Union Workload: a Barrier to Women Surviving Labour-Movement Leadership

By Adriane Paavo

Workaholism is deeply rooted in labour-movement culture. While unions have successfully fought to reduce the work day and week for members, these same unions demand long hours of work from their leaders.

These workload expectations assume that union leaders--elected, hired, and volunteer--are men who are always available and have no competing responsibilities or interests. For those who do not fit this male-leader model, becoming and remaining a leader in the union movement is impossible or onerous.

At the moment, all union leaders are expected to sink or swim on their own. Whether in terms of job training, upgrading, workload management, emotional and physical health, or community connections, it's all up to the individual, except in rare cases. But such an ad-hoc, individualistic approach is unsuitable for a movement whose intention is to have representative leadership and to humanize working life. Involving more women in sustainable forms of union leadership requires a deliberate rethinking and restructuring of union workload and union leadership.

This issue of Just Labour; A Canadian Journal of Work and Society; vol. 8 Spring 2006 contains a special section on Advancing the Equity Agenda inside unions and at the bargaining table