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Celebrate womxn in the labor movement
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may day
National Domestic Workers Alliance Read more inside:
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Ai-Jen Poo of the
may day
table of contents 1 meet the authors 2 about the womxn’s hub 3 hxstory of may day & purpose 4 what is a labor union? 5-7 interviews with union leaders at uci 8-11 interviews with union leaders at uci 12-13 know your rights! all about title ix 14 womxn's hub services & programs
May 1, 2021
meet the authors
Alisa Masamitsu (she/her)
Reema Saad (they/them)
Alisa Masamitsu is the Leadership Admin intern at the Womxn's Hub. She is a second-year psychological science major with minors in creative writing and criminology. She is from Hawaii, enjoys surfing and golfing, and loves noodles with a passion.
Reema Saad is the Community Building Intern at the Womxn's Hub. They are a fourth-year Sociology and currently serves as the ASUCI Senate President. Reema is excited to be completing an honors thesis in Sociology and graduating this Spring 2021. 1
about the womxn's hub Our Mission The Womxn’s Hub at UC Irvine advances gender equity by raising community consciousness, fostering personal growth, implementing social justice initiatives, and increasing access to resources that support student success.
Why Womxn? “Womxn” is one of a few lexical and social phenomena, including the adoption of “x” in naming gender nonconforming individuals, genderqueer folxs, two spirit people, femmes, transgender folxs, and non-binary people. This term recognizes the history of feminism has included racism, transphobia and gender binary views.
Follow us on social media: Instagram: @whubuci Twitter: @whubuci Facebook: facebook.com/whubuci TikTok: whubuci
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May 1, 2021
hxstory of may day
D
uring the late 19th century, workers in the United States were grappling with unsafe working conditions, long work hours, and very little workplace protections. Because of this harsh reality of being in the working class, thousands of people, including womxn and children, were dying. Some industries had life expectations as low as early 20s. In response, trades and labor unions organized, particularly to fight for the 8-hour workday. On May 1, 1886, more than 300,000 workers took to the streets all across America to strike their unfair treatment. In Chicago’s Haymarket Square, police opened fire on protestors. To honor those lost in the strike and to celebrate this massive demonstration of workers’ rights, May 1 would become known as May Day, or International Workers’ Day. Unfortunately, this holiday is not widely recognized in the United States because of the government’s lack of solidarity with the workers at the time.
purpose At the Womxn’s Hub, we strive to shine light on these moments in hxstory that are often lost. Through this May Day Zine, we hope to commemorate womxn in the labor movement as well as celebrate the womxn at UCI fighting for better working conditions.
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what is a labor union? A labor union or trade union is an organization of workers who come together to make decisions regarding their working conditions. Through organizing, labor unions seek to bring justice to the workplace and better the terms and conditions of their employment. Unions address issues of race, sex, class, and other protected categories to ensure equitable outcomes for all members of the union. Decisions are made democratically through the process of electing officers who serve on behalf of the interests of the union.
UC-AFT, Local 2226 UC-AFT represents lecturers, program coordinators, supervisors of teacher education, and librarians.
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Photo courtesy of Kat Lewin
May 1, 2021
kat lewin, uc-aft Q: In your own words, what is collective bargaining?
A: It is the legal right that a union has to sit down and negotiate with its employer over the terms and conditions of employment, so fundamental issues like wages, work responsibilities, work hours, and health benefits. Q: Are there any gender issues that persist for your workers? What steps are taken to address any instances of sexism in the workplace?
Kat Lewin (She/Her)
Composition Lecturer UC-AFT Member Leader Q: How has being part of the union changed you as a person?
A: I really see my work at the Union as as coming out of my love for the students. It's about using my ability to craft language and read over contracts and see if it actually results in things like having stable career appointments for lecturers so that when my first generation students are applying to graduate school they can email to ask for a letter of recommendation. With a 21% faculty turnover rate, students often lose access to old lecturers because they no longer have their UCI emails.
A: [There are] implicit biases that exist in the workplace, and the huge double burden of expectation that is put on womxn in our society expresses itself in workplace issues. One big fight that we've been having is re-evaluating the way that evaluation of lecturers is done. They've done studies with online classes where they'll have the instructors give the exact same commentary but womxn get lower evaluations. Q: How can students support UC-AFT?
A: Sometimes students attend bargaining sessions, and that is really amazing because the University listens to students (because students pay to be there) more than they listened to us, who are paid to be there. Students are going to start hearing a lot more from their lecturers. We are certainly very hopeful that management is going to come to us with a proposal that offers basic dignity and fair working conditions. However, if that is not something they can do then students can show support through petitions and using their voice.
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michelle kim gardner, uaw 2865 Q: Why do you think union work is so important?
A: The union work that we do is so important because it gets these very scattered grievances and brings them together and makes it a cohesive package of things that we want from the administration. Q: What does intersectionality mean to you, and how does it impact the work that you do with the union?
