by Ana Avendaño
Pluto Press
2/20/2025, paperback
SKU: 9780745349060
In the years since #MeToo, there has been a fundamental shift in public consciousness about sexual harassment in the workplace. So what are trade unions, whose mission it is to improve the lives of workers, doing to address the issue?
Solidarity Betrayed reckons with the labor movement's failures on sexual harassment. Ana Avendaño draws on decades of organizing experience to provide a compelling insider's account of trade unions' complicity, collusion, victim blaming, and lack of perpetrator accountability.
Sharing survivors' stories and examples of how labor leaders and bureaucrats have perpetrated abuse, Avendaño explores how labor laws and practices contribute to the perpetuation of harassment. She concludes with positive examples of what some unions are already doing to address the problem, and offers aspirational recommendations that unions and their allies can adopt to create harassment-free workplaces.
Reviews:
"Ava Avendaño's book is a clarion call to justice, marrying vivid survivors' stories with her incisive legal and cultural critique. This accessible and transformative book urges readers to envision a world rooted in dignity and collective resistance" -- Soraya Chemaly, author of Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger
"An important and courageous book that shines an informed light on the failure of certain unions and leaders to respond to sexual harassment and the resulting damage to those victimized and the movement more generally" -- William A. Herbert, Distinguished Lecturer, Hunter College, City University of New York
About the Author:
Ana Avendaño runs Minga Strategies, a consulting firm where she helps unions and other organizations to create healthy, safe activist cultures. She is also a Lecturer in Law at the City University of New York (CUNY) Law School, where she teaches labor and employment law. She has held senior positions in the US labor movement, playing major roles in changing its position on immigration, and broadening the AFL-CIO's vision to include worker centers and other non-traditional worker organizations. She served as an Assistant General Counsel to the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, as well as Associate General Counsel to the AFL-CIO, and Assistant to the AFL-CIO President for Immigration and Community Action.