Sisters in the Brotherhoods: Working Women Organizing for Equality in New York City (review)

I think the company did a very good job of introducing fear into white men, fear that their jobs were going to be taken, fear that they were going to be displaced. And of course, a part of that fear is real . . . If you've been able to get people in your family—whole families—if you've been able to get your family a job in this company and now these jobs are going to have to be competed for, that is a threat (174).

—Nene Winkler, Local 1101 of the Communications Workers of America.

Sisters in the Brotherhoods collects stories from twenty-one women who used consciousness raising, collective organizing, consensus-based decision making, direct action, and other feminist tools to make inroads in the skilled trades and their unions. By presenting these stories within the context of labor history, Jane LaTour goes far in dispelling misunderstandings of blue-collar women's engagement with the Second Wave Feminist movement. Conducted from 1990-94 and 2004-06 with women who started working as carpenters, plumbers, truck drivers, biomedical engineers, telephone switching equipment technicians, fire fighters, and other "nontraditional" jobs for women in the early 1970s and 1980s, the interviews illustrate that these women were well aware of the feminist politics of their employment. They knew from the beginning that as the first women on the job they had to do more than just show up and do good work, they had to organize. The pioneering tradeswomen LaTour documents clearly viewed their personal actions as part of an historical movement, contrary to criticisms that second-wave feminism did not speak to the needs of working-class women. When the union did not have their backs, the women formed organizations outside the union. They looked to feminist organizations like the National Organization for Women for support, although LaTour explains that this allegiance never fully took root (179). They brought forth lawsuits on their own—whatever needed to be done to solve injustices, if not for themselves then maybe for the next women in line (three of whom LaTour interviews here). Joe Hill is rolling in his grave at these stories of union apathy, corruption, harassment, and blacklisting. The presence of women interacted unpredictably with racial tensions among workers. Thankfully, allies are just as effective as bullies. It is empowering to learn through these first-hand accounts the force individuals have in addressing or ignoring systemic sexism and racism in the workplace.

LaTour also documents important programs, like Women in Apprenticeship Program and Nontraditional Employment for Women. These organizations were founded by women to help women break into apprenticeship programs and overcome other barriers to employment in the skilled trades. LaTour brings in "expert allies" to describe the landscape of economic opportunities for women in the 1970s-80s. Unlike the women working in shipyards and building aircraft during World War II who arrived as a group (and were summarily dismissed as a group when the war was over), women entering the skilled trades after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 were not trained as a group, nor were they working together. This isolation on the job was another challenge for tradeswomen to overcome as they fought not just for their own welfare but for the advancement of women throughout the industry.

LaTour, a labor activist and journalist, does not tell us much about the personal lives of her narrators, choosing to focus on details of union history, which has a particularly shady past in New York City with organized crime and ethnic rivalry. We learn that some but not all the women come from working-class backgrounds, and interestingly, it seems that they all come from families with pro-labor, pro-union legacies. Many of the women have college and advanced degrees where they formed ideas about how to combat systemic economic gender inequities; and many entered apprenticeships...