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PROPOSED RESOLUTION
A RESOLUTION HONORING WOMEN LEADERS IN THE LABOR MOVEMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL WORKERS' DAY
WHEREAS, the Cook County President and Board of Commissioners have designated the first of May as International Workers' Day, joining the majority of the world's countries in honoring workers and the global labor movement on the anniversary of the 1886 Haymarket Tragedy in the City of Chicago; and
WHEREAS, women have made significant contributions to the labor movement throughout history by organizing, unionizing, rallying, and inspiring all workers to fight for social and economic justice, better working conditions, immigrant rights, and equal pay across racial and gender lines; and
WHEREAS, Cook County is home to many historically influential women leaders in the labor movement, such as Lucy Gonzalez Parsons, Jane Addams, Margaret Haley, Sylvia Woods, Reverend Addie Wyatt, Jacqueline B. Vaughn, and Karen Lewis, and many others; and
WHEREAS, in 1910, women led over 40,000 mostly immigrant laborers in Chicago in the garment workers' strike against the garment industry in response to low wages, unrealistic production demands, poor working conditions; and
WHEREAS, in 2012, then-CTU president Karen Lewis led more than 25,000 members of the Chicago Teachers Union on a seven-day strike to defend public education, for better pay, better benefits, and protections for teachers who lost their jobs due to school closures; and
WHEREAS, cisgender women and transgender women workers continue to struggle against many long-standing inequities in the workplace, such as insufficient maternity leave, sexual harassment, gender pay disparities, discrimination, xenophobia, unequal access to career opportunities; and
WHEREAS, the gender pay gap has barely closed in the United States in the past two decades, with women typically earning 82 cents for every dollar earned by men; and
WHEREAS, women workers and leaders in Cook County and across the world have improve...
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