Forum tackles building Latina power in unions & nationwide
Declaring that Latinas and Latinos are the future of the labor movement, a panel of top Latina union leaders discussed strategies for increasing Latina involvement and power in unions and nationwide.
Montserrat Garibay of Education Austin in Texas, Diana Ramirez of the Restaurant Opportunities Center in D.C., Monica Ramirez of Labor’s Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA) and Dora Cervantes, the first Latina to be the Machinists’ Secretary-Treasurer, laid out a variety of roads for Latinas to advance, and to gain political power, too.
“Latina empowerment is important because nobody but us can tell our stories,” Garibay said.
The Trabajadoras forum highlighted the fact that Latinas are both part of the largest minority group in the U.S., and one of the most oppressed. Federal data shows that Latina working women earn median pay of 54 cents for the median pay a white man earns.
And pollsters told the packed crowd at an AFL-CIO conference on Oct. 13 that Latinas – especially in the restaurant industry – report high rates of wage theft, discrimination and sexual harassment on the job.
The key point of unions’ efforts for Latina workers must be empowerment, and teaching them how to achieve that, the panelists said. That can range from helping Latinos and Latinas gain U.S. citizenship by guiding them through the labyrinth of requirements, to combating a culture that often tells Latina women they should be quiet and not speak up.
And unions are and can be the conduit for that empowerment, if they make the effort to connect and train the Latinas, the panelists added.
“Zero-point-one percent of restaurant workers are unionized,” said ROC’s Ramirez, executive director of its D.C. branch. “It’s hard to organize them because of high turnover and low wages. If we stabilize the workforce, then there’s that much more opportunity to organize.”
So ROC, a unionized non-profit organization that advocates for the restaurant workers in 10 major cities, also runs workshops to train Latinas on how to advance from the back of the house – cooks, dishwashers, servers – to front-of-the-house posts, usually held by white men.
And ROC works to convince restaurateurs to empower their workers by paying a living wage; showing them doing so is also good for business, reducing turnover and improving employee morale and efficiency. Restaurant workers, particularly servers, now make the so-called “tipped minimum” wage, of $2.13 an hour nationwide. It hasn’t risen in 25 years.
Garibay’s union, a joint AFT-NEA affiliate, runs training for teachers, bus drivers and classified school employees to give them more skills – and strength – to stand up for themselves, even in anti-union right-to-work Texas.
At EducationAustin, “We want them to say ‘If I’m working overtime, pay me time-and-a-half,’” as federal law requires, and as Anglo school principals often refuse to do.
“As a teacher, I cannot do my job fully if the cafeteria workers (in my school) are not treated with respect,” Garibay said. The cafeteria workers are mostly Latinas.
But political action is needed, too. At one point, Garibay said, anti-worker members dominated the school board. So EducationAustin gathered like-minded groups in a mass coalition to go out and educate voters on how to change the board members to improve the schools. It succeeded. Now, seven of the nine board members are worker-friendly and student-friendly, she said.
And her union launched the citizenship drives, even coming up with money to help Latinos and Latinas pay the $680 each they needed to obtain needed documents and pay federal fees to become citizens – after training the workers on what questions they would face.
It succeeded, she added, because the organizers looked like the people they serve.
That’s important: The labor movement must make the first move, by finding and encouraging Latinas who are willing – and able – to take the time to learn how to stand up for themselves. Panelists agreed with Garibay that first unions must identify Latinas with the characteristics of leaders, then educate them and then mobilize them to ascend to positions within the movement, such as on local executive boards, and outside of it, too.
Unfortunately, ROC’s Ramirez pointed out, executing those options can be difficult for restaurant workers, who must live paycheck-to-paycheck, who have erratic hours and who are forced to survive on tips. They often can’t take time off for training and development. So ROC is bringing it to them, she said.
Cervantes, the IAM official offered yet another way up: Marching through the ranks to the top of a still 80-percent male and majority white union. She made a habit, she said, of breaking down doors. But that also led her to talk up political action.
“As the number of Latinas grows and flexes our muscle at the polls, politicians will need to deal with our issues – the harassment, the remarks, the B.S.,” Cervantes declared. “We have to say, ‘Basta!’ Enough!”
That means also organizing, handbilling, demonstrating and taking Latinas’ issues, from low pay and sexual harassment to affordable child care, to the general public, she said.
“We need to take our campaign out on the streets because we know the issues in here,” she added, gesturing to the pro-worker crowd. “But do they know out there?”
