And welcome, also, to more information about the problems of academic women
in the University of California and news of some solutions. We hope you will
join us in
our efforts to change this institution to achieve equality for academic women.
Our
last newsletter reported our victory in getting the legislature to instruct UC
to produce a yearly report on what UC spent on outside attorneys to fight gender
discrimination/sex harassment lawsuits and on how many women and minorities were
hired or promoted by UC. This report was due March 1; as of March 7 it had not been
produced.
Meeting with DoL
A group of WAGE women met last November with Ric Sawyer, Woody
Gilliland, Barbara Sanford, Georgia Martin and Alanzo Salas of the
Department of Labor
and the Office of Federal Contract Compliance. WAGE brought ten women: Sue
Carole
DeVale
, Marcy Wong, Marjorie
Mosier
and Burnet
Sumner
represented cases;
Marty
West
, Anne Weills, Mary Singleton, Sue Butler and Cathy
Jensen
presented general perspectives on the problems of women in UC; I had organized the
meeting and also came.
We had a long meeting and impressed the DoL with the seriousness of our
claims. They shared with us the limitations loosing half their budget since the Reagan
years has placed on their investigations. They also are limited by having to rely on
information from the institution they are investigating. They were very impressed by
the statistical work presented by Mary Singleton on salary differentials at the Livermore
Labs.
Woody Galliland spoke with satisfaction about the recent DoL investigation of
UC San Diego
and the settlement it brought about.
*** Senator Barbara
Boxer
and Representatives Ron Dellums, Nancy Pelosi, Patsy
Mink, Anna Eshoo and George Miller have all written to urge the DoL to investigate
gender discrimination at UC (ask Senator Feinstein and your Representative to do
likwise!). Still, as I write, it is uncertain if the DoL will have the resources
and the political will to take on this investigation, though a class action lawsuit
would be an incentive for them to do so. Since the November '94 elections, as you
might expect, there is a great threat that the DoL budget will be cut further.
New Officers
Wage members elected a new Governing Council at the end of 1994. The
Governing Council met in February and elected new officers. They are:
Patricia St. Lawrence, Chair; Leigh Segel, Treasurer; Marty West, Co-treasurer;
Charity Hirsch, Secretary.
We continue to work on finding funding for WAGE and getting non-profit
status. We hope to develop a closer relationship with AAUW; we presently have a
loose working relationship. We had a good meeting in February in the north where
Mary Singleton showed us detailed results of the Livermore Labs salary differential
studies and Anne Weills spoke of the problems of dealing with UC from a lawyer's
perspective. We plan a general meeting in the south this spring or summer.
We also plan to bring out this newsletter twice a year at a minimum. Will
those with articles or ideas for articles please
email
us, or contact the office
(WAGE/MacLachlan, 3857 Howe Street, Oakland, CA 94611-5404). As is
always the case with a volunteer organization we need everyone's efforts to
achieve our goal.
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