Misrepresented: women fight harassment and the union boys' club

Progressive, The, August, 1996 by Camille Colatosti

Situations like those described above make women hesitate to approach the union for help with sexual-harassment problems. Some union leaders like it this way. They refuse to accept any responsibility for harassment problems and may do their best to ignore sex discrimination. They believe that stopping sexual harassment is the employer's responsibility, and tell members to report problem directly to management. In a unionized workplace, this strategy seems peculiar at best and divisive at worst. Workers who have a problem with overtime pay or line speed, for example, don't speak directly to their supervisors. They speak to their union representative, who then approaches management through official channels.

Asking women to approach management directly when they have a sexual-harassment problem, especially if that problem is with a co-worker, places women in the position of company stooge or union traitor. When Northwest Airlines mechanic Melanie Zimmer was unable to get help from her union, the Machinists District 143, she went to management and asked that they remove pornography from the workplace. Managers then went to Zimmer's co-workers and told them to tear down their pictures, not because harassment is against the law, but because "Melanie wanted them to." Pornography became "Melanie's problem," Zimmer explains. She was seen as the one who got co-workers in trouble, and her isolation increased.

Unions that refuse to address co-worker harassment find themselves facing increased problems. Instead of taking the initiative against harassment and protecting workers' rights, they react to management decisions. They become involved in incidents of harassment only if the harasser is a union member. The union sometimes even files a grievance on behalf of the harasser, protesting discipline he may have received from management. The union thus becomes a champion of the harasser, while the female victim of harassment testifies against the union on behalf of the company. Many union members then turn against the woman.

Debra Darco, for example, is the only woman among the 400 workers at Wagner Mining and Construction Equipment in Oregon. There are several unions in her shop. She's a member of Boilermakers Local 72 and builds hydraulics. For years, she put up with explicit sexual remarks and repeated propositions from her co-workers. But one day something happened that she couldn't ignore.

A machinist, Charlie, exposed himself and masturbated in front of her. Darco tried to file a union grievance, but the Boilermakers told her that this was management's problem. "I turned Charlie in to the company," Darco says, "because I wanted to stand up for my rights."

The case came to arbitration when the Machinists Union filed a grievance for Charlie, protesting the discipline he received from the company. Darco testified against him and he was fired after twenty-two years on the job. Since then, the situation at work has become unbearable for Darco.

"No one will speak to me," she says. "I've been blackballed. It's all I can do to get through a day down there. I'm trying to survive and I don't know if I'm going to."