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| New video funded by Berger-Marks grant |
Innovative groups & organizers
win $91,671 in 2010 grants
Here's what they're doing!
Eleven winners emerged from among the many exciting grant proposals the Foundation received this Spring. Many will create innovative resources to help women organize, often using media like websites, video and dramatic readings, and several offer training to help specific groups organize. They are developing new ways to organize women who work in isolation -- from immigrant domestic workers to freelance journalists. And two research winners are looking into what it takes to be a winning organizer, with surprising conclusions.
Another big project you’ll be hearing about
This March the Foundation brought together 30 activist women from different generations who spent almost two days analyzing their experiences with the labor movement and exploring differences, similarities and tensions across generations. The process generated exciting ideas about “making change happen,” including concrete ways to make unions more inviting to young women. Stay tuned to this website for news and videos about this women's summit and the release of the report the Foundation will publish based on it.
Grants to organizers in '10
CHERYL HITZEMANN:
NORTHEAST INDIANA CENTRAL LABOR COUNCIL
Rebecca Rosen Lum:
New west coast media union offers support & resources to free-lance journalists
CWA, Local Northern California Media Workers Guild No. 39521
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Rosen Lum continues to make tremendous progress building a new union for free-lance journalists, and the grant she won in 2009 was renewed. In her first eight weeks of organizing, she built an innovative structure and database and launched a beautiful website and has recruited influential members. The union runs lunchtime seminars on journalistic issues and offers juried press credentials and a resource directory. Rosen Lum is looking into offering benefits like health insurance, and is surveying members about their needs. Find out more.
She is determined "to provide journalists in all media with the supports they need to work independently -- without sacrificing security."
Freelancers' website.
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Grants to groups in '10
Damayan Migrant Workers Association:
Filipino domestic workers organize to fight health threats, 'modern slavery' & wage theft
Just because domestic workers aren't protected by basic labor law doesn't mean they can't organize. DAMAYAN has proved that by attracting 700 dues-paying members among domestic workers who migrated from the Philippines (or whose families did) and have been isolated and often very badly treated at their low-paying jobs. This year's grant helps DAMAYAN expand and energize its base. Entering its eighth year, DAMAYAN will keep recruiting domestic workers through house meetings, and offer potential leaders advanced political education, organizing skills, and networking opportunities.
Since DAMAYAN has only two full-time staff members – who are also domestic workers -- it relies on members to run campaigns and its three main programs: the LUNAS ("healing") program that aims to protect members' right to health and well-being; the Wage Theft and Recovery Program to protect members' right to the wages they earn; and the ABANTE BABAE ("onward women") program to stop workplace harassment and violence. They also run a Campaign Against Trafficking & Modern Slavery and a campaign for a New York State Domestic Workers Bill of Rights. DAMAYAN won a Berger-Marks grant for such campaigns in 2008.
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Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA), AFL-CIO:
First-ever Organizing Institute
for Asian Pacific American women
Asian Pacific Americans are among the fastest growing groups of union workers, and half of APA union members are women. However, they have very few opportunities to be trained as union organizers.
APALA plans to fill that gap with a three-day Organizing Institute where seasoned APA union organizers train some 30 rank and file women union members and recent women college graduates. They hope that many participants will become union organizers.
Since this is the first time they've focused the Institute on women, the curriculum is being modified to stress the importance of unions for women, the union advantage for women, and strategies to successfully engage women workers. They expect to start recruiting participants this Spring and do the training in July. Read about recent hearing APALA sponsored with the AFL-CIO.
CanMyBossDoThat:
Web site goes interactive by giving direct answers to workers' questions
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| From health & safety section of site |
| Photo by Earl Dotter |
CanMyBossDoThat.com is a non-profit website with 750 pages advising workers on their rights and protections, along with tools for self-advocacy, and connections to local resources. A previous Berger-Marks grant helped them explain worker rights like family medical leaves and protections for breastfeeding mothers.
