GALLE, Sri Lanka (AP) — Sri Lanka has rewarded Kamindu Mendis for his profitable tour of England by moving him up the batting order for the two-test series against New Zealand starting on Wednesday in Galle.
Mendis reaped a century and two half-centuries from his fourth, fifth and sixth career tests over the past month in England, where he was Sri Lanka's player of the series lost 2-1. In his brief test career, he has three hundreds and four fifties.
It was time to move him from No. 7 to No. 5 in the lineup, Sri Lanka coach Sanath Jayasuriya said on Tuesday.
“There was lot of discussion that Kamindu has to move up the order when we were in England. Too often he was batting with the tail and we felt that we need to make the best use of him,” Jayasuriya said.
Former captain Dinesh Chandimal, who occupied the No. 5 slot, has been moved to No. 3 and stripped of wicketkeeping duty. Kusal Mendis, no relation to Kamindu, will keep wickets and bat at No. 7.
Sri Lanka is expected to make two more changes from the side that beat England in the third test last week at the Oval. Seam bowlers Vishwa Fernando and Milan Ratnayake are expected to make way for spinners Prabath Jayasuriya and Ramesh Mendis.
“Our fast bowlers have done well, but it's horses for courses and we have to back spin in Galle,” Jayasuriya said.
Spin-friendly Galle favors the home team, but New Zealand has done well in these contests. Sri Lanka last won a series against the Black Caps in 2009. The last two series in Sri Lanka in 2012 and 2019 ended 1-1.
New Zealand has retired Sri Lanka great Rangana Herath on its staff to help its spinners, but the weather might be a bigger influence. The forecast across the test is not good.
The visitors will be used to that. Rain and a soggy outfield washed out all five days of New Zealand's scheduled one-off test against Afghanistan last week in Greater Noida, India. That was also to be New Zealand's warmup for this series.
“Disappointing, no doubt, but we cannot control the weather,” New Zealand captain Tim Southee said. “It would have been nice to have a test match against an ever improving side. However, we have had some good training and have spent time together both in India and in Galle.”
While New Zealand hasn't played a test since March, it won't be cold for long.
“Eight test matches between now and December is lot of cricket. We are excited," Southee said. "We are ranked three in the World Test Championship and it’s an opportunity for us to get some points and move forward.”
He has another personal milestone in sight, too. Southee needs 20 more wickets to become the second New Zealander to take 400 in tests after Richard Hadlee's 431.
“I have played for a long time and when you do that you come closer to these milestones,” said Southee, who has 100 caps. “We have a lot of tours ahead. Especially in this part of the world. Every game you are going out to do your role and take wickets for the side. It will be nice if I can achieve those milestones. But the focus is on winning games.”
Lineups:
Sri Lanka squad: Dhananjaya de Silva (captain), Dimuth Karunaratne, Pathum Nissanka, Kusal Mendis, Angelo Mathews, Dinesh Chandimal, Kamindu Mendis, Sadeera Samarawickrama, Oshada Fernando, Asitha Fernando, Vishwa Fernando, Lahiru Kumara, Prabath Jayasuriya, Ramesh Mendis, Jeffrey Vandersay, Milan Rathnayake.
New Zealand squad: Tim Southee (captain), Tom Blundell, Michael Bracewell, Devon Conway, Matt Henry, Tom Latham, Daryl Mitchell, Will O’Rourke, Ajaz Patel, Glenn Phillips, Rachin Ravindra, Mitchell Santner, Ben Sears, Kane Williamson and Will Young.
AP cricket: https://apnews.com/hub/cricket
Sri Lanka's Kamindu Mendis during day three of the Third Rothesay Men's Test at The Kia Oval, London, Sunday Sept. 8, 2024. ( John Walton/PA via AP)
Sri Lanka's Kamindu Mendis bats during day two of the Third Rothesay Men's Test match between England and Sri Lanka in London, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024. (John Walton/PA via AP)
Women make up roughly half of U.S. labor union membership, but representation in top level union leadership positions has lagged, even in female-dominated industries and particularly for women of color.
But Black and Latina women are starting to gain ground, landing top positions at some of the biggest unions in the U.S. That has translated into wins at the bargaining table that focus more attention on family-friendly benefits like parental leave and health care coverage, as well as protections against sexual harassment.
Often when people think about unions, "they think of a white guy in a hard hat. But in fact, studies show that about two-thirds of working people who are covered by a union contract are women and/or people of color,” said Georgetown University labor historian Lane Windham.
Indeed, hospitality union UNITE HERE's membership is majority women and people of color. And last month, more than 12,000 of them across six states went on strike to push for wage increases, fair workloads and more affordable health care under the leadership of Gwen Mills, who in June became the first woman to be elected union president in its 130-year history.
Data from the U.S. Department of Labor shows that Black and Latina women experience a particularly wide gender pay gap. They also face intersectional headwinds of both racism and sexism in their careers, making them even more attuned to inequities in the workplace and motivating them to increasingly step up the fight as union leaders.
Black and Latina women are driving labor union growth in the U.S. amid a decades-long decline in membership. In 2023, Black women's union membership rate notched a slight bump from 10.3% to 10.5%, while Latinas went up from 8.5% to 8.8%. But that's still more than white men and women as well as Asian women, whose membership experienced a decrease during the same time period.
