites. Only three hotels out of more than 200 in South Florida are organized.
 |
Women's Institute for Leadership Development (WILD):
Weekend school helps Massachusetts women get skills, vision & supportive network
WILD’s June weekend Institute offers women workers and leaders the tools and vision to be effective organizers and to strengthen and diversify women’s influence and leadership in Massachusetts labor. It aims to give women a network of support that continues after they go home -- with opportunities to take leadership in caucuses and on its board, to support each other’s campaigns, and to help plan the next conference and teach workshops.
WILD says its mission is to build a stronger and more representative labor movement, one that’s anti-racist, anti-homophobic and anti-sexist. Seventy percent of the 2008 Summer Institute participants were women of color. Over 1,650 women from 150 union locals, organizing drives and community rights organizations have participated in WILD’s programs. WILD works closely with unions like 1199 SEIU, which is making new inroads in organizing women.
Director Emily Hardt believes this education is especially important in times of economic crisis. Working women are being hit hard, but also have opportunities to help shape new initiatives like “green energy,“ and to help build an economy that works for working women.
“We strive to make the Institute accessible to all women who want to come,” says Hardt. They offer subsidized transportation and childcare for the entire weekend and choose locations that are accessible to people of all physical abilities. Scholarships are available to ensure that non-union, low-income women can also attend and there’s simultaneous interpretation in Spanish and Portuguese. Berger-Marks is helping fund not only the program, but also the scholarships and other accessibility features.
Thanks to all applicants
We’d like to thank all who submitted proposals, including those that our limited funds can’t cover.
More information about Berger-Marks grants.
* The free Adobe Acrobat program is needed to view pdf documents.
The latest news
More about our grants
The latest news
More about our grants
"Sara's never-say-die organizing, even in the face of being laid off, . . . made it possible, in less than a year, for the Guild to transform a newsroom that was historically loath to embrace organized labor into a union shop."
– Co-worker,
Oakland Tribune/BANG-East Bay
Grants approved in the Winter & Spring of 2009
For organizers:
For groups:
CanMyBossDoThat.com, Sponsored by Interfaith Worker Justice
Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA)
The Evergreen State College Labor Education and Research Center
Women's Institute for Leadership Development (WILD)
The latest news
More about our grants