Public Employee Press

Part 1 in a series on how the economic crisis is affecting working families.
Economy wallops women

By JANE LaTOUR

Each week, new statistics show that our economy is not working for working people - rising foreclosures, poverty rates and food stamp needs, more budget cuts and layoffs.

The economic crisis is hitting women hard, and for low-income women and women of color, the impact is even worse.

Women hold a high percentage of public-sector jobs, and as city and state budgets shrink, cuts in jobs are hitting some of the lowest-paid workers in the workforce. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has targeted the worst layoffs in his administration's history at nonteaching public school employees, who are overwhelmingly black and Hispanic women and who are among the city's lowest-paid workers. Gov. Andrew Cuomo aimed his deepest budget cuts at the public schools.

While the number of Americans living paycheck-to-paycheck increased 5 percent over the last year, the number of low-income women only a paycheck from poverty jumped 17 percent.

City Laborer Geraldine Morseman grew up poor. "We were seven kids. My father died when I was eight and my mother raised us," she said. Now Morseman and her partner struggle with their own burden of raising two children. As the city balks at granting them the prevailing wages they are entitled to under state law, Morseman and her coworkers in Local 924 haven't had a pay raise in nine years.

"You borrow money from your pension. You have to borrow from somewhere," she said. "You don't buy as much as you used to and you don't go out to eat. We've stopped doing a lot of enjoyable things."

School Crossing Guard Sandra Fowler has raised her children, but her daughter and grandchildren need her help. "It's a struggle for me," she said. "I try to find sales and sometimes I go lacking."

An activist in Local 372, Fowler joined the Sept. 7 rally against Mayor Bloomberg's plan to lay off almost 800 school workers. "I was out there to support my brothers and sisters," she said.

City Parks Worker Deborah Feliciano is the mother of four grown children. She started as a Job Training Participant and spent a year in the Parks Opportunity Program honing her skills in horticulture, gardening, landscaping and forestry before she was hired by the Parks Dept. Now she works hard keeping the parks in Brooklyn's District 5 up to her high standards and coping with the understaffing caused by budget cuts. "We're constantly being squeezed and I worry every day about layoffs," she said. "I'm not letting the increasing pressure get to me. I don't want anything negative to affect my job. I pray to God that the cuts pass me by."

Morseman believes new policies are necessary to alleviate the burdens of working people, including a millionaire's tax. "I don't know why the mayor and governor are letting this die when average working people are suffering so much," she said.

U.S. Census Bureau information for 2010 released in September showed the highest overall poverty rate, 15 percent, since 1993. But the poverty rate for single-mother families was an outrageous 41 percent.

A new study by the Institute for Women's Policy Research, "Women at Greater Risk of Economic Insecurity," says that women of color are at greatest risk of economic hardship and that single mothers face double jeopardy - lower earnings because they are female and higher financial stress from the costs of raising children.