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Your Call

Your Call: #Whataboutus - What will change for women working low-wage & blue collar jobs?

Photo by Alterio Felines via Pixabay

  

Women in low-wage jobs – janitors, domestic workers, farmworkers, waitresses – face rampant sexual abuse and assault on the job. When wages are low, there's no HR to report abuse and work sites can be isolated.

Low-wage workers, who tend to be women and immigrants, are finally getting attention in the national media's #metoo coverage. What will it take for them to be heard and treated with dignity and respect at work?

Guests:

 

Sasha Khokha, host of The California Report Magazine at KQED, worked on Rape in the Fields and Rape on the Night Shift, collaborative investigations by PBS, Reveal and KQED about the sexual assault of women janitors and farm workers

Linda Burnham, senior advisor at the National Domestic Workers Alliance and co-author of the report, Home Economics: The invisible and Unregulated World of Domestic Work

 

Mónica Ramirez, co-founder and president of Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, a national alliance of women farmworkers, an attorney who comes from a family of farmworkers

Web resources:

 

PBS: Amid the National Conversation About Sexual Harassment, “Rape on the Night Shift” Examines Abuse of Women in the Janitorial Industry

TIME: 700,000 Female Farmworkers Say They Stand With Hollywood Actors Against Sexual Assault

The Atlantic: Is This the Next Step for the #MeToo Movement?

 

New York Times: How Tough Is It to Change a Culture of Harassment? Ask Women at Ford

Sacramento Bee:Jerry Brown signs janitor protection bill amid fast

LA Times: California lawmaker proposes requiring panic buttons for hotel workers in response to widespread sexual harassment

Pro Publica: California Governor Signs Bill to Protect Temp Workers

 

Rose Aguilar has been the host of Your Call since 2006. She became a regular media roundtable guest in 2001. In 2019, the San Francisco Press Club named Your Call the best public affairs program. In 2017, The Nation named it the most valuable local radio show.