Let Us Now Praise All Great Working Women
Say the phrase “war on women” to anyone not in the MAGA coterie and most people will tell you it refers to the Supreme Court ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which opened the door to states removing the reproductive rights of women and allowing state governments to launch an inquisition against anyone that would not abide by the law. Without question, the ruling that struck down Roe v. Wade was the breaking point. Women and personal privacy were the victims. The extremist majority on the Supreme Court was the villain.
Clearly not all infringements against women are as easily documented as the Supreme Court blunder on Dobbs, and infringements happen too frequently and mostly out of sight, especially when it comes to working women. Greedy right wing bosses, many of them in the Trump camp, deploy an arsenal in the economic War on Womenthat includes wage inequality, insufficient healthcare coverage, dismal allowance for family and medical emergencies, pregnancy discrimination, random overtime policies, workplace neglect, and inadequate safety provisions.
“The true working class — the surviving not thriving low-paid women in jobs without fringe, without leave, without care — deserve a champion, or at least a politician to recognize them for what they are,” labor economist Kathryn Anne Edwards wrote recently in a column for Bloomberg.
As we all know, employers cheating women out of fair worker compensation packages unfortunately is not new, however putting an anti-worker agenda in writing and boasting that you’re selling out your presidency to some of thebiggest worker-bashing billionaires on the planet is pretty novel. The imprudent Project 2025 report and the arrogant bloviator Trump are advertising their bad faith agenda for the working class, and women would feel the brunt of it.
“For 900 pages, Trump’s Project 2025 playbook dives into excruciating detail on how a Trump-Vance administration will roll back workers’ rights, curbing the right to organize, eliminating overtime pay laws, gutting health and safety protections and protections against child labor,” said Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union.
Vice President Harris gave a more colorful review of Project 2025 in her recent address to the American Federation of Teachers convention. “Can you believe they put that thing in writing? Nine hundred pages in writing,” Vice President Harris chortled. “Project 2025 is a plan to return America to a dark past. Donald Trump and his extreme allies want to take our nation back to failed trickle-down economic policies—back to union busting—back to tax breaks for billionaires.”
Women make up about 47 percent of the U.S. workforce, but women earn just 84 cents for every dollar a man makes, and Black, Latina and Native American women make even less. About 42 percent of management positions are held by women, but women hold only 28 percent of executive C-suite level positions – and in both categories women had lower salaries on average than their male counterparts.
So whether blue collar or white collar, women continue to get ripped off in the workplace.
Fortunately a diverse bunch of labor leaders, many of them women, are stepping up to try to improve the quality of life for their members in what they are hoping will turn into a “year of the women” election in November. The enthusiasm was seen and heard during a “Labor for Harris” video call, one of a series of organizing and fundraising group-think online meet-ups with supporters on behalf of the campaign.
“At every step in her distinguished career in public office, she’s proven herself a principled and tenacious fighter for working people and a visionary leader we can count on. From taking on Wall Street and corporate greed to leading efforts to expand affordable child care and support vulnerable workers, she’s shown time and again that she’s on our side,” AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said.
The labor boost for Vice President Harris is a big deal, and not only in terms of fundraising and volunteers, but for what it says coming after President Biden, arguably the greatest pro-labor president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Labor is counting on the Harris administration to continue to help create more good-paying union jobs and open pathways that make it easier for workers to organize.
Women make up almost half the total union membership in the U.S., working mostly in services industries. Women in unions are paid on average 23 percent more than women in the same jobs without a collective bargaining agreement, and are likely to have better health care coverage, paid leave and other benefits that outway packages for non-unionized workers. Union women who are mothers are more apt to get hard-fought flex hours than women not under a collective bargaining agreement. The gender wage gap is also narrower for women in unions.
“In our vision of the future, we see a place where every person has the opportunity not just to get by but to get ahead, a future where no child has to grow up in poverty, where every senior can retire with dignity and where every worker has the freedom to join a union,” Vice President Harris said. “We see a future with affordable healthcare, affordable childcare and paid leave, not for some, but for all.”
The core of the Trump agenda for the working class is deflect and disguise with chaos, hate and lies. No plans to invest in workers, families or communities; no plan for protecting the supply chain; and no incentives for returning manufacturers back to the U.S. Like Trump’s first term, his campaign has nothing real to offer workers, just selfies with Hulk Hogan and Kid Rock, and that's not a plan, it's a sham.
“We are not going back,” Vice President Harris said. “And one of the best ways to keep our nation moving forward is to give workers a voice, to protect the freedom to organize, to defend the freedom to collectively bargain, to end union-busting.”
Written by Ken Bazinet, a former White House correspondent, has covered three presidents and five presidential elections. Still writing, he works with organizations and individuals that focus on opening and expanding ballot access to Black, Latino, Women, Native American, pro-worker and rural voters. He is third generation organized labor.