On International Women’s Day, GOP attacks on women

Six days after that first international call to action for
women, flames engulfed such a sweatshop, the Triangle
Shirtwaist Factory in New York City, killing 146 workers, the vast majority
of them young women aged 16 to 25, some of whom jumped to their deaths from the
9^th floor rather than burn.

Women can vote now. They can hold most jobs, though not all,
including combat positions in the U.S. military. And their pay is
only 75 percent of men’s. So the struggle for equality and autonomy is not
over. Yet the GOP is intent on setting women back. If the Republican governors
across the country succeed in confiscating collective bargaining rights from
public sector workers, women will be hurt most.

The grotesque
working conditions at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, including locked and
blocked exit doors, a failed fire escape, and fire hazards such as oily floors
and wicker baskets of scraps, will be invoked on this centennial commemoration
of International Women’s Day, as they were during observances in the early
years after the tragedy. These conditions epitomized the very kind of
oppression that International Women’s Day had been created to eradicate.

Labor organizations, such as the International Ladies’
Garment Workers’ Union and the Women’s
Trade Union League aided the fire
victims’ families and pressured for legislation to improve working
conditions and protect exploited workers from the hazardous effects of employer
greed. Since that time, labor unions have contributed significantly to the goal
of women’s equality by, among other things, ensuring with contract language
that their pay is equal to that of men performing the same tasks.

Some unions give special attention to the needs of women
members. The United Steelworkers, for example, established Women of Steel (WOS),
which trains and promotes women for leadership in a predominately male
industrial union. WOS, in turn, aids sisters internationally, including the
widows of 65 miners killed at Grupo Mexico’s  Pasta de
Conchos mine and Liberian women at the Firestone
rubber plantation where USW and AFL-CIO training enabled
workers to wrest control of their union from the corporation. Like the goal
of the first International Women’s Day a century ago, this is women working to
improve the lives of women worldwide.  

Now, however, right
wingers have launched broad attacks on unions, attempting to both crush
their ability to protect workers and to elect progressive lawmakers who will do
the same. This includes GOP efforts to pass Right to Freeload legislation that
would permit workers who benefit from unions to shirk paying dues. And it
includes attempts
by GOP governors to strip public sector unions of the right to bargain over
working conditions and benefits.

This is an attack
on women. In the state and local public sector unions that these governors
are trying to enfeeble, members are more likely to be women – teachers,
librarians, nurses, and public health workers. On the state level, 52
percent of workers are women; on the local level, it’s 61 percent.

Public sector workers – the majority women – already earn
less than their private sector counterparts. Two studies, one by the Economic Policy Institute
and one by the non-partisan
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, show that when education,
experience and benefits are factored into the calculations, government workers
— the people who perform critical societal functions like protecting the
elderly from abuse and teaching our children — earn 4 to 11 percent less than
comparable private sector workers.

Despite the already-lower pay, public
sector workers have agreed to wage cuts. But they refuse to accept GOP
attempts to strip them of their right to bargain for safe working conditions
and benefits. 

GOP governors from Ohio to Indiana to Wisconsin have claimed
last November’s elections gave them a mandate to decimate worker rights. But
numerous polls, from those sponsored by the New York Times
to USA
Today/Gallup, have shown that these Republicans are wrong, that the public
is not with them. Consistently, 60 percent in the polls say they oppose
legislation terminating worker rights.

They don’t want corporations and they don’t want governments
to return to the days of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, when young women,
without a union and without an effective collective voice, labored in a fire
trap that eventually killed them. They don’t want government to give itself or
corporations the unfettered ability to exploit workers again.

Tuesday is the centennial commemoration of International
Women’s Day. It is a day for women to stand up to the Republican men trying to
turn back time. It is a day for women to demand equality and autonomy, both of
which are best achieved collectively. 

Leo W. Gerard is the international president of the United Steelworkers.