Labor Studies Journal

These two companion books—sisters, so to speak—cover the common theme of women in the steel industry and in the United Steelworkers of America (USWA) during the period of 1974-2000, but they present very different perspectives and come to very different conclusions.

Although Fonow describes the long history of women in the steel industry, her focus begins with the 1974 consent decree, "the outcome of decades of civil rights activism [which] put into place one of the most extensive affirmative-action plans in basic industry "requiring that 20% of all new hires in production and maintenance had to be female." This [End Page 103] decree brought dramatic, and occasionally violent, changes to the heavily masculine workplaces—mills and mines—and challenged both the elected officers and the members of the USWA, the largest affected union.

Her book begins, almost happily, with the success stories of three USWA women hired in 1976, who "share a similar understanding of feminism," who became union officers, and who "secured space within a male-dominated union from which women could challenge sex discrimination and advocate for women's rights."

In contrast, Lois Jensen, one of the heroines of Class Action, was told on her second day of work in March, 1975, at the Eveleth Mine in Minnesota: "You f— women don't belong here. If you knew what was good for you, you'd go home where you belong."

Over the next twenty-five years, Lois Jensen courageously carried one of the most important workplace struggles, accusing the company of a new variant of sex discrimination: the creation of a hostile environment. Class Action describes in excruciating detail the incidents of bestiality that her co-workers brought to the mine. It carefully follows the legal challenges which developed from a grievance to a state case to a unique class action lawsuit on behalf of the women in the mill, many of whom originally were so demoralized that they initially opposed the suit.

In the end, Jensen, suffering from post-traumatic stress, won a settlement which not only recognized the concept of hostile environment, but also provided compensation for the "scorched earth" defense provided by company lawyers, The case created "new law" and changed the lives of women on the Iron Range of northern Minnesota, and in every workplace, forever.

One sharp limitation of each book is the authors' lack of awareness of each other's work. Fonow praises the steelworker women who "found it necessary to transform the organizations, resources, and networks of both the women's movement and the labor movement" but indicates no knowledge of the Eveleth court case, which was running throughout 1974-2000 time period.

At the same time, the authors of Class Action focus on a group of women who are totally isolated, politically and geographically, from any of these activities in the USWA, and who found neither support nor sympathy from any male union officer. Fonow describes a series of USWA Women's Conferences beginning in 1977, with no acknowledgement that Lois Jensen's protracted struggle was also going on at the very same time.

In one intersection of the two books, Class Action describes Lois Jensen's attempt to get the USWA local officers to write a grievance for [End Page 104] her after being stalked by a co-worker. She approached a co-worker, who had attended a union summer school workshop on sexual harassment, but the local officer responded that he "did not know the procedures for filing a sexual harassment claim, "even though he had attended the class." Class Action is very clear about the conflicts between justice and solidarity...