AFL-CIO launches outreach drive for working women

LOS ANGELES, CA -- Admitting the AFL-CIO has not done enough in the past to reach out to and represent working women, the labor federation's Executive Council launched an outreach campaign aimed at millions of working women -- union and non-union -- nationwide.

The drive for working women was one of two major efforts the council approved at its meeting here last month. The other, entitled "Organizing for Change, Changing to Organize," will feature a series of 12 regional organizing conferences.

The conferences will generate new thinking, new strategies and new energy at every level of union organizing, said John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO. The first conference will be in Seattle on Wednesday, March 26. Sweeney will be in Seattle along with an estimated 300 participants from the Pacific Northwest.

Gloria Johnson, president of the Coalition of Labor Union Women, said the drive would build on a trend that has seen female membership within AFL-CIO unions grow from 18 percent in 1960 to 39 percent today.

"There's a gender gap in organizing," added Linda Chavez-Thompson, executive vice president of the AFL-CIO. "We need more and more women to join unions. Working women have a lot to say about their lives and families and how we can help them."

Sweeney said the labor federation hasn't listened enough to these women in the past. The new strategy will start with a working womens' questionnaire, to be distributed by more than one million union women to their friends, colleagues and other women everywhere from supermarkets to laundromats to libraries, said Karen Nussbaum, director of the AFL-CIO's Working Women's Department.

That will be followed by a 20-city campaign to highlight issues of concern to working women, and a nationwide organizing conference for working women, hosted by the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C., just after Labor Day. The AFL-CIO has established a toll-free phone number for working women with questions, Nussbaum said. The number is 1-888-971-9797.

"In the last 10 years, more women than men have become unionized," she said. "But the vast majority of working women still don't know who to turn to."

The surveys will help the AFL-CIO "reach out to those working women who are not in unions, but who could be" and who want someone to be their voice, Nussbaum added.

Women Earnings and Jobs

• The 1995 annual real median earnings of women working year-round full-time was $22,497, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. For men it was $31,496. The ratio of female-to-male earnings remained unchanged from 1994, at 71 percent.

The Numbers

• On Dec. 1, 1996, women outnumbered men, 136 million to 130.3 million. Projections indicate that by July 1, 2000, these totals will reach 140.5 million and 134.2 million, respectively.
• On Dec. 1, 1996, women had a median age of 35.9 years, while men's median age was 33.6. The median age is the age at which half the population is older and half is younger.

Women in Business

• The number of women-owned businesses in the United States reached 6.4 million in 1992, representing a third of all domestic firms and 40 percent of all retail and service firms.
• Businesses owned by women generated $1.6 trillion in revenues and employed 13.2 million people in 1992.

Marriage and Family

• The number of families maintained by women with no husband present rose from 5.6 million in 1970 to 12.2 million in 1995.
• In 1995, 15 percent of women lived alone, while two percent shared a home with non-relatives.

Child Care

• In the fall of 1993, nearly 10 million children under five required child care while their mothers were working. Of these, almost half (48 percent) were cared for primarily by relatives.
• The majority of preschoolers cared for by relatives in 1993 received care from grandparents or fathers.
• The proportion of preschoolers with working mothers cared for in organized facilities jumped from 23 percent in 1991 to a new high of 30 percent in 1993.
• In fall 1993, there were 8.1 million families with preschoolers who required care while their mothers worked. Of these families, 56 percent paid an average of $74 per week for child care -- eight percent of their monthly family income.