Founded in 1974, the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW) identified several goals: 1) to organize women workers and to make unions more responsive to their needs; 2) to promote affirmative action in the workplace; 3) to strengthen women's role in unions, especially as leaders; 4) to raise policy issues concerning work and family, the minimum wage, child and elder care, family leave, the right to a job, and health and safety; and 5) to create links between the women's movement and organized labor.
CLUW has supported women as workers, mothers, and family members by promoting policies and contract language to make wages and salaries adequate to support families, to achieve pay equity and equal opportunity, and to encourage practices that respect both the workers' employment and family responsibilities. CLUW consistently has emphasized the family needs of women wage earners. Its 1977 study of child care in Israel, Sweden, and France led to a call for child-care policy and for union contracts that would support parents' family obligations.
Priorities for the 1990s include union contracts that broaden the definition of "family" to serve all varieties of U.S. families.
CLUW continues to raise gender issues in the workplace, to work for a progressive labor program, and to ally working women with the feminist movement. CLUW's achievements include the introduction of women's issues into collective bargaining, passage of the Family and Medical Leave Act in 1993, and an increased leadership role for union women.
Ruth Meyerowitz
See also
Labor Movement;
Labor Unions.