A: Intersectionality is complicated and difficult for a lot of people to grasp because there is this tendency to put ourselves into pigeonholes of identity, and there's so much of ourselves that might even make it seem as if we're walking contradictions. But we are not just pigeonholes of identity -- we are holistic human beings who have all of these lived experiences that make us more complicated than one might think. Intersectionality tries to theorize about the fact that things can really seem one way, whereas that's not the whole truth and there's more to an individual than just one single identity. I think we see that in the academic student workers because even though we're some of the most highly educated people, we are not getting paid [enough] for the work that we do. I would say that that's how [intersectionality] impacts my work with the union.
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Michelle Kim Gardner (she/her)
Political Theory PhD Student Head Steward for UAW 2865 UAW 2865 represents teaching assistants graduate student instructors, tutors, and readers
Q: Why is collective bargaining important?
A: Because when we have a supermajority, we have the collective power that we need to go to the bargaining table. We might have really well-written demands, but the administration is not necessarily going to take us seriously if we don't have this supermajority of graduate students on board with us.
May 1, 2021
natalie barman, uaw 2865 Q: How has being part of the union changed you as a person?
Natalie Barman (she/her)
English PhD Student Sergeant at Arms for Statewide Executive Board Q: What is the biggest challenge your union is facing?
A: The housing crisis is a big issue, and part of the reason I'm so into challenging it is that the university refuses to bargain with us over it because they claim that housing is a student issue and not a worker issue, which feels hard to believe, since they offer professors subsidized housing -- so it doesn't really make sense that they say this is a student issue. One thing that we're definitely going to be working towards next year is bargaining over getting a cost of living stipend so that people can actually afford to live in Orange County.
A: Before I got involved with our Union, I was a bit cynical about what [meaningful] change we can make [as individuals]. But I feel like my politics have changed; I do believe that people can change things because I have seen these victories happen. I think I also have discovered how to talk with people who disagree with you and move them to think about what it is that they want to see change in their lives -- and how something like a Union collective action could bring about that change. That's been really empowering.
Q: Please describe one of your favorite moments during your time with the union.
A: One thing that's going on right now is there's an unfair grading policy in the social sciences. [TAs] are sometimes given different grades for their work, which violates their contracts because they are basically being punished by getting a bad grade, which impacts their ability to be hired. [Our Union is] trying to change that, so [maybe 40 of us] went to the dean's Zoom office hours and a couple of graduate students gave testimony about how [this policy has] negatively impacted them, not only in terms of applying for fellowships and like getting rehired, but also the emotional burden that was put on them. I think it was very powerful -- the dean ended up sending out an email about it later, and we're still trying to get this issue resolved, but people are no longer receiving poor grades for their performance. It was really cool to just see so many people turn out to this Zoom to try to change this thing.
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womxn in labor movement hxstory “You may call me an anarchist, a socialist, or a communist, I care not, but I hold to the theory that if one man has not enough to eat three times a day and another man has $25,000,000, that last man has something that belongs to the first.” In addition to organizing on behalf of farm workers, Mary Lease was committed to social justice causes, such as womxn’s suffrage and Black suffrage.
Mary Lease, 1850-1993 Lucy Parsons was an organizer in the first ever May Day protest in 1886. With her husband and their two children, Parsons went on strike to demand the 8-hour work day alongside the tens of thousands of protestors in Chicago. Later on, Parsons helped to found the International Workers of the World.
Lucy Parsons, 1851-1942 Anna LoPizzo was murdered by police during the Bread and Roses Strike in 1912. This strike was carried out by textile workers who discovered their wages had been lowered to match their hours after a change in Massachusetts law lowered working hours from 56 to 54 hours per week. The lowering of these wages amounted to several loaves of bread per week, hence the name Bread and Roses. 25,000 workers went on strike that day. LoPizzo is regarded as a martyr of the movement (memorial pictured).
Anna LoPizzo, 1878-1912
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May 1, 2021
womxn in labor movement hxstory Elizabeth Gurley Flynn dedicated her career to being an organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World. Flynn is known for her famous quotation, “I will devote my life to the wage earner. My sole aim in life is to do all in my power to right the wrongs and lighten the burdens of the laboring class.” She was also a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union and was a key member of the ACLU until she was expelled for being a member of the Communist Party. Despite this setback, Flynn continued to fight for workers and for womxn’s economic equality throughout World War II. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, 1890-1964
Luisa Moreno was a Guatemalan immigrant and a worker at Zelgreen’s Cafeteria in New York City. Faced with “long work hours, constant sexual harassment, and the threat, should anyone object, of dismissal,” she and her co-worker organized a strike of the workers at Zelgreen’s. When she directed the workers to begin striking, police arrested her and took her custody into a nearby building. Moreno’s face was bloodied, but that did not stop her from organizing for the next 20 years.
