“Chickens come home to roost”: Industrial reorganization, seniority, and gender conflict in the United Packinghouse Workers of America, 1956–1966

Abstract

Capitalists have indeed used women as unskilled, underpaid labor to undercut male workers, yet this is only a case of chickens coming home to roost—a case of men's coaptation by and support of patriarchal society with its hierarchy among men, being turned back on themselves with a vengeance. Heidi Hartmann It took me some time to get up to the mike to speak because I was really full of emotion listening to Sister Mary Salinas when she made her speech. I was afraid that tears would have come into my eyes, and then to listen to the other sisters that spoke, one who is retiring and another whom I have seen around this convention for years — I know that these … three women have been a bulwark of our union. I know that, and to see that we are losing or are about to lose these women, I am telling you it almost brought tears to my eyes. Ed Shanklin