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Study: Wisconsin's GOP Anti-Union Legislation will Disproportionately Harm State's Women

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Posted March 23, 2011

Interview with Glenda Jones, assistant professor and director of Women and Gender Studies Program, conducted by Melinda Tuhus

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Legislation weakening public employee union collective bargaining rights rammed through the GOP- controlled Wisconsin legislature by Republican Gov. Scott Walker was put on hold by a county judge in Madison, who ruled that its passage may have violated the state's open meetings law, one of the strongest in the country. If the ruling is upheld, the legislature will have to vote on the bill again. Because one Republican legislator voted against the bill the first time, opponents hoped more Republicans will defect to defeat the measure, or that it may be modified in order to gain passage.

Meanwhile, a group of professors from the University of Wisconsin System Women's Studies Consortium -- representing women's studies programs on the state's campuses -- published an open letter highlighting their concern that women will suffer disproportionately if the law goes into effect. While women make up just over half of the state's 175,000 public sector employees, they are concentrated in the lowest paying jobs. And they stand to lose the most if only wages are covered under collective bargaining -- and other issues such as family leave, health insurance and sick days are no longer negotiable. Also, Gov. Walker exempted police and firefighters -- who are overwhelmingly male -- from the law, thus skewing the gender imbalance even more. In addition to gutting collective bargaining, the law would also remove over 300,000 people from Badger Care, the state's health insurance program, mostly affecting young and elderly women.

Between The Lines's Melinda Tuhus spoke with Glenda Jones, an assistant professor at the University's Stout campus in Menominee, who originated the letter. She discusses the response the letter generated, and what's at stake, especially for women workers of color, if the anti-union law goes into effect.

GLENDA JONES: We originally published it on Facebook, and started sending it out to our friends and constituents, and different people sent it to local newspapers; they took it down to a few hundred words to publish it as op-ed pieces, so we just tried to get it out in every way that we could.

BETWEEN THE LINES: And what kind of response has it gotten?

GLENDA JONES: Well, the UW Women's Studies program said they've received more email trafficking on people that have read this and emailed them than anything in a long time, and they thought that was very positive. Mostly I think people are just interested in the fact that we're starting to talk about this. Honestly, we were a little hesitant as a group to sign it because many people felt if you start making this as an issue about women and take away the fact that it's an issue about people, then it would be easier for people to start saying...for men, maybe...to start saying, this is really going to affect women more than it's going to affect me. And so far people have been in solidarity and stood together on this. And there were even women within our group who said we really need to think about the implications of fracturing off before we start talking about how it will impact women specifically.

BETWEEN THE LINES: But you felt this was an important thing to raise, I guess.

GLENDA JONES: Well, I did, because I feel that often women are silenced, and I'm really for the fact that men are now talking about solidarity and what unions have done for them. It's picking up steam even in academic areas that formerly people were against unions. But it's workers without a voice and elderly people and young people and children that will be affected by Badger Care, so this is not just a union issue, it's not just about collective bargaining, it's not just about pay wages or increases in contributions to pensions. There are so many aspects to the bill that almost everyone is unilaterally hurt in some way that works for the public sector.

Right now, we're not sure exactly what rights are going to be lost. The bill itself is 144 pages, but as things start to get whittled away, I think it becomes more scary to people. Right now it seems to be changing. We know that many of the Republican legislators are saying, "You're not losing collective bargaining." But what they were meaning by that is you're not losing collective bargaining for wages. Many of the people that are going to be hurt the most are covered by collective bargaining now for many of these things, but there are other people that are not covered by collective bargaining...many people that work for universities, for example, are already not represented by unions, and they were just starting to get a lot of unionization and vote for unions here in Wisconsin, so that's been very demoralizing to many people.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Glenda Jones, are you a member of a union?

GLENDA JONES: UW-Stout just voted to be part of Wisconsin American Federation of Teachers, so Wisconsin AFT. We just had a union card vote about two weeks ago, and it was a landslide. I think 86 percent of the faculty and the majority voted to unionize. We were actually just a union for five or six hours because it was the same day the legislature had the vote and pushed the budget repair bill through.

BETWEEN THE LINES: And just say a word about one of the points in your letter that women of color will be even more disproportionately impacted than women overall.

GLENDA JONES: I think one of the most surprising things to me as I did research about this is that 30 percent of the women of color in this state live in poverty, and that's twice the national average. And Wisconsin is already 45th out of 50 for women's working wages -- they make 71 cents on the dollar, whereas the average is 77 cents throughout the rest of the U.S. Women of color make 63 cents to every dollar that a man makes, so they're going to be impacted even more. Obviously, as an advocate for women, we feel the workplace needs to be structured in a way where everyone -- regardless of race, ethnicity or gender -- can receive a fair wage. And collective bargaining is the only way that can be done. Joining a union can actually give women more benefits than perhaps getting a four-year degree. So there's some leverage and power that there is in a union to give women these economic benefits. And women of color are going to be disproportionately impacted by this.

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