NATIONAL Why Labor Supports the ERA
NEWS
The national LERN (Labor for Equal Rights Now) march in Richmond, Virginia on January 13 is a symbol of the emergence of a powerful new ally in the struggle for women's rights-the organized labor movement. LERN was formed by a coalition of Virginia labor organizations in 1978 to demand passage by the Virginia Legislature of the ERA. That Legislature is now in session, and it is hoped that this key state will become the 36th to ratify the ERA.
In Virginia, the Virginia State AFL-CIO, United Auto Workers Region 8, Virginia Education Association, Teamsters Joint Councils 55 and 83, and United Mine Workers District 28 united to launch the campaign to bring the ERA to a vote in that state. The campaign has been endorsed by the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW) and the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU).
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There is good reason for this united labor support. More than two out of every five workers in the Unkind States, noe female. And yet full-time working women earn only 39 cents før every dollar earned by men. Om ille àverige, wonsen'workers earn approximately $100 less a week than men.
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With the ERA as part of the Constitution, the pressure will grow for more effective enforcement of anti-discrimination laws. The ERA will make it easier for wassan to poort their rights, including their right ving, union-protected, industrial jobs. is nim closely linked to the angry, 1980
fight against "right to work" laws which hamper the efforts of unions to organize workers. Twelve of the fifteen states that have not ratified the ERA are right to work states.
All workers suffer from the low wages, paltry unemployment compensation, inferior health care and education, and lack of job security that prevail in right to work states. But women workers are especially the victims. They have the most to gain from doing away with state laws that divide workers, hamper organizing the unorganized, and weaken unions' efforts to win the best possible contracts for all their members.
In the United States, only one working woman in ten belongs to a trade union. When unions take the lead in fighting for equal rights, this helps them win working women to the union banner. and undermines the employers' attempt to use vulnerable, underpaid female workers against organized labor. The labor movement also realizes that the ERA is needed to eliminate the estimated 3000 laws on the
books which discriminate on the basis of sex, including workers' compensation laws. When a woman is injured or killed on the job, her family members often have to go through a long and degrading process to prove they were dependent on her income. Social Security laws also discriminate against women, especially those who work as homemakers. When a homemaker becomes disabled, her dependents have no right to social security.
Thus, it is in the best interests of organized labor as well as of women that they ally in the stuggle to ratify the ERA. By fighting for the ERA, the labor movement helps to cement its unity; women are becoming a powerful force in organized labor and they are needed in the continuing struggle for better wages and working conditions. Further, the unions have come to realize that passage of the ERA will mean gains not only for women, but for all.
-Excerpted from Labor's Case for the ERA, Labor for Equal Rights Now
Racism Charged in NOW
(HerSay)-A San Francisco urban consultant and former president of the National Organization for Women says that she has received no official response about a resolution she sponsored recently which urges black women to quit the nation's largest feminist group.
Aileen Hernandez, president of the National Organization for Women in 1970 and 1971, called NOW "racist" at the recent organizing convention in California for the Black American Political Association. Her charges came on the heels of a September NOW convention in Los Angeles, in which an allwhite group of officers was elected for the second straight year in a row. Hernandez sponsored a resolution saying blacks should quit NOW or refrain from joining until the feminist group confronted its own racism and that of the larger society. Her resolution was endorsed by the Black American Political Association of California, with support from all four
Small Business Aid
The Small Business Administration has produced a publication Learning About Your Market which provides an overview of what market research is and how it's done. Especially valuable to women initially getting involved in their own businesses, the booklet introduces inexpensive techniques that small business owper-chamagers can apply to gather facts about ourrent and prospective customers. For a copy of this free aid, write to the Small Business Administration, P.O. Box 15434, Fort Worth, Texas 76119.
-Ohio Report Vol. 5, No. 6'
Pennyroyal Warning
(HerSay)-The Rocky Mountain Poison Center in Denver, Colorado is warning that pennyroyal oil, a folk medicine used to induce abortion and menstruation, has a toxic effect which can cause stomach upset, intestinal and vaginal bleeding, and possibly a coma. The Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, which has been collecting information about the uses of pennyroyal as an abortifacient, has also issued several warnings about the wie of the herb. The Center admits, however, that it is not so much, the oil in itself which is haruiful, but that most users are simply not aware of how inuich cám bẹ safely ingusted.
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of California's black women legislators.
Hernandez' remarks brought protests from Eleanor Smeal, who was elected last September to her second one-year term as president of the 110,000-member group. Smeal insisted that NOW fights "as hard on discrimination of race" as on sex discrimination.
Hernandez says, however, that since the resolution was passed, no attempts have been made by the Washington-based feminist organization to open a dialogue about the racism charges.
A San Francisco consultant for affirmative action and equal opportunity legal cases, Hernandez herself is currently active as a member of the Ms. Foundation and the National Women's Political Caucus.
Abortion: Europe
(HerSay)-France's temporary abortion law has been made permaneist by that country's National Assembly, which voted 271 to 201 to approve the measure permitting abortions up to the tenth week of pregnancy.
Great Britain's Parliament, in the meantime, is debating a proposed how which would tighten the upin that country frøm 28 per time mir for mor to 20 weeks.
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