BWI celebrates Dora Cervantes on Women’s Day 2021
Dora Cervantes became the first woman to direct the IAM’s finances as its 12th General Secretary-Treasurer on 1 August 2015. Cervantes currently serves as a National Board Member on the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA), is an active member of the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW) and is member of United Against Human Trafficking, At the international level, Dora Cervantes represents North America in the BWI International Women’s Committee.
She has proven to be a committed trade union leader striving to bring the concerns of North American union members to the global arena while extending solidarity to all workers internationally. She has understood that unity of workers across borders is needed to address the power imbalances between workers and multinational employers, especially when they are giants such as IKEA and JELD-WEN.
Dora Cervantes, who is a seasoned trade unionist and the first Hispanic woman to serve in her current position at IAM, has been a strong campaigner for the convention on eliminating violence and harassment in the world of work that was adopted in 2019 by the International Labour Organisation. With growing attention to the need to address racial injustice, recognising everyone’s right to be free from violence and harassment in the world of work, and to safety, dignity and respect at work is important in the US. Cervantes would openly criticize Donald Trump’s alpha male propaganda and hate speech that divided the American working class and was proud to celebrate with BWI affiliates the election victory of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamila Harris, with great hope for a new progressive era.
As Chair of the BWI North American Women’s Committee, Dora Cervantes has used her position as a woman union leader to fight for better representation of women in unions globally. At the BWI World Congress in 2017, she was at the front of the women leaders that advocated strongly and successfully for a quota of 30 percent for women participation to be put in place in all it structures and activities of the global union. This has had a positive impact on women trade unionists' participation in leadership and decision-making within their unions, as well as changing the culture of the male-dominated union environment and promoting greater commitment to gender equality.
Today, women are a small minority in the leadership of trade unions. By celebrating these women on International Women’s Day, BWI is showing how they are using their positions to take forward gender equality. Cervantes is a shining example of this, from her start as a union organiser, she has worked her way to be part of the top leadership of IAM, and continues to move the union forward strong and steady to build a better gender equal future for all.
As BWI marks this year’s celebration of the International Women’s Month, it honours courageous women like Dora Cervantes who pushed the envelope to give women workers equal representation to top-level trade union leadership posts and key policy-making units, thereby assuring that their needs and interests will be considered in decision-making processes that affect the lives of women workers.