With this grant they'll start directly answering questions. Although the site currently says it can't respond to inquiries, they've been getting 30 messages a week from workers who have nowhere else to turn. They're now convinced that workers need direct, individual support to take action. This will also help them collect data on issues faced by workers and their experiences with enforcement agencies, which can be useful to policy makers and academics.
They're also talking with other groups about letting workers ask questions through their sites.
Hesperian Foundation:
New Workers' Guide to Health and Safety includes 'social hazards' dangerous to women
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| From Health & Safety Guide |
Hesperian has produced many valuable educational tools to help people take greater control over their health and lives, and to fight the underlying causes of poor health—including poverty and unjust social structures. Activists in sweatshops and factories in the U.S. and abroad asked for the new manual funded by this grant.
The Worker's Guide to Health and Safety will deal not only with work dangers but also with "social hazards" in export processing zones where so many women live and work -- such as violence, discrimination and unsafe housing and transportation. It zeroes in on challenges faced by women workers, ranging from overwork and poverty wages to sexual harassment, reproductive health risks, and the burden of working a "second shift" caring for families at home. It stresses that organizing is the key to changing hazardous conditions.
"Women's issues are not treated as special cases, but rather as the rule," Says Hesperian.
Interfaith Worker Justice:
Worker Centers focus training program on helping women organize into unions
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Interfaith Worker Justice runs 26 worker centers where workers in hard-to-organize sectors like home care-giving or sanitation learn how to assert their rights and join campaigns for economic justice. In November, this grant will help IWJ launch a national pilot program, Safe Spaces: Women and Workers' Rights, to give women involved in worker centers the tools and resources to organize other women in their workplaces.
They'll start with a 3-day women's retreat where staff and workers develop strategies and tactics, share success stories, and learn new skills. They'll discuss how cultural and societal expectations impact women in the low-wage workforce and how to overcome them and make their voices heard. And they'll develop three-month work plans to build female networks and leadership and set up peer-to-peer mentoring.
This female-focused program will be added to IWJ's "Know Your Rights" training module, and data about women's jobs will be offered online and to community allies.
Labor Heritage Foundation:
Oral History Project will capture women's stories, share them through video, the web & dramatic readings
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| LHS also sponsors labor arts exchanges |
The LHF was born as a labor arts exchange and has grown into a vibrant national community where artists, activists and organizers share their experiences and vision. It aims to preserve and promote the cultural heritage of the American worker through the arts, and strengthen the labor movement through creative organizing.
This grant helps LHF conduct a Labor Union Women's Oral History Project to capture the stories of working women and their impact on families, communities and the union movement. They'll recruit a crew of young interviewers, and run workshops to teach them interviewing, transcribing and editing skills. They aim to collect 30-40 compelling stories and a wealth of narratives, video footage, and audio recordings for a special section on their website.
The Heritage Foundation believes that "the real power of the collected stories lies in sharing them with the broader community through a series of dramatic readings or multi-media presentations of first-person monologues based on the collected interviews." Such stories can encourage young women to seek out careers in the union movement.
Academic/ Research grants in '10
Fraser + Films:
Exciting new documentary, 'From Roses to Rivets,' highlights women's work for labor rights
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| Michel Fraser |
The grant helps fund a 1-hour documentary for PBS TV stations as well as two hours of video designed for education and archives. It will show the extraordinary contribution of women to the labor movement, from a high school principal who championed pay equity for teachers in the late 1800s, to the war against child slavery, to modern women like Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis, and Farmworkers leader Dolores Huerta. While the struggles of working men have been well documented, "precious little media exists about the role women have played in re-shaping the American workplace. 'From Roses To Rivets' aims to correct this," says Producer/Director Michel Fraser.
The videos will also address issues facing working women today -- such as family leave and child care – and possible solutions. "Sexism is no longer the issue facing women in the work place," asserts Fraser. "it is motherhood."
A short five-minute trailer can be viewed at www.fromrosestorivets.com .
Labor Project for Working Families:
How do union organizers and young women use new technology to link up?
