'Lean In' All You Want -- But If You Want a Better Job, Unionize!

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http://www.alternet.org/labor/lean-all-you-want-if-you-want-better-job-unionize-what-ceos-facebook-and-yahoo-wont-tell-you

'Lean In' All You Want -- But If You Want a Better Job, Unionize! (What the CEOS of Facebook and Yahoo! Won't Tell You)


OK, Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg didn’t say “join a union.” But that’s the message the vast majority of working women should be considering this Women’s History Month. The best way for the most women to improve their working lives is through a union.

The new PBS documentary Makers: Women Who Make America shows how the women's movement changed the workplace for women, men and families. Two of the young Makers highlighted in the film, Sheryl Sandberg at Facebook and Marissa Mayer at Yahoo, now dominate the news. Here's what neither of them tell you: union women earn more than non-union women and have better benefits and working conditions.

Women at Facebook and Yahoo should consider spending their time organizing to have a say in their workplace.

Lean In: Women, Work And The Will To Lead is in the bookstores and online this week. Author Sheryl Sandberg is chief operating officer of Facebook, a multi-millionaire, and the mother of two small children. She leaves work around 5pm to have dinner with her family. She wants to jumpstart the women’s movement, and her focus is on what women, especially those headed for the executive track, can do to remove internal barriers to their own success. Marissa Mayer, 37-year-old chief executive officer of Yahoo and new mother, answered the childcare question by adding a nursery next to her office. She also just ended telecommuting for Yahoo employees.

[Live and Learn]

1. REC The demise of worker input and unionization is extremely

disheartening to those of us who remember the strides unions made. I wonder how far workers will have to fall before people realize that unions are the only way to get their voices heard in Boardrooms and that corporations really don't have any hearts or souls.

[NYC Liberal]

4. People think they protections they have now are set.

"Hey, we've got workplace safety laws, the 40-hour work week, no more child labor, minimum wage, paid leave, overtime, etc. Why do we need unions?"

Well those protections can be taken away -- and they have indeed been slowly chipped away over the years.

My simple response to anti-union nonsense is: "Management is organized; why shouldn't workers be?"

[HiPointDem]

2. i just love how all these sucky surveillance companies like to pretend they're all diverse and

warm and feminist-fuzzy.

[dotymed]

3. This applies to all sexes...

Unionize for you and your family's future...

[lindysalsagal]

5. Amen. I was not impressed with her at all.

That whispery voice, no firm attitudes on anything. She's got no spine, that I can see.

Give me a woman who just speaks her mind and still makes it to the top: That's my kind of woman.

This little cupcake might be rich and powerful ,but I wouldn't want to be her.

[redqueen]

6. "little cupcake"

Really?

*sigh*

[lindysalsagal]

7. Did you see her interview? Total cupcake.

There's more to life than saying you're in charge (for now) of a huge corporation: I personally wouldn't brag about that.

Let's see if she can hold on in her 40's and 50's and do some good for the world at large, and other women.