The US Supreme Court decision in UAW v. Johnson Controls, a landmark case that eliminated employer policies that excluded women from jobs with significant reproductive risks, has been the focus of considerable debate. While challenging policies that decided what risks were acceptable for women of childbearing age, critics charged that the ruling weakened labour law protections for women in the USA and lowered standards for all workers. Yet, the case emerged at a time when workplace protections under the Occupational Health and Safety Administration were already failing due to deregulation and unions were running into growing employer hostility. This article argues that labour feminists in the United Auto Workers (UAW) hoped to simultaneously force employers to end sex discrimination and toxic exposures in the workplace. They only shifted to the narrower legal strategy that prevailed in Johnson Controls in the late 1970s and 1980s for pragmatic reasons. Using equal opportunity provisions of the Civil Rights Act was one way for union plaintiffs to ensure that employers were not using foetal protection policies as an end-run around a safer workplace for all workers. Yet, while women workers and unions originally sought to “fix the workplace, not the worker,” conservative opposition accepted women having fewer labour protections while endorsing a less protected and riskier workplace.
By the early 1970s, women office workers in the United States began to seriously address their working conditions. Their efforts expressed renewed expectations that women workers were entitled to certain basic rights, such as respect on the job and equal pay. Finding that women's lack of collective bargaining power limited their ability to improve conditions, working women organizations sought to further address their problems through union organizing campaigns. Affiliating with the Service Employees International Union, 9to5-a working women's organization-formed Local 925 and District 925. Within District 925, organizers, using labor feminism, effectively combined the goals of the working women's movement and the labor movement, as seen in the campaigns at the University of Cincinnati. District 925's campaigns combined tactics from the women's movement, such as consciousness-raising and one-on-one organizing, and traditional union tactics. District 925 created a novel relationship-based unionism that led to tangible gains for clerical workers.
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