Friday, March 23, 2018

Tues 3/27, 4:45 pm, Picket for Mayli, fired by Harvard for reporting sexual harassment & racism!

Geoff Carens
To  act-ma@act-ma.org,    reformhuctw   and 5 others
Dear All,

Next Tuesday, 3/27, starting at 4:45 pm, supporters of HUCTW* member Mayli
will picket <https://www.facebook.com/events/1663807007019858/> her
workplace at Harvard University. Mayli was fired in February for reporting
sexual harassment and racial discrimination at work. Please join us in
front of the Smith Campus Center, 1350 Mass Ave in Cambridge, steps from
the Harvard Square T stop.

*Background*: Mayli, who worked at Harvard for 10+ years, had good
performance evaluations until she reported inappropriate conduct and racist
remarks from her boss. She was swiftly targeted for micro-management and
retaliatory discipline, and was soon fired, supposedly for being seen at
her desk half an hour *early*. Mayli's supervisor had previously written,
"Mayli is always in work before her regular hours. She is extremely
reliable," on at least two performance evaluations. A few days before she
was fired, Harvard put a letter in Mayli's file, threatening her with
termination for sharing her complaints with co-workers. It is clear the
firing was punishment for speaking out.

Harvard has challenged Mayli's unemployment benefits and she is now without
income. A first gen immigrant single mom of two, she could lose her home,
and her child may have to drop out of college. You can donate to help Mayli
here <https://www.gofundme.com/DefendMayli>.

Please feel free to send protests to Harvard's Director of Labor Relations
Paul Curran at paul_curran@harvard.edu, 617 496-9193. Suggested message, "I
am outraged to hear that a union member named Mayli was fired by Harvard
after reporting sexual harassment and racial discrimination. Please use
your influence to ensure justice in this case."

Read more about the fight to win Mayli's job back:

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2018/2/16/mayli-shing-protest/

https://www.harvardindependent.com/2018/02/unions-students-stand-mayli-shing/

Please feel free to forward this message as widely as possible!

In Solidarity,

Geoff Carens, Union Rep, HUCTW / AFSCME Local 3650
Harvard No Layoffs Campaign
<https://www.facebook.com/groups/224445424319070/>

*Harvard Union of Clerical & Technical Workers
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RAPID RESPONSE: Wendy's attacks farmworker women as "exploiting" the #MeToo and Time's Up movement.

Coalition of Immokalee Workers
To   
RAPID RESPONSE: Wendy's attacks farmworker women as "exploiting" the #MeToo and Time's Up movement.

Heidi Schauer (pictured above, confronted by farmworker women at Wendy's headquarters last May) to Huffington Post: "There’s no new news here, aside from the CIW trying to exploit the positive momentum that has been generated by and for women in the #MeToo and Time’s Up movement to advance their interests."

Eve Ensler, #TimesUp's Alyssa Milano join the Fair Food Nation in swift, unequivocal response: "The Immokalee women workers are the heart and soul of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements..."
Today, Wendy's took their denial of farmworker women's basic rights to a despicable new level. Responding to the Huffington Post, Wendy's spokesperson Heidi Schauer shamelessly went on the record with the fast-food holdout's latest:

“There’s no new news here, aside from the CIW trying to exploit the positive momentum that has been generated by and for women in the #MeToo and Time’s Up movement to advance their interests."

Speaking for Wendy's, Ms. Schauer's statement is a wildly disrespectful attack on the leadership of farmworker women in the decades-long fight to end sexual violence in the fields, a fight that long predates the critical momentum garnered by the recent #MeToo and #TimesUp movements. It is a disgraceful response to the sacrifice of the dozens of farmworker women who fasted last week in New York to hold Wendy's and its Board Chairman Nelson Peltz accountable for the company's failure to join the Fair Food Program, a successful solution designed by farmworkers to halt sexual abuse in their workplace.

Time's Up leader Alyssa Milano immediately rebuked Wendy's offensive attack on Facebook:

"...Wendy's, this is very simple: These women are the #MeToo movement, which is a grassroots movement of women from all corners of society exposing the painfully common experience of sexual harassment, misconduct and assault. The Time's Up movement was created in part to "lift up the voices, power, and strength of women working in low-wage industries."

