Note: This series is about a cultural immersion experience in the late 70’s and early 80’s. It was cultural immersion because I was new to factory work and for three of the five years that I worked for Control Data Corporation, I worked alongside primarily African-Americans. I am white (whatever the hell that means; actually Dutch and British American) and from an upper middle class background, so to me this qualifies as a kind of travel. I was there as a labor organizer. You might want to start from the beginning to get the cast of characters (Chapter 2) and background on CDC’s social experiment in building computer peripherals (Prologue).
Our Magnetic Peripherals Inner City Plant opened up in about 1978, following CDC’s Statement on Social Justice in 1977 and its rollout of the Plato Learning System. My production unit on the second floor was peopled with a mix of five women and four men. Willie Robinson was our foreman, a former football player and nice guy. There was no factory production line, so we worked mostly independently, able to chat and move about at will. The women were an ethnic mix: me and one white middle-aged woman, two young Filipinas and one young African-American. The men were young African-American men from street life and it was the 70s.
Pretty early on our new line leader Gary made a practice of putting a sexual slant on most interactions with me and other young women. I asked him to stop doing it but he just laughed it off. Then I tried a bet. I challenged him to arm wrestle me. If I won, he would stop the sexual harassment. I felt optimistic about this bet. I was left-handed and he was not. I picked the hand. He was a short wiry guy and I was more of a mesomorph. I also regularly lifted weights at the gym. We set up right in the work area. We gathered a little audience. I did beat him, but it didn’t make any difference. It was all more amusement for him.
Thursday seemed to be designated sex talk day with the guys, especially Rodell near me. Getting ready for an exciting weekend, I suppose. Sometimes it was fun, but quickly got uncomfortable. This dynamic became the norm, but it went on amid plenty of comraderie, joint shop floor activism, and zero defect zeal.
When our plant closed in 1981, due to the construction of the Humphrey Metrodome across the street, and we all were moved together to a plant in Bloomington, we decided the harassment was intolerable. I think it was Taja who started the action. She said “We don’t have to take this anymore. Let’s walk off the job until this stops.” We talked to the other three women and we all agreed. As one, we left the unit and walked into the women’s bathroom to formulate our demands. As we walked past Willie, the foreman, he just stared, but didn’t try to stop us. The guys were confused. After maybe ten minutes we left the bathroom and returned to the floor. We announced our demands regarding sexual harassment to the guys. They acted hostile, but didn’t make any threats. Nothing was said in response, but we noticed a positive change in their behavior. Of course, if someone came back drunk from lunch, all bets were off. I think the effectiveness of the tactic resulted from two facts: We diverse women were united. We had a history of effective work place activism by all of us together, so we had demonstrated that “when we act together, we win”. 
And we stood up for ourselves and didn’t back down. A few days later Taja came to work and handed each of us women one of these:
Now these Virginia Slims sloganized keychains are sold as vintage items on Etsy.
Other states, other lives, other souls 