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Archived News Release--Caution:
information may be out of date.
For more information call: 202/219-6652, x107
Karen Nussbaum, director of the Women's Bureau at the U.S.
Department of Labor, today formally announced that she is leaving the
government on March 8 to become the director of a newly created Working Women's
Department at the AFL-CIO.
"Karen Nussbaum has been a great asset to the department
and to the nation's 60 million working women. Her experience and extraordinary
commitment to the ordinary woman worker has brought the Women's Bureau to a
prominence and effectiveness not seen since the days of Rosie the Riveter,"
said Secretary of Labor Robert B. Reich.
Said Nussbaum, "It has been a privilege and a pleasure to
serve as director of the Women's Bureau and as a part of this Administration --
I have loved this job. Working women need and deserve a real voice inside
government. But that's not all they need, and I'm excited to take on this new
challenge at the AFL-CIO."
Nussbaum has had a long career as a leader for working
women. Out of her early experience as an office secretary, in 1973 she
co-founded 9to5, the National Organization for Working Women, to advance the
rights of pink collar workers. She led 9to5 for 20 years, and in 1981 also
became the founding president of District 925 of the Service Employees
International Union (SEIU), a national union of office and professional
employees. Appointed by President Clinton, Nussbaum became the Women's Bureau's
13th director in June 1993. The Women's Bureau was created in 1920 to promote
the welfare of wage-earning women, and under Nussbaum's leadership has
responded directly to the concerns of the women who now make up nearly half of
America's workforce.
Through the Bureau's 1994 "Working Women Count!" survey,
more than a quarter of a million women told the Bureau, and the President,
about what was right and wrong with their jobs. With a consensus that crossed
all lines of income, age, and background, women called for change in three key
areas:
- pay and benefits;
- work and family, especially child care and family leave;
- valuing women's work through training, advancement and respect on the
job.
These issues have formed the basis of the Bureau's work
during Nussbaum's tenure -- from informing women about fair pay, family and
medical leave, and pregnancy discrimination, to encouraging hundreds of
employers and organizations to create new woman-friendly programs and policies
through the "Working Women Count Honor Roll."
Nussbaum lives in Washington, D.C. with her husband and
three children. No successor at the Women's Bureau has been announced.
Archived News Release--Caution:
information may be out of date.
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