A Miniature Hell

Abstract

Chapter 2 provides a detailed analysis of the occupational structure and social division of labor in the power laundry industry. The chapter follows the laundry as it moves through the plant, from the markers, who sorted and tagged the incoming soiled laundry, to the sorters, who packaged the freshly laundered garments for return to the customers. The chapter highlights the occupational and social divisions between the inside workers, who were mostly women and people of color, and the drivers, who were all white men. An examination of how and why this division of labor emerged in the early 1900s (and which to a large extent has remained intact in the twenty-first century) demonstrates that deeply entrenched assumptions about the relationship between skill, ability, and a worker’s racial and gender identity influences hiring and employment practices. Drawing on the work of labor sociologists and historians such as Ruth Milkman and Alice Kessler-Harris, this chapter demonstrates that once a job is labeled female or male, the demand to fill that job becomes sex (and race) specific and, over time, extremely resistant to change. Finally, chapter 2 argues that although the occupational structure was imposed from above, white male workers, determined to protect their monopoly over the highest-paying and highest-status positions, eagerly embraced and defended the racist and sexist job assignments. The occupational divisions that emerged during the industry’s formative years would complicate the workers’ organizing, at times hopelessly impeding the development of workplace solidarities, while simultaneously providing opportunities for women and people of color to mobilize in independent and oftentimes empowering spaces where they forged race- and gender-based coalitions with allies in the labor movement.