The East Side Freedom Library invites you to
the January meeting of our Labor History Reading Group

9to5: Women Workers Organize Themselves in the 1970s

Register to receive the Zoom link here

We are starting our 2021 engagement with labor history with a double-barreled exploration of women workers’ organizing in the 1970s. On Friday evening, January 8, we are screening the iconic documentary from Minnesota history, “The Willmar 8,” and, on Tuesday, January 19, we are reading and discussing a chapter from Lane Windham’s acclaimed book, Knocking on Labor’s Door: Organizing in the 1970s and the Roots of a New Economic Divide (2018). Lane will be with us for the discussion of her chapter, “9to5: Framing a New Doorway.”

From January 12 through January 31, several online platforms host screenings of Julia Reichert’s new documentary, “9to5: The Story of a Movement.” We encourage you to look over this list and sign up, for free, to watch.

In late 1972 a group of women workers started a newsletter they called “9to5 News.” A year later, they announced the formation of Boston 9to5, a grassroots collective for women office workers that addressed issues such as low pay and lack of opportunities for advancement. In 1975, 9to5 joined with SEIU in Boston to initiate a project for office workers to gain access to collective bargaining rights, which grew into the Working Women Organizing Project, then the National Association of Working Women, and, in 1981, SEIU District 925, a nationwide labor union for office workers. “9to5, National Association of Working Women” evolved into the largest membership organization of working women in the United States. Their impact reached far beyond their own organizational parameters. As workers and the labor movement explore ways to rebuild organization and power in 2021, there is much to learn from this experience.

Lane Windham is Associate Director of Georgetown University’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor and co-director of WILL Empower (Women Innovating Labor Leadership). Windham spent nearly twenty years working in the union movement, particularly among clothing and textile workers in the South in the 1990s, and was media outreach director for the national AFL-CIO from 1998 to 2009.

Cherrene Horazuk, President of AFSCME Local 3800, the union of clerical and technical workers at the University of Minnesota, will also be speaking with us, discussing the ways this 1970s organizing way inspired the birth of her union.

Please register to participate. You will be given the Zoom link and emailed a pdf of Lane’s chapter for our reading and discussion.

Free and open to all

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