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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Union To Be More Mom-Friendly Poll First Step Toward Helping Women Balance Work, Children

Chicago Tribune

Each morning, hundreds of women arrive for work at the headquarters of the biotechnology firm Amgen without some of the worries that will occupy the minds of millions of other women around the country.

These women won’t have to arrange for someone to look after their preschool children, or rush to drop off the dry cleaning, or try to find time to grab something for the family supper at the end of a busy day. That’s because Amgen provides a wide range of services intended to make it easier for women with children to continue their careers.

The Amgen headquarters in the rolling hills of Ventura County just north of Los Angeles contains a full-scale day-care center, a dry cleaner and even a place where prepared dinners can be grabbed on the way home.

But millions of other women balance responsibilities to jobs and families each day without the kind of support provided by Amgen and a few other companies.

The less well-paid the women and the more menial their jobs, the more difficult the problems become.

The AFL-CIO plans to campaign for more of these services as part of its drive to increase membership.

Union leaders, meeting in Los Angeles last week, said they plan to send a million questionnaires to women around the country to identify the problems of working women and the ways unions can help. The union organization plans to use the information to lobby for legislation to address those needs.

“We think that women have a common set of concerns regardless of what region they come from, or what their income level,” said Karen Nussbaum, head of the AFL-CIO’s new Working Women’s Department. “But they have few opportunities to voice their problems and there is nobody behind them.

“We are going to survey all working women, not just union members,” she added. “We think we can give them their voice and put the power of unions behind them.”

Unions are being urged to increase the portion of their budgets that they spend on organizing from the present level of about 2 percent to 30 percent.

Although union membership has been in decline for years, there are signs that the tide may be turning. Recent recruitment gains by unions among service workers, primarily women and minorities, has encouraged labor organizers.

For the first time, Nussbaum said, women are joining unions in greater numbers than men.

Sixty percent of unionized public sector workers are women, she said. Nearly 70,000 women working in the food and commercial services industry are union members. In the fast-growing casino industry, 75 percent of new union members are female.