By Gretchen Keiser

Women who work in traditionally low-paying jobs in the Atlanta area have been singled out for a $20,000 grant from the national Campaign for Human Development.

The grant will be given to a year-old organization, Atlanta Working Women, which is the first organization in the southeast of the often “invisible” worker in the business world--the woman who types, files, clerks, keeps the books, works the bank teller’s cage and handles the cash register or counter in retail stores.

Atlanta Working Women, which operates with a staff of two and a membership of nearly 100 women from those offices in retail, banking, insurance and other fields, has, in the past year, conducted a survey of women office workers to gauge pay scales, raises, job training and promotion possibilities, and the attitudes of bosses toward women working in non-management jobs.

The grant will go toward a further campaign to research industries which chronically pay low wages to office workers and discriminate in hiring and promotions. The aim, said staff member Verna Barksdale, is to select “a specific industry and from that a target company--a company that we can bring public pressure on to change practices that we think, and certainly their employees think, are unfair.”

“We think it’s a good project and we believe in it,” said Mary Jo Shannon, a program officer of the Campaign for Human Development.

In its 11th year, the campaign was created by the U.S. bishops in 1970 to fund projects which enable people living with the effects of poverty to change the causes.

The Campaign is funded by an annual collection, three-quarters of which is distributed to projects through the national CHD office and one-quarter of which is distributed through the archdiocese. Local CHD awards have already been announced.

In addition to funding Atlanta Working Women, the CHD is also giving support this year to the Pittsburgh chapter of the organization and to the national umbrella group, Working Women, National Association of Office Workers, in Cleveland.

The Atlanta group, which arose at the request of some of the estimated 200,000 women office workers in the city and metropolitan area, has won quick momentum in its first year, spreading the word that “you can join together with other women you work with or other women in the city and see accomplishments,” as director Diane Teichert puts it.

Acting on the message, one group of women working for a perimeter area insurance company got together at lunch with 17 co-workers and convinced the company to institute a job-posting program, she said. One of the founders of Baltimore Working Women, Ms. Teighert says part of the organization’s work is letting women workers here know that they can accomplish change following others’ footsteps-- “that there are tried methods that others have used before them--they don’t have to break new ground.”

A jobs survey, distributed at MARTA stops, on street corners and through volunteers willing to circulate it within their companies, revealed a host of complaints that the 800 women responding have about their jobs and workplaces.

Over 78 percent of those who filled out the survey believed that women were discriminated against in their company and over 60 percent believed there was race discrimination where they work.

More than 25 percent earn less than $10,000 a year and another 27 percent earn less than $12,000 a year. While more than 52 percent of the women answering the survey earned less than $12,000 a year, over 85 percent of the women had five or more years of work experience. Over 55 percent had worked for more than 10 years.

Behind the survey results, which also show a spotty record by companies in promoting routes up and out of clerical jobs, are the stories by women, now members of the organization, who say they are gaining confidence to ask for changes where they work and starting to emerge from the sense of being a “second-class citizen.”

“Your self-esteem is low when you’re getting such low pay,” said Katrina Smith, who works for a major insurance company. “I am worth more than this and they can’t treat me like a second-class citizen just because I make $8,000 a year--but they do.”

Three women, who work variously in insurance, a law office and a retail store, said that lack of self-confidence and fear of retaliation prompts women to keep mum when asked to do work which overlaps into the boss’s personal tasks and commitments--like work for an outside charity he turns over to his secretary--or when confronting the fact that there is no job description, no job posting and no explanation of pay increases and when they’re due.

Part of the aim of the “higher pay campaign,” which will focus on a chronic offender in a major industry, is to bring to public light the common abuses that women office workers have been fearful to raise.

“The finished project, we hope, will have ramifications all over Atlanta,” said Vicky Hyde, a mother of three children. “We’re hoping it will draw the public’s attention to the issues women have to work with every day. And that it will make women more aware of who we (Atlanta Working Women) are and what we’re about. I think when we do this, and if we have the success we anticipate, it’s going to take the fear away from a lot of women.”

At the moment, said Susan Miller, “we’re one of those ones speaking for 200,000 office workers and saying ‘It’s not right.’”

“I think the louder we speak and the more often we speak--they’re going to have to join in with us.”