Rights and Respect: The Working Women's Movement and Clerical Unionism in Higher Education

As the women’s movement of the 1970s came to maturity, a parallel movement among working-class women developed to address their working conditions and economic inequality.  This new labor feminism helped working class women form their own organizations, such as 9to5.  Finding that women’s lack of collective bargaining power limited their effectiveness, the working women’s organizations and clericals in higher education, dealing with university budgetary constraints, stagnant wages, and a reorganization of work, further sought to address the problem through unionism.  As clericals reached out to unions, unions, faced with increasing hostility and declining membership, entered the largely unorganized clerical sector, to save themselves and the labor movement. Through an examination of SEIU and AFSCME clerical organizing campaigns in higher education, Rights and Respect: The Working Women’s Movement and Clerical Unionism in Higher Education contends that unions had diverse organizing styles and that the women’s movement had a tremendous impact on the labor movement, including style of organizing, what workplaces could be seen as unionization targets, and what issues should be prioritized in campaigns and contracts. This research, based on SEIU and AFSCME archival collections at the Walter Reuther Library at Wayne State University and oral histories with union organizers, also shows there was local variability in which union clericals chose, depending on gender politics of the union, political environments, and urban settings.  Both local case studies and the national context of organizing will be examined.