Pearl River      I’ve known Ana Avendano for a long time.  I’ve never known her well, but over decades our paths would cross.  She was a lawyer for the AFL-CIO and had the immigration rights portfolio, when there seemed the promise of reform.  She was a guest at an ACORN National Board meeting in Little Rock decades ago, arguing the AFL’s position, while Ben Monterosa, then with SEIU, argued another position.  At the time, there was still hope for a more perfect solution, and ACORN wanted to get it right, rather than these days, where anything moving forward would be better than the present horror.  I would also run into her when seeing Jon Hiatt, the general counsel for the AFL-CIO, and later the chief of staff, where she was his deputy.  More recently, I’d lost touch, but on Facebook, my feed indicated she had written a book, so I messaged her that I would be glad to interview her on the radio.

Ana’s book, Solidarity Betrayed:  How Unions Enable Sexual Harassment — and How They Can Do Better was an uncomfortable read, and our discussion wasn’t easy in some parts either.  Working in a union, many of us like to see the organization as standing firm for its members, regardless of gender, race, religion or anything else.  The first grievance I ever won for contract cafeteria workers that we represented at Tulane University was over harassment by students and athletes of a young worker, Gail Kelly, who was being terminated for “not smiling” enough on the line.  Gail later was an organizer for Local 100 and then worked for SEIU organizing home care workers in northern California for several years before returning to New Orleans.

I couldn’t not tell that story, but Ana, politely, but quickly, repeated a point made frequently in her book.  Most of the cases of sexual harassment in unions are not those between workers and management, like Gail’s, but between women workers and their co-workers.  Worst, she cited cases not only where unions had represented abusers against discipline or ignored women members’ complaints, but also where the same kind of harassment occurred within unions themselves.  Ana knew the situation personally.  She had left the AFL-CIO to take a job with the United Way, coordinating 100 or more labor liaisons who were paid by local branches to run the fundraising campaigns in unionized workplaces.  She had stumbled on numerous cases of harassment of female liaisons by union leaders and in trying to support them was isolated from union leadership and eventually fired by the United Way.

There were bright points.  I was proud to read that perhaps the best program in the country dealing with these kinds of internal issues came out of my old friend and comrade Mike Garcia’s SEIU local, then 1877, in California.  When in a staff and leadership meeting an ice breaker made it impossible to ignore, they created an entire program of promotores that changed the culture of the union.  They also bargained with their employers to finance the program so it was sustainable.

The hardest problem for membership organizations, either in the community or the workplace to handle, is between members, between neighbors, or between workers.  Instinctively, most organizers try to avoid the issues, redirect the anger and energy, and look for issues that unite, rather than divide.  We all do that, almost as a rule, but talking to Ana, it was clear that when it comes to sexual harassment, like racism, that’s an area where there is no workaround.  It has to be confronted, and, as Mike did, and as Ana argued, the culture has to change.

It’s a tall order.  In society and within organizations, culture is key, and it’s also the hardest thing to challenge and change, whether to alter smaller bad habits, or confront and change practices on issues like sex, race, and ethnicity that can be toxic and fatal to the organization.  That’s not an excuse.  Ana is right.  Despite the difficulty and likely internal conflict, it has to be done.