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| Netsy Firestein |
This project is inspired by the successful use of the Internet and social networking tools during the presidential election campaign. Labor Project Executive Director Netsy Firestein says she'll use the grant to explore:
- How do unions use online tools and new technology, such as YouTube and chat rooms, for recruiting and organizing women?
- Do young women workers use the Internet to get labor news and information on life issues? Do they see family issues as big concerns? Do they believe the best way to solve them is through workplace action or political activity?
- What other groups use the Internet to organize support among women for work-family issues? Would they like to link up with unions and their websites?
- Are unions interested in working with White House initiatives for families and connecting them with organizing campaigns for women?
UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education:
How courageous women reporters fought union busting at the Contra Costa Times
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| Lum & Steffens during organizing drive |
When a group of reporters in San Francisco's bay area tried to organize the Contra Costa Times into the Newspaper Guild-CWA in 2008, companies and unions around the country viewed it as a test case for a changing newspaper industry. The paper was owned by the powerful MediaNews Group, which used every tactic they could – legal or illegal – to scare workers into voting against the union, and labor law was too weak to protect the workers. But the union won. How did it do it?
Dr. John Logan at UC Berkeley's Labor Center won this grant for a case study on how "key activists – in this case women reporters – can and do make a difference to the outcome of organizing and bargaining campaigns." Sara Steffens and Rebecca Rosen Lum, who have won Berger-Marks grants to continue organizing for the California Media Workers Guild, were two of those dedicated leaders. Steffens had no union experience when she agreed to co-chair the organizing committee, but she had what it took to win.
University of Montana-Missoula:
Beyond charismatic leadership: How workers & organizers view effective leadership in union organizing campaigns
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| Daisy Rooks |
Do you have to be a "bigger-than-life " inspiring orator who has charisma -- like Mother Jones or Walter Reuther -- to be a good organizer? And do men and women value charisma the same way? What are the most important qualities union organizers need? Once Daisy Rooks realized that few scholars have delved into this issue, she decided to find the answer.
Rooks and her co-author interviewed 79 union organizers and 79 workers involved in union organizing drives across the U.S. Their preliminary analysis suggests that while union organizers believe they need charisma to be effective leaders, the workers -– men and women alike -- argued that other, relational qualities such as credibility, trustworthiness and honesty, were more important.
The grant will help Rooks hire research assistants to do a systematic analysis of the interview data over the summer. If her final report confirms the first impressions, it could encourage women who don't feel they're loaded with charisma to become organizers. And it could influence how unions recruit, train and assess full-time union organizers.
Thanks to all applicants
We’d like to thank all who submitted proposals, including those that our limited funds can’t cover.
More information about Berger-Marks grants.
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More news
More about our grants
The latest news
More about our grants
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| Poster produced by 2008 grant winner Kathy Peterson |
Grants approved in the Spring of 2010
For organizers:
Rebecca Rosen Lum:
New west coast media union offers support & resources to free-lance journalists
For groups:
Damayan Migrant Workers Association:
Filipino domestic workers organize to fight health threats, 'modern slavery' & wage theft
Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA), AFL-CIO:
First-ever Organizing Institute
for Asian Pacific American women
CanMyBossDoThat:
Web site goes interactive by giving direct answers to workers' questions
Hesperian Foundation:
New Workers' Guide to Health and Safety includes 'social hazards' dangerous to women
Interfaith Worker Justice:
Worker Centers focus training program on helping women organize into unions
Labor Heritage Foundation:
Oral History Project will capture women's stories, share them through video, the web & dramatic readings
Academic/research:
Fraser + Films:
Exciting new documentary, 'From Roses to Rivets,' highlights women's work for labor rights
Labor Project for Working Families:
How do union organizers and young women use new technology to link up?
UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education:
How courageous women reporters fought union busting at the Contra Costa Times
University of Montana-Missoula:
Beyond charismatic leadership: How workers & organizers view effective leadership in union organizing campaigns
More news
More about our grants