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Interview with A Union Organizer (continued from page 9)
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Page 12/What She Wants/October, 1979
how to bring all those workers together.
Linda: It seems that women workers have a common set of problems and have a lot to gain by joining forces. After all, that's the principle the union is based on.
Kathy: But the problems of women in the shop are so interrelated to other worker's problems. I can name five issues that are predominantly women's issues in the shop, but to say that we need a women's caucus tends to threaten people and loses what could possibly come of it. The real way to change people is to convince them. And I don't think that just because you have ten women determining that that's the way it has to be rather than one woman that it's really going to change anybody's mind. I don't know.
Linda: That's a problem everywhere--convincing men that women's issues are in their interest, too. Particularly now that the economy is so tight. When men can't find work, some of them grumble that women are taking the jobs. And then if you start talking about day care and equal pay....
Kathy: When you talk about the women's movement, I think we're all defining it as a middle class women's movement. A movement that sprang out of the universities. A lot of young women-women who had luxuries-were able to be defined as the women's movement. They had the time and luxury of being educated. I'm not saying that they're bourgeois and fancy-1 was one of those women, too—but if depends on what you do with that time and luxury, which is another topic altogether. I think that this movement could only have happened because our mothers and grandmothers worked for a living. The women's movement in this country grew out of working class women and their struggle. I think it's the middle class women and the university women that somehow separated themselves. Women in the shops, in some ways, are much more conscious of oppression and exploitation of women. They just never had the time and the luxury to intellectualize about it. That's where the real movement is.
Linda: Now that more middle class women are struggling financially, do you think there is more opportunity for ties between working class and middle class women?
Kathy: I think the links were always there, but you have to approach it carefully. For example, a women's group wanted to be active in the J.P. Stevens boycott. They defined it as a women's issue. Not only from the consumer point of view, since women buy most of the linens and other products J.P. Stevens makes, but also because 80% of the J.P.Stevens workers are women. It's an exciting women's issue, but the frightening thing is that the group wanted to be involved in the contract. Outsiders have nothing to say about a workers' contract, and heaven help us if they ever have a chance to vote
on one.
Linda: So what is the link? Supporting union activities? That's pretty ambiguous....
Kathy: I'll tell you one thing. If there's ever a picket line going on and someone wants to join it, that person could announce themselves as a "commie" and those workers would embrace them. People don't care what your goddamn politics are if you're out there on the line-at least as long as you don't try to take it over. But, to be more specific, if we wanted to go on strike and could go to organizations like C.L.U.W. [Coalition of Labor Union Women] and the N.O.W. Labor Task Force, we could start making some good connections. It seems that women's
organizations are becoming more interested in supporting workers.
Linda: I think there is some mistrust there-not
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pag avesill LIBERATION NEWS SERVICE against the women in the labor movement, but, as you said, the unions are basically male institutions.
Kathy: But it's easy to write things off as part of a male institution. And once women do that, they begin to isolate themselves. But then, what isn't a male institution? People have to learn how to strug gle in institutions. And it is a struggle. Fortunately, we have friends to help us get through those times when it seems impossible to go on.
Linda: How does this struggle affect you personally?
Kathy: There is still sexism in my work that I have to fight. And, like a lot of women in work in nonsupportive environments (and even the women are not all supportive), I've found that I have to learn to be the "bitch" and really push for what I believe in. Men don't listen to you. I think all women working in institutions face that. I'm transformed, and a lot of it is bad. I've had to develop a lot of social male characteristics. I've had to learn to be super-logical, articulate, controlled, unemotional. Now when I stand up in front of a membership meeting, people see me as being different from them. It's that whole thing where you have to get up there and lead people. right?
There's a real fine line. You want to be developed as a full human being. You want to take everything you've got and put it to the best you can in terms of being articulate, confident, and logical. I think all of us want to be those things. But once you start to act that way, you don't get a lot of support. You start separating yourself from the rest of the women, and that's real conflict for me.
The women in the union want me to be strong. A lot of it has nothing to do with me personally. Just being a woman affects the other women in the shop. For example, I went into a shop that was 90% women that had been in the union for about ten years. They had a male organizer assigned to them for all that time. They called him mister, and he ran their membership meetings even though there was a woman officer. He talked to the boss all the time. And then I came in and wasn't going to run the show. And they didn't want me to, either! All of a sudden there was a woman organizer with them. If I could lead, so could they. Because they learned to run their own union, they had their first strike in ten years and won!
Linda: Do you find that it's harder to organize women because of the responsibilities they may have at home?
Kathy: Yes, sure. But I disagree with most male organizers who say that women are a lot more difficult to organize. Women's consciousness, which is