To suggest that farmworker women — whose voices, power, and strength were on impressive display in front of the offices of Wendy's Board Chairman all last week during their Freedom Fast — are somehow unwelcome intruders in the fight for dignity and safety for women is downright absurd and unbelievably offensive. And that such a statement was made by a company like Wendy's, who pulled their purchases entirely from "the best working environment in American agriculture" and now partners with an industry with well-documented human rights abuses, including sexual violence, is even more outrageous. I stand with our sisters in the fields, and applaud their efforts to expand the new protections guaranteed in the Fair Food Program to the millions more women who are seeking change.

And a final word of advice, Wendy's: If you really want to get on the wrong side of the Time's Up movement, keep using our name to attack and belittle farmworker women who are fighting to keep themselves and their sisters safe from rape in the fields."

Meanwhile, acclaimed playwright Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues, fought back on Instagram:
Now, it's your turn.

Coalition of Immokalee Workers
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Twitter claps back at Wendy’s: “Reprehensible,” “vile,” “disgusting,” “shameful” and “outrageous”…

Coalition of Immokalee Workers
To 
Twitter claps back at Wendy’s: “Reprehensible,” “vile,” “disgusting,” “shameful” and “outrageous”…
From left to right, CIW leaders Silvia Perez, Julia Perkins, and Lupe Gonzalo conduct a worker-to-worker education session on the right of farmworker women to work free of sexual violence on a Fair Food Program farm in July, 2017.
Wendy’s spokesperson Heidi Schauer claims “CIW trying to exploit the positive momentum that has been generated by and for women in the #MeToo and Time’s Up movement to advance their interests” in Huffington Post article…

Time’s Up leaders react! Alyssa Milano: “Hey,@Wendys! If you really want to get on the wrong side of the #TimesUp movement, keep using our name to attack and belittle farmworker women who are fighting to keep themselves and their sisters safe from rape in the fields.”
First, a bit of context…

The CIW’s Silvia Perez (pictured on the right during last week’s Freedom Fast), has spent the past six years waking up as early as 4 am to drive through the dawn to tomato, strawberry, and pepper fields across the state of Florida and up the East Coast as far as New Jersey. Over those six years, she and her fellow education team members have taught tens of thousands of her fellow farmworkers about their rights — including the right to work free from sexual violence, an abuse so common that fully 80% of farmworker women report being subjected to sexual harassment or assault at work — under the Fair Food Program. 

Indeed, along with several other longtime CIW leaders, women and men, Silvia has spent the past seventeen years, since the launch of the Campaign for Fair Food in 2001, organizing day in and day out to win the power to enforce farmworkers’ human rights in the fields — including the right to work free from sexual violence. In the process, Silvia and her colleagues have helped countless farmworker women successfully defend their rights and have transformed an entire industry.

And today, the Fair Food Program (FFP) that Silvia and her colleagues built is widely recognized as the only program that has successfully put a stop to sexual assault at work for low wage workers in this country. The FFP is being studied by experts from the halls of academia, to European capitals, to the inner circles of the Time’s Up movement as a model for protecting the rights of tens of millions of women around the globe. Their efforts over the past two decades have attracted the attention of human rights observers from the White House to the United Nations. They have received a Presidential Medal, the Anti-Slavery Hero Award from the State Department, and a MacArthur “Genius” Grant for their groundbreaking achievements.  

Yet this week, Wendy’s spokesperson Heidi Schauer accused Silvia and her colleagues at the CIW of “trying to exploit the positive momentum that has been generated by and for women in the #MeToo and Time’s Up movement to advance their interests,” in an article published Wednesday in the Huffington Post. 

Wendy’s accused farmworker women of exploiting the Time’s Up movement.

Wendy’s should never be allowed to speak about the Time’s Up movement again.
Read all of the rapid responses from Alyssa Milano, Eve Ensler, Caitriona Balfe, Sara Ziff and, of course, Silvia Perez, over at the CIW website!
Coalition of Immokalee Workers
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