I attended my first union meeting a few months after I started my position. The union meetings were held in the Public Works building where most of the men in the union worked. The only two women—I was one of them—who were in the union worked in City Hall. Upon entering the building, there were men gathered around a table drinking beer. Mind you, this was a city government building and drinking alcohol is illegal. No one greeted me or welcomed me so I sat down and was fortunately joined by the only other woman in the union. We had no chance of running for any of the union officer positions because we would not be elected over any of the men in the union.

The most vivid memory I have of my first meeting was sitting across the table from a man who was wearing a t-shirt that said “free mustache rides” with no shame. I considered myself a worldly person and open-minded but I will never understand why he decided to wear that t-shirt to a union meeting. Between the beer-drinking and the t-shirt, I felt intimidated right from the start.

Although I no longer remember the business at hand at that meeting, the union went on throughout my 18-months of employment to undermine all my proposals and the proposals of the other woman in the union. The city underwent a comparable worth study from an outside firm and the study showed that both of us, plus a non-union woman, were not earning what we should be, especially in comparison to male union members. The union denied me vacation time during my first year of employment although they granted two other new male employees vacation time during their first year of employment. When I got a copy of the union contract I realized that I was hired at $1.54 less than what the minimum amount was supposed to be for my position. It took me six months to convince the union and the city to even consider adjusting this discrepancy that was clearly spelled out in the contract.

I am a supporter of unions. I have been a union member for several of my jobs throughout the years, and currently I work for a union and I am in a union. Unions are there for worker’s rights and I could not for the life of me figure out what was going on. The big difference in this union was the male to female ratio. When we asked for equal pay we were told outright that we did not need to earn as much as a man because we were married and our husbands were the bread-winners. I mean, seriously, what year, what decade was this? It was 2001! It was years later that I heard the term “gaslighting” and I knew right away that was what I experienced in this mostly male union.

When the three of us women finally filed claims with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights, even though probable cause was found against both the city and the union, it was the union that refused to mediate with the two of us. By that time, we were worn out and we gave up. In my next blog I will talk about filing the claims and mediation. (To be continued in Part 3)

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Thank you Amazon for free image

The year was 2000, I was young and had two small kids, and I thought that the world was moving in a direction where marginalized people were gaining momentum. The LGBTQ+ community was coming out and telling their stories after talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres came out a few years earlier. Famous women of color were entertaining the world and at the same time they were telling us their stories. Women were creating their stories as they attended college, took over the work force, and still managed their households and took care of their kids. We survived Y2K, we had a president I believed in (Bill Clinton), and I started a full-time position in local city government.

For me working at the city was like stepping back in time. At first I could not put my finger on it, but I started to notice that it was mostly men in city hall who had the offices that surrounded the outside of the building and they had windows to the outside. In the middle of the building was an area of cubicles where most of the women worked in a window-less environment. The two men who also worked in the cubicles spent most of the day outside smoking or in the break room drinking coffee while the women were working, answering the phones, and helping people who came into city hall. I worked there for about a month when the city administrator asked me to make a pot of coffee and bring it in to the meeting. I didn’t even drink coffee. I had no idea how to make it. I couldn’t hide my shame and disappointment of being asked to do this. In the back of my mind all I could think was, is this why I went to college? Is this why I spent nearly four years in Europe broadening my horizons? This may seem very inconsequential in the big scheme of life and work but it was a turning point for me. The worst part was that the two men I worked with knew very well how to make coffee since they drank it non-stop, but they would have never been asked to make it and serve it to a board meeting full of men.

Thanks Mike Kenneally for image

I worked for the building inspector, who I admired; however, his office was a mess. Although he did not ask me nor expect me to, I ended up tidying his office weekly. He was often at inspections and I would have to help contractors with their licenses or building plans and if his office was unorganized, neither he nor I could find what we needed and we wouldn’t be able to help the contractors. Once I cleaned his office, I couldn’t take it back. Regardless whether it became expected or not, I felt I needed to do it in order to do my job.

My value and worth as an employee was based on doing these sorts of jobs around the office that no one should be expected to do in a professional government setting. Some days I had to ask myself if I was being unreasonable because my coworkers acted like it was normal. I struggled one moment thinking that I should just do it and not think about it and then the next moment putting my foot down. The women who worked with me were super nice and we became good friends and although they were sympathetic to my situation they had worked there longer and they were at a point where they were happy it wasn’t them performing these household sorts of tasks while at work. Plus, in time I learned that they experienced their share of oppression throughout their years at the city.

I continued to do these tasks for months. I thought the atmosphere at city hall was oppressive for women. I didn’t feel good about it and I felt helpless in trying to make my situation better. It wasn’t until months later when I attended my first union meeting that I realized the discrimination was much worse than I could ever imagine. (To be continued in Part 2)

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