Putting Families First:
Labor Project for Working Families helps unions negotiate and advocate for family friendly policies
Are you looking forward to starting a family but worried about taking the time off from work? Have you ever missed work because of problems with child care? Do you anticipate caring for an elderly parent someday? Would you go to your union for help with these issues?
The Labor Project for Working Families, a union-based national non-profit, provides unions with solutions to work/family problems like paid leave to bond with a newborn, paid sick time for families, money for child and elder care and creative ways to work while putting family first.
Netsy Firestein, Executive Director and Founder of the Labor Project, came from District 65, UAW where she saw many examples of the need to fight for a balance between work and family life. "I was in the Membership Assistance Program where we counseled workers on job stress - most of it was work/family related. After documenting case after case, a light bulb went off - we saw that paid leave, quality child care and elder care were critical concerns for union members," she said. "We are conditioned to see these as personal issues, yet they affect our working lives."
Netsy went on to found the Labor Project for Working Families with leaders of labor councils in the California Bay Area. The Labor Project for Working Families has become a national resource for unions for all of their work/family needs since 1992. The Labor Project:
- Maintains a national database of work/family contract language
- Helps unions negotiate for family friendly provisions
- Assists unions in setting up dependent care funds
- Builds union coalitions to pass family-friendly legislation such as paid family leave
- Produces Labor Family News, a national newsletter about labor's role in work/family policy
Unions have teamed up with the Labor Project to substantially improve their members' families' lives. In 1994, HERE Local 2 (now UNITE HERE) contacted the Labor Project for help in bargaining for and setting up their historic Child and Elder Care Fund. The Labor Project helped Local 2 identify the best way to set up the fund and linked the union to local childcare and elder care organizations to provide input about services. San Francisco Hotels now pay into this fund to subsidize Local 2 members' child and elder care needs. The members also have access to information about the best quality of care for their children and grandparents through local community organizations. Since setting up the dependent care fund with Local 2, the Labor Project has worked with 1199SEIU in New York, CWA District 1 in the Northeast, UAW in Michigan, ATU Local 192 in California and many other unions on work and family issues.
Paid Family Leave- Union Made
In 2002, the Labor Project played a leading role alongside the California Labor Federation in passing the state's Paid Family Leave Law - the first of its kind in the country, which allows California workers to take up to six weeks of paid time off to bond with a new child or care for a sick family member. The law took effect in July 2004. Since then, the organization has helped convene advocates and unions in 7 other states - Georgia, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Washington and Wisconsin - to build paid leave coalitions and pass similar legislation. In addition to paid leave legislation, the Labor Project builds labor support for many work and family policies including paid sick time, child care funding, and universal preschool.
Promoting a Union Work/Family Agenda
The Labor Project recently formed a National Advisory Board to help build national labor support for a work and family agenda. This Board includes representatives from the AFL-CIO, AFT, AFSCME, CWA, Laborers, Massachusetts AFL-CIO, USWA, UAW, SEIU, Teamsters and UAW. The Board is assisting in the development of a work/family curriculum for labor educators and a union work/family manual to promote these issues within their unions.
In the last decade, the media has paid more attention to the need for American workers to find balance between their work and family lives. The Labor Project puts unions at the forefront of this movement to make changes that have a real impact on working families. Karen Nussbaum, Assistant to the President of the AFL-CIO, says, "We consider the Labor Project for Working Families an extremely valuable partner. Their particular combination of skills - staff's ability to capture important information and make it a great resource, to know the work/family subject matter so well, and to know the union world, too - is something you can't find anywhere else."
For information on the contracts database or to get a copy of the newsletter, work/family curriculum or union work/family manual, go to at http://www.laborproject.org/, or contact the Labor Project at 510-643-7088 or lpwf@berkeley.edu To support their work , become a Union Sponsor or Friend of the Labor Project. Contact them for more information.
