University at Buffalo - The State University of New York

Published: March 9, 2006

By KEVIN FRYLING
Reporter Contributor

The fall 2006 semester will mark Ruth Meyerowitz's 25th year at UB researching and educating students about women and work.

Faculty member Ruth Meyerowitz has spent nearly 25 years at UB researching and educating students about women and work.
PHOTO: NANCY J. PARISI

In classes such as "History of Working Women," Meyerowitz, associate professor in the Department of American Studies, College of Arts and Sciences, uses speakers and recordings collected from local workers and activists to bring to life the struggles women face in the workplace.

"Most men and women think society and the workplace are a lot more equitable than it actually is right now," she says. "I think the course is an important eye-opener for students."

Since 2003, Meyerowitz has received about $10,000 via two grants from UB's Educational Technology Center to teach students how to use media software that blends traditional oral histories and high-tech capabilities. The program, called Interclipper, is used to index, code, transcribe and analyze oral-history interviews, such as those Meyerowitz conducts on unions and activism in the City of Buffalo.

Multimedia interviews are a vast improvement over text transcriptions because of their visual impact, she says.

"When you read about these things, they seem abstract," she notes. "But the interviews are very fresh when you present them to students."

Among the cases Meyerowitz presents to students are two local union success stories from the late-1980s and 1990s that took place at Mercy Hospital and Angelica Laundry.

Angelica, a national operation that provides medical laundering services, has been cited nationwide for numerous workplace violations. The now-defunct Buffalo operation was one of the worst, Meyerowitz says, citing reports of sexual harassment and racial comments by administrators and hazardous working conditions—including outrageous violations such as workers frequently finding severed limbs and needles in the linens taken from an operating room.

Meyerowitz says she shows students interviews with a former Angelica worker, who talks about the conditions she and other workers faced, and with an organizer who assisted the workers in forming a union.

The nurses and clerical employees at Mercy Hospital unionized to stop unfair policies, she adds. One of the greatest injustices they faced, she says, was the practice that forced women who went on maternity leave to lose their seniority after returning to work.

"It was a Catholic hospital and most of the workers were from South Buffalo and were Catholic," she points out. "So the decision to unionize and stand up to the nuns and administrators took a fair amount of courage.

"There are a lot of inspiring stories of ordinary people who've gotten together in the face of bad conditions to create more equity and justice for themselves and their fellow workers.

"Part of what I try to do is show students that a lot of things going on nationally are also happening locally," she says, "including on their own campus."

For example, Meyerowitz points to the nationwide increase in living-wage campaigns that, she says, combat "stagnated" minimum wage laws that trap people "well below the poverty line."

Meyerowitz says the Buffalo Common Council in 1999 passed living-wage legislation mandating higher wages for low-paid private-sector employees under contract with the city. But in 2001, the Coalition for Economic Justice (CEJ) took the city to court, claiming the legislation was not being implemented. During the legal action, which was not resolved until 2003, Meyerowitz invited CEJ speakers to class to update students on the court case as it unfolded.

Moreover, Students Against Sweatshops is beginning its own living-wage campaign at UB, she adds. Students at Harvard and Georgetown ran successfully living wage campaigns at their universities.

"Workers should earn a living wage," she says. "Everyone who works full-time and full-year should earn wages at least up to the poverty level for a family of four. What's spread is the notion that if you can't raise the minimum wage, then you have to find ways at the local level to pass laws to raise the standard of living."

But unions remain more effective than legislation when it comes to fairness in the workplace, says Meyerowitz, who is an active member of United University Professions (UUP), the union representing SUNY faculty and professional staff.

Meyerowitz has served as a negotiations officer for academics in the UUP Buffalo Chapter and remains actively involved in the union, including serving on the statewide UUP Women's Rights and Concerns Committee.

UUP, she says, was one of the organizations that encouraged the creation of the President's Task Force on Women, which was launched in 1994 at UB. Conclusions from the study, which investigated the state of gender equity on campus for faculty, staff and students, including hiring, salaries, promotions and discretionary raises, were released about nine years ago, she says.

"Currently, I'm continuing to track gender equity issues in colleges and universities nationally, and continuing to look at SUNY and UB as a case study," she says.

Along with unionization and living-wage issues, gender equity is a subject about which Meyerowitz is passionate. Greater monitoring is needed to ensure that federal laws, such as the Equal Pay Act of 1963, protect women from economic discrimination based on sex.

"The national laws are not enforced," she notes.

According to Meyerowitz, the AFL-CIO estimates that women whose education and age match hers lose about $1 million in earnings during their lifetime due to gender discrimination, and women who are not in unions lose even more—about $1.7 million.

"That's an enormous loss to families," she says.

"A lot has to do with management and leadership. I think managers need to be trained to implement gender equity, as well as racial and ethnic diversity."

Meyerowitz says most of the students who take her courses on working women seem to be surprised by what they learn. "I think the gender equity issues are even more invisible to males in some ways," she says.

She says that one male student, after taking her class, switched his academic focus from management to industrial relations and became a union organizer upon graduation. He later returned to UB to earn a law degree and now works as a prominent labor lawyer in Buffalo.

Meyerowitz has continued her commitment to women, work and unions by helping to organize "Women and Work: Strategies for Leadership and Progress," a forum to close out Women's History Month. It will be held from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. March 28 at Temple Beth Zion on Delaware Avenue in Buffalo.

The forum is free and open to the public. Call Becky Daniels at 852-4191, ext. 104, to register.