Race and Technology: African American Women in the Bell System, 1945–1980

Abstract

Race and Technology: African American Women in the Bell System, 1945—1980 VENUS GREEN Telephone operators in America’s largest cities experienced a dra­ matic technological transformation of their work process during the mid-1960s when the Bell System (AT&T and its associated compa­ nies) replaced cord switchboards with Traffic Service Positions— computerized equipment1 (see fig. 1). Martia Goodson, a former op­ erator who worked on both types of equipment, described how astonishing the change was for her: [Cord board operators] get calls [at a] switchboard [which] is full of holes and over every hole there is a light. When the light lights up [it] shows that someone is calling. You stick the plug in that hole; but how fast you get the cord up there is up to you. . . . Every three or four positions the switchboard repeats itself . . . so you might start to go for a light and somebody else picks it up, . . . the light goes out. How fast you pick it up . . . how fast you handle the call de­ pends. ... If no one puts their hand up there to pick up the light, the call would never get answered. . . . That’s different from having [a call] come in your ear . . . and the customer is there, you see what I’m saying, that’s why TSP blew my mind so bad because all of a sudden the customer was there . . . where Dr. Green is an assistant professor appointed jointly in the Department of History and the Department of Black Studies at the City College of the City University of New York. She wishes to thank Elizabeth Blackmar, Ula Taylor, Daryl Scott, Martia Goodson , Cheryl Greenberg, Bruce Sinclair, and the Technology and Culture referees for their comments on different versions of this article. Research for this article was partly funded by a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship and by the National Endowment for the Humanities through the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture’s Scholar-in-Residence Program. ’After further computerization, Traffic Service Positions (TSP) became known as Traffic Service Position Systems (TSPS). This equipment automatically measured the length of time an operator spent on a call and the number of calls handled per hour. The machines also calculated charges and determined call routing without any opera­ tor input. This equipment will be described more fully in the next section.© 1995 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/95/3602-0007$01.00 S101 S102 Venus Green Fig. 1.—The old and the new: Traffic Service Position Systems replaced cord swithchboards (far right) in Morristown, NewJersey, 1969. (Courtesy AT&T Archives.) we used to go in, see how it sounded, if it didn’t sound right. . . we’d come out . . . [with TSP] the customer was in your ear.2 Goodson’s testimony is rich for interpretation by those who study labor, women, and technology. Scholars who examine questions of skill, deskilling, the degradation of work, and job loss or gain due to new technology would be alarmed at the elimination of the physical and mental tasks associated with TSPS.3 They would argue over 2Martia Goodson made this statement in an interview conducted with Lessie Sanders in September 1975. I am indebted to her for the tape. 3Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twenti­ eth Century (New York, 1974); and the essays in Andrew Zimbalist, ed., Case Studies on the Labor Process (New York, 1979) advanced the idea that scientific management in conjunction with the introduction of new technologies deskilled and degraded work by separating conception from execution. In effect, technology, they argued, was a means whereby managers maintained control over the workplace. This thesis was chal­ lenged and modified by writers who expanded definitions ofskill, elevated governmental /political influences on technological development, and viewed workers as more active agents who themselves may choose to accept managerial control. Among this group are Kenneth Kusterer, Know-How on theJob: The Important Working Knowledge of “Unskilled” Workers (Boulder, Colo., 1975); Charles Sabel, Work and Politics: The Division of Labor in Industry (New York, 1982); Larry Hirschhorn, Beyond Mechanization (Cam­ bridge, Mass., 1984); and Michael Burawoy, Manufacturing Consent: Changes in the Labor Process under Monopoly...