SEIU proposes living wage for Oregon workers

Scan page 5

SEIU 503 has announced it supports a living wage for its workers in Oregon, and is taking the issue to the bargaining table and possibly to the streets. While President Obama has proposed an increase in the Federal Minimum Wage to $9 an hour, SEIU doesn’t believe that is the solution. Oregon’s minimum wage is already close to what Obama is proposing, and still 800,000 Oregonians are receiving food stamps and 30% of the applicants are currently working.

The union is saying that no state employee should continue to qualify for public assistance. They pro­ pose raising the wages to at least $30,000 per year, which would be slightly above the threshold for a family of four to receive food stamps.

Heather Hoffman, the Statesman Journal’s columnist assigned to keep an eye on those pesky state work­ ers, actually dug up some interesting statistics. In comparing salaries among different state agencies, she found that “many of the people in the pay sector below $30,000 work for the Department Of Human Services (DHS).”

But she didn’t pursue research on the gender break­ down of the workers in the agency that has the most number of workers who are not receiving a “Living Wage.” Anyone who has worked for DHS knows the answer. And anyone who has walked into an office where food stamps or other poverty-level assistance applications are being received knows the answer. These workers are women.

So here we are again. In 1987, when SEIU went on strike, one of the main issues was pay equity for wom­ en who were in job classifications that were predomi­ nately female and undervalued. Many were on food stamps. In organizing for that strike, women workers spoke out in public hearings, met with women work­ ers across the state and then voted overwhelming to strike. In fact, Michael Krivosh, the chief strategist of the strike, affectionately referred to our strike as “my mother’s strike.” Not only did the workers win pay in­ creases for those undervalued job classifications but it changed the face of the union—literally.

Now in 2013, they are not looking at predominately female job classifications, as in 1987, but at the agen­ ... Women & fightback (continued from page 4: “Women and the coming working-class fightback”)

by the far right. The fight for full democratic rights for LGBTQI workers and for gender equality are necessary corollaries that limit the ability of the ruling class to use the nuclear family as an ideo­ logical tool to attack the working class as a whole.

An effective working-class program for jobs and social services must include the appropriate de­ mands for child care, for reproductive freedom and reproductive justice, for full female and child health care, for adequate maternal and paternal leave for childbirth, child rearing, and elder care, for a full and rich education for all children, and for affirmative action to achieve gender equality in all trades and professions that we are fighting to maintain.

These demands, and others like them, could not only heal one of the most dangerous divides in the workers who qualify for food stamps. We are living in a system that continues to use women as a source of underpaid labor. We fought against it 26 years ago, and we need to fight against it again.

No changes of any magni­ tude will come about with­ out organized pressure from women. Certainly, no effective strike will happen without women activists stepping forward. The fight against gender-based wage discrimination requires a prolonged and consistent commitment. It didn’t end in 1987, and it won’t end in 2013; but there can be vic­ tories along the way if we don’t give up. n ranks of the working class, but could make crys­ tal clear the nature of the society that will benefit all working people. It would be a system in which society as a whole, not the individual household unit, takes responsibility for the basic human needs of its members.

It would be a society in which those who produce the wealth have the power to channel resources into social projects that enrich the youth and com­ fort the elderly, and afford 100% of the population the time and means to develop as full and produc­ tive beings, free to use their talents and creativity to shape a better world.

Currently, there is no sizeable movement for women’s rights in the streets. Nevertheless, the small mobilizations, conferences, and discussions occurring among young feminists, at Occupy gath­ erings, and in the labor movement are part of the broad political process by which an effective class-struggle movement and revolutionary organiza­ tion will be built in the next period. n SOCIALIST ACTION APRIL 2013 5

----- pull-quotes -----

Once again we see gender- based pay inequity