Luisa Moreno, 1907-1992 In Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Velma Hopkins led over 10,000 workers demanding the formation of unions to the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. The union leading the effort was the Food, Tobacco, Agricultural and Allied Workers of America-CIO Local 22. The union was run by Black womxn who pushed for economic, gender, and racial equality. Their vision for an equal society garnered national attention, despite the anti-union sentiment in the region.
Velma Hopkins, 1909-1996
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womxn in labor movement hxstory In 1942, Sue Cowan Williams represented the Black teachers of the Little Rock School district, challenging the rate of salaries granted to teachers based on skin color. Although the initial demand to equalize salaries was lost in court, Williams eventually won in an appeal on the case.
Sue Cowan Williams, 1910-1994
Jessie de la Cruz began her work as a field worker when she was just 5 years old. She was no stranger to poverty, harsh working conditions, and the exploitation of Mexican laborers. In 1965, she was invited by César Chávez to join the United Farm Workers as their womxn recruiter. Additionally, de la Cruz led strikes and fought to ban the short-handle hoe, an unsafe working tool. Among her other achievements include being elected as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention and testifying before the United States Senate. Jessie de la Cruz, 1919-2013
Before joining the United Farm Workers and César Chávez in 1962, Dolores Huerta was a school teacher and the founder of the Agricultural Workers Association. Not only is she a champion of workers’ rights, Huerta was a key player in advancing voting rights for Mexican Americans and lobbying for providing the written drivers’ test in various languages.
Dolores Huerta, 1930-
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May 1, 2021
womxn in labor movement hxstory Hattie Canty was a hotel maid in Las Vegas and eventually became the President of the Las Vegas Culinary Workers’ Union Local 226. This union represented tens of thousands of workers in the hospitality industry. As a union representative, Canty fought for better wages, integration in the work industry, and higher level jobs for minorities.
Hattie Canty, 1933-2012 May Chen was the key leader in the New York Chinatown strike of 1982. Over 20,000 workers marched in Lower Manhattan demanding work contracts. In addition, the strikers demanded higher wages, better working conditions, fairness, and respect. Because of this movement, practices such as hiring bilingual staff and providing English-language classes were adopted.
May Chen, 1948Ai-Jen Poo has taken on the challenging task of organizing domestic workers across the country. People thought this would be an impossible feat, considering domestic workers are scattered across different homes. However, Poo experienced immense victory with the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) in 2010 when the State of New York passed a legislation that would give domestic workers the same rights as other employees, including vacation time and overtime pay. The NWDA took this mission to an additional 17 cities and 11 states.
Ai-Jen Poo, 1974-
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know your rights! all about title ix So, What is Title IX? “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” Title IX prohibits: sex discrimination, sexual harassment, and sexual violence
How does Title IX Protect Student Employees at UCI? Rights Reflective of what Title IX is being defined as at the time, as well as what UCI’s policies and guidelines say Students have the right to go to UCIPD, to get accommodations under Title IX Overall, making sure students are successful on campus Options Gives each student agency and the ability to decide how they want to handle their situation Resources Connect students with UCI resources (UCIPD, social workers, counseling center, CARE advocates) or with community resources (domestic violence clinics, sexual assault prevention clinics)
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In comes... the Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity Resource for those experiencing discrimination, sexual harassment, sexual violence, and retaliation Provides guidance and consultation, informal resolution options, and performs formal administrative investigations Serves the entire UCI community; faculty, staff, students, on campus and at the Medical Center Provides mandatory SVSH (Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment) trainings and tracks compliance
May 1, 2021
know your rights! all about title ix How does The Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity respond? OEOD reaches out via email to provide rights, options, and resources OEOD answers questions and helps a person decide what (if any) resolution process they would like (informal resolution, alternative resolution, formal investigation) Students, staff, faculty can bring a support person or advisor with them to OEOD meetings Under Title IX, students, staff, and faculty have the right to supportive measures, regardless of if they file a formal complaint In hate crime or sex offense cases, meetings with OEOD and UCIPD can occur at the same time for ease of reporting
OEOD’s Process Inquiry Informal resolution Alternative resolution Formal investigation UCI office does not make disciplinary decisions
Special thank you to Katherine Papageorges from the Office of Equal Opportunity & Diversity for sharing these Title Ix resources
Supportive Measures that OEOD provide (whether or not an administrative complaint is filed) Changing to housing or classes Academic assistance, withdrawls, and extensions Financial aid assistance Visa assistance Workplace accommodations Safety escorts (UCIPD) and safety planning Information on no contact orders *OEOD is committed to helping individuals and respecting their agency b/c they understand that not everyone wants to go through an investigation, but they still may want help
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womxn's hub services & programs
Thank you for celebrating International Workers' Day with the Womxn's Hub! Please join us in our other programs and services: Live chat services via website One-on-one appointments Programs We Rise Ambassadors Pen Pals Program Sad Girls Club at UCI Feel Good Moment EmpowerHER Summit Womxn's Wisdom Counselor-in-residence Weekly newsletter 14