Women workers on a risky journey
By
Rosemary Neidenberg
Published Jun 23, 2005 10:29 PM
“Making Changes” by Patricia Hilliard, iUniverse Books, $14.95,
2005
Patricia Hilliard’s first book,
“One Pledge Unspoken,” transported the reader to the 1960s and a
reliving of the struggle of small-town Midwest high school students against the
Vietnam War. (Does anyone remember running leaflets on a mimeograph
machine?)
“Making Changes” takes us to a large Cleveland
insurance company office in the 1980s. The women workers, the supervisors, the
bosses—they’re all here, so authentic in every detail. The personal
lives of the workers, their problems, interests, life-plans, the way they think
and dress and talk are real and recognizable.
Particularly familiar and
poignant is the woman who collects figurines. She buys one every week. Do you
know her? I do.
The mix of heritages found in every big-city workplace is
there—newly arrived, as well as third-generation descendants—from
Europe, Asia, the Caribbean, and women many generations out of Africa. Each cog
in the American Empire Insurance Co. is a beautifully etched dimensional
portrait.
The drudgery of the data-entry work, the drabness of the
fluorescent-lit rows of computer-adorned desks—one shudders to envision
it. But brightening the picture are the lunchtime, break-time, stealthy stolen
moments from work-time, camaraderie of the workers, the confidences about
personal problems, the kidding around, the mosaic of personalities to deal with
and gossip about (particularly the bosses and supervisors). And there is the
occasional delicious event when the workers get over on management.
Ellen
Anderson, leader and instigator, is happy to get the data-entry job. She will be
able to pay her rent and buy film for her camera. Spiritual kin to the
high-school anti-war organizer in the 1960s, she rejoices in an exciting
prospect. She is determined to organize a union.
Hilliard provides a
step-by-step, nitty-gritty, hold-your-breath account of how the disparate,
generous, flawed, gutsy, disregarded, underpaid women office workers embark on
their risky journey.
Anyone who has been involved in union organizing will
recognize and relive the moments of desperation, the moments of triumph, the
strategy meetings to counter each move of the bosses, the feelings of deep
disappointment when it looks like the workers will lose, the exhilaration when
victory is in sight.
Do the workers win? Well, it cannot be imagined that
Hilliard would write a book where the workers lose.
Available from
leftbooks.com.
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