Content area
Full Text
"Sisters in the Brotherhoods: Working Women Organizing for Equality" LaTour, Jane. "Sisters in the Brotherhoods: Working Women Organizing for Equality in New York City." Palgrave MacMillan, 2008. 308 pages, paperback, $25.
By Andy Piascik
If we're lucky, the next upsurge of the working class will be led by women. If we're really lucky, some of those leading that upsurge will be the women in Jane LaTour's new book, "Sisters in the Brotherhoods: Working Women Organizing for Equality." LaTour is an award-winning labor journalist who also has a long history as a rank-and-file union activist. That last is significant, for "Sisters" reads very much like it was written by someone who's spent a long time in the trenches.
"Sisters" is the story of two dozen or so women who were the first to work as firefighters, carpenters, pipefitters, telephone technicians, and other jobs in New York City. Most entered their respective fields in the 1970s and early 1980s- a time when two clashing forces met in workplaces throughout the country. On the one hand, there was the women's movement, which broke down doors to jobs that were historically seen as off-limits to women. On the other hand was a wall of male privilege and entrenched power that refused to willingly give the least bit of ground: unions, contractors, government bureaucracies and the occasional mafioso.
One result of the clash was hiring halls and job sites that were cesspools of hostility and obstruction. As the women in "Sisters" relate, women were taunted, threatened, and harassed in as many ways as one can imagine. Working in jobs where danger and the need for cooperation are great, some of the women were placed in life-threatening situations. Harassment anywhere is a serious issue; when it takes place amidst heavy machinery or high up on the skeleton of a skyscraper, it's as real as it gets.
In "Sisters," electrician Brunii da Hernandez describes an incident with a drunk coworker who, from the time she was hired, did everything he could to make her life difficult. "[H]e threatened me," Hernandez recalled. "All the guys circled us. He was cursing...