Momentum for Black and Latina women rising into labor union leadership has picked up in the last five years. But the work began long before that by "our foremothers who laid this foundation and have been pushing and kicking those doors open for decades,” according to Liz Shuler, who in June 2022 became the first woman in history to lead the AFL-CIO, a federation of 60 national and international labor unions.
“The #MeToo movement, I think, has really emboldened women across the board, including in labor, to say, you know what? I’m not going to be sitting on the sidelines,” Shuler said. The pandemic also put a spotlight on essential workers such as nurses, service workers and care workers, who are predominantly women and minorities.
Today’s examples of diverse union leaders include Becky Pringle, a Black woman who leads the National Education Association, the nation's largest union; Bonnie Castillo, the first Latina to serve as executive director of National Nurses United; and April Verrett, who in May became the first Black woman to lead the Service Employees International Union, which says about 60% of its service worker members are people of color, and two-thirds are women.
“If we want to build power on those who are perceived to have the least amount of power, then we've got to create space for our people of those identities to be able to lead,” Verrett told The Associated Press.
But while female-dominated fields have made strides in union leadership diversity, “there is still a long way to go” for unions in male-dominated fields like building and manufacturing trades, said University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign labor historian Emily Twarog. Despite some headway through DEI and apprenticeship programs, “there hasn’t been that kind of culture shift.”
Men still have a higher union membership rate than women — 10.5% versus 9.5% respectively, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. And workplace sexual harassment and biases still run rampant in many places, including for Chicago-based Lisa Lujano, a journey-level carpenter and member of Carpenters Union Local 13.
Things might get better, she said, if more Black and Latina women held union leadership roles and were more aware of their memberships' needs, including safety gear that fits women’s bodies, or parental leave, which Lujano does not have.
“I think we would get more respect out in the field,” she said.
Here's a look at the impact women union leaders have had at the bargaining table:
Teachers’ unions have in recent years begun to use their collective power to push for wraparound benefits to help their surrounding community in a method known as "bargaining for the common good," which aims to go beyond wages and benefits at the bargaining table and tackle wider social issues. The Chicago Teachers Union, for example, included demands for affordable housing citywide during a strike in 2019 — in part organized by then-vice president Stacy Davis Gates, who is now CTU president.
Some teachers' unions are also fighting for racial justice, including the United Teachers Los Angeles, which demanded that the school district stop subjugating students to random metal detector screenings and locker checks without cause, decrying the practice as disproportionately targeting Black and minority students.
“We need to address the inequities that are built into every single social system in this country that determine whether our students come to school ready to learn every day,” Pringle said. “It was our female leaders, particularly our leaders of color, who really leaned into that.”
Unionized hotel workers like Maria Mata have made strides toward fighting the rampant sexual harassment in their profession.
Mata, a Hispanic housekeeper and UNITE HERE union leader at the W San Francisco, helped lead a successful push at her hotel for workers to be equipped with panic buttons in 2018 to summon security help in an emergency, now implemented by several major hotel chains.
“We needed more protection,” especially during night shifts spent cleaning entire floors alone, explained Mata, who has herself twice experienced sexual harassment on the job. “It’s very dangerous."
It’s also vital for the women doing the work to also sit at the bargaining table, “because sometimes as women, we need something that the men don’t know,” said Mata, whose hotel is currently in bargaining for a new contract.
Keturah Johnson in 2022 became the first queer woman of color to serve as international vice president for flight attendant union AFA-CWA, which is led by Sara Nelson and represents over 50,000 flight attendants at 20 airlines.
People often think of a flight attendant as “a white woman with hair put up in a bun,” and Black flight attendants frequently face microaggressions from managers about their appearance, Johnson said. “It’s happened to me many times because of my natural hair."
And for gender nonconforming flight attendants, being able to wear a uniform that reflects their gender identity is important, Johnson said. So she's leading the fight to update uniform standards to be gender inclusive and permit natural hairstyles, which has resulted in several airlines making changes.
United Airlines, for instance, updated its uniform standards to include gender neutral options in 2021, and Alaska Airlines management adopted gender neutral uniform and appearance standards in 2022, according to AFA. Frontier allowed natural hairstyles for flight attendants in 2021, and this year implemented standardized pricing for all uniforms regardless of size or gender.
“We’re not just there to serve Diet Coke. And so it’s our job to make sure that flight attendants are represented and seen just as they are,” Johnson said. “The world is changed now.”
The Associated Press’ women in the workforce and state government coverage receives financial support from Pivotal Ventures. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
Unite Here Local 2 leader María Mata stands for a portrait in front of the W Hotel on Friday, Sept. 13, 2024, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Juliana Yamada)
Unite Here Local 2 leader María Mata stands for a portrait in front of the W Hotel on Friday, Sept. 13, 2024, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Juliana Yamada)
Keturah Johnson, international vice president for flight attendant union AFA-CWA, poses for a portrait in her headquarters office, Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/John McDonnell)
Keturah Johnson, international vice president for flight attendant union AFA-CWA, poses for a portrait in her headquarters office, Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/John McDonnell)
Keturah Johnson, international vice president for flight attendant union AFA-CWA, poses by a decades old, outdated poster with rules and uniforms for flight attendants, at her headquarters office, Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/John McDonnell)
