Women show discontent in union survey

[Omaha Steve]

Full story: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06219/711352-28.stm



Women show discontent in union survey

Monday, August 07, 2006
By Anya Sostek, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Every two years since 1997, the AFL-CIO has surveyed thousands of working women to gauge attitudes on issues such as wages, benefits and opportunities.

Snip: "There's a strong undercurrent of dissatisfaction with the lack of equality," said Karen Nussbaum, executive director of Working America, a affiliate of the AFL-CIO. "This is still a burning issue for women."

Ms. Nussbaum said the level of concern over equal pay came as a surprise even to her -- two-thirds of respondents included comments in addition to their survey responses. A keyword search on the comments yielded several references to "second class citizens" and "working twice as hard."

The survey, which will be officially released today, was not a random sample; women responded to the survey online, where it was posted on Web sites of unions and women's organizations. Thirty percent of survey respondents were union members, two-thirds had college degrees and two-thirds were older than 40.


The survey was posted on DU awhile back.

[ananda]

1. I wonder how many..

.. of those women voted for Bush and/or GOP candidates.

[Fierce]

3. Probably not too many.

Seeing where the AFL-CIO posted its self-selecting survey.

[Warpy]

2. Well, DUH, not only are we constantly having to prove ourselves

over and over on the job, trying to justify our mere presence, most of us have unpaid jobs after we're off the clock, thanks to the sense of entitlement most men have to our unpaid labor at home. We are expected to fulfill the male model at work, the model of having a wife at home to do all the tasks of daily living, while fulfilling the wife's role at home.

Clearly, this is not working for most of us.

[Omaha Steve]

4. Meagan Jeronimo: Ask a Working Woman Winner

Full article: http://blog.aflcio.org/2006/08/07/meagan-jeronimo-ask-a-working-woman-winner/

Legislation & Politics

Aug 7

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Meagan Jeronimo: Ask a Working Woman Winner

And the winner is…

In July, the AFL-CIO launched its online Ask a Working Woman survey to enable women to come together to make their concerns heard on the issues most crucial to them: the rising cost of health care, jobs, wages and their children’s future. More than 22,000 women have taken part in the survey this year, and on Labor Day we will issue a report summarizing their concerns and deliver them to every member of Congress and local lawmakers as we head into the 2006 election season.

A majority of the 22,000 women who responded say they are worried about basic economic issues like paying for health care, not having retirement security and pay not keeping up with the cost of living. Many working women report lacking basic benefits.




Affordable health care tops the list of concerns for working women—97 percent of women across age and race lines say they are worried about the rising costs of quality health care. Some 65 percent of women rank health care as their top legislative concern.

Meagan Jeronimo, a Working America member from Houston, Texas, not only took the survey, but encouraged hundreds of working women to take it, too. And I’m excited to announce that because she succeeded in getting the most women (49) to complete the survey, Meagan becomes our 2006 Ask a Working Woman survey contest winner! She joined us today in Chicago during a meeting of the AFL-CIO Executive Council for the national release of the survey results.