Solidarity Betrayed: How Unions Enable Sexual Harassment - And How They Can Do Better

In the years since #MeToo, a fundamental shift in public consciousness about sexual harassment in the workplace has taken root. So what are trade unions, whose mission is to improve workers’ lives, doing to address sexual harassment?

Solidarity Betrayed critiques the US labor movement’s failures on the taboo subject of 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 are accomplices in perpetuating harassment and how women labor leaders are too often enablers. She concludes with examples of what some unions do to address the problem and offers aspirational recommendations that unions and their allies can adopt to create harassment-free workplaces.

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.