Women confront obstacles in non-traditional work

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OLYMPIA, Wash.— "New directions for the Eighties" was the theme of this year's celebration of International Women's Day at The Evergreen State College (TESC). The event was sponsored by a coalition of student groups that included Third World Women, the Women's Center, the Lesbian/Gay Resource Center, and Students for a Humane Foreign Policy.

The celebration of IWD opened with a presentation by Evergreen faculty member Joye Hardiman. She is the subject of a recent PBS documentary, "A Soul Comes Home," which chronicles her experiences as a teacher and her Diane Lutz 4 SOCIALIST The refusal of federal and state government to monitor and enforce affirmative action regulations is impeding further progress by women into higherpaid, non-traditional blue-collar jobs.

This was the conclusion of Bobbie Kierstead, director of Tradeswomen, Inc., in a recent interview with Socialist Action. Tradeswoman, Inc. is a nonprofit grassroots organization of over 600 individual women and affiliates nationwide that does peer support and advocacy for women in non-traditional blue-collar jobs. The organization publishes a monthly newletter, Tradetrax, and a quarterly magazine, Tradeswomen.

"As a result of the government's tacit opposition to affirmative action and its disinterest in enforcement," said Kierstead, "contractors have developed a cavalier attitude. Contractors are not hiring women and not caring about not hiring women."

Though the number of employed women has risen by about 80 percent over the last 20 years, the overwhelming majority of women workers remain segregated in so-called "women's work" —low-paying secretarial and service jobs. Partly as a result of this job segregation, college-educated women working full time still earn only 55 percent of the income of their male counterparts.

The small number of women who have broken through the sex barrier are forced to work in isolaACTION tion from other women and often face sexual and other forms of harassment from male bosses and coworkers. Tougher affirmative action regulations and enforcement of those regulations already on the books are essential for achieving a qualitative improvement in the status of working women.

But the government has not only refused to enforce present regulations, it has attempted on a number of occasions to seriously weaken them. At the beginning of his first term in office, President Reagan proposed a complete revision of affirmative action regulations that would have gutted affirmative action nationally. Concerted protests by women's and civil rights organizations resulted in this proposal being tabled.

More recently, the Reagan administration, through the Department of Labor's Office of Federal Contract Compliance Program (OFCCP), developed a National Self-Monitoring Reporting System (NSMRS). This system would have allowed major employers to establish and monitor their own affirmative action program with few compliance requirements.

Before protests put a halt to this program, secret NSMRS agreements had been negotiated with American Telephone and Telegraph Co., General Motors Corp., International Business Machines Corp., and Hewlett-Packard.

Similar attacks on affirmative action have occurred on the state level in California where Joint Apprenticeship Committees (JACs), co-sponsored the building trades, in these moves to weaken and dismantle affirmative action not only hurts women and national minorities, but weakens unions as a whole.

"While changes in the law have been blocked for the time being," noted Kierstead, "the Reagan administration's atmosphere of non-enforcement of affirmative action has almost as devastating effect on women and people of color as changes in the law would have."

Tradeswomen, Inc. is presently preparing for hearings in April, sponsored by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, regarding the extremely low representation of women in non-traditional city jobs. Blue-collar women who work for the city will be challenging civil-service testing procedure, widespread sexual harassment in the workplace, and sex discrimination in promotions.

In addition, Tradeswomen, Inc. will be involved in hearings on implementation of the Carl Perkins Vocational Educational Act. The act sets aside more money for the vocational training of women and girls than ever before. Tradeswomen and other women's rights advocates want to assure that the program is actually used to benefit women and girls.

Kierstead emphasized that women in blue-collar jobs not only have to work 40 or more hours per week doing hard physical labor, but often have to take courses at night and suffer the additional stress of working in a frequently hostile work environment. This often leaves little energy for political work. Blue-collar women are in great need of allies.

Clearly, the fight to defend and extend affirmative action cannot be the task of blue-collar women alone. The feminist movement as a whole and the labor movement must also take up the banner.

Tradeswomen, Inc. can be contacted at P.O. Box 40664, San Francisco, CA 94140. (415) 821-7334.