Young women democratizing the workplace: Gendered union organizing in the feminized US service sector

Young Women Democratizing the Workplace:

Gendered Union Organizing in the Feminized Service Economy

Tricia McTague

Eastern Michigan State University

tmctague@emich.edu

ABSTRACT

In this study, I examine young women’s experiences as workers and active organizers of a unionization drive at an upscale retail grocery store that was part of a large national chain in the feminized US service sector.  Despite management’s efforts to elicit worker consent—by using seemingly democratic team-based work systems and by crafting an image of environmental responsibility and “diversity and individuality” acceptance—workers at these two stores sought to unionize.  Based on in-depth interviews with twenty former worker-organizers, I show how consent broke down when workers experienced contradictions between the company’s image and managerial behavior. Dissatisfaction stemming in part from policy changes in dress code, led to organizing campaigns in which workers invoked the company’s same democratic and green rhetoric to legitimize their efforts. I examine how perceived limits to freedom of gender expression sparked the organizing drive, how transgendered and women workers negotiated the traditional masculine model of organizing, and their experiences with paternalism both inside the union and with the company. Both organizing drives failed, however, because of managerial recalcitrance, high turnover, and weak support from established unions as is characteristic of feminized service work.