Young Women who Work
Wolfgang, Myra
Myra Wolfgang is International vice-president of the Hotel, Motel and Restaurant Employees' Union, as well as secretary-treasurer of its Local 705 in Detroit. She also heads the Coalition for...
...No more white gloves...
...Now, when 22 percent of the members of your unions are unemployed, as is the case with the carpenters in the Detroit area, this isn't the best time to say to them, You should share with blacks...
...WEINMAN: They got no wages...
...The person who cooks is also serving you...
...he may be working to buy a car, if he's middle-class, and his father says, "You want a car...
...That's one thing...
...few can follow the job, and therefore the complexion of our union is changing...
...you eat dinner at home...
...WOLFGANG: Partly because of our approach...
...The Equal Rights Amendment does not control the private sector of society, where most of the discrimination takes place...
...So, what used to be our strength, is no longer a weapon at all, and we have not as yet devised new methods...
...You have 12 Holiday Inns in the metropolitan Detroit area...
...It was our intention to put a picket line on the place, protesting their labor policy...
...All that's left as a saving grace for New York restaurants is that tourists eat out, but we don't have tourism in this city...
...WOLFGANG: Yes...
...They send their children off to school, and are back home when the kids return...
...General community problems become our problems because we cannot be separated from them...
...ROSENBERG: What effect does the present economic crisis have...
...You know, they should join the union so they'll have security on the job...
...We say join our unions and you'll have seniority which will give you the right to work eight hours a day, a full day...
...I subsequently found out that every woman employee in the Gandy Dancer is a college graduate...
...They are living for now, as they really should do...
...I was concerned about whether that was going to be their policy here too...
...We furnish that...
...I believe more people are going to the unions because they want someone like me to raise hell, generally, than are looking for pensions or seniority or vacations or other benefits...
...Sheraton, for instance, is now owned by IT&T...
...They YOUNG WOMEN WHO WORK understood unions...
...Our International union has not taken a posi tion, there's no doubt that if they did, it would be one supporting Meany...
...WOLFGANG: The majority of bartenders would be males...
...This interview was held in Detroit by BERNARD ROSENBERG and SAUL WEINMAN...
...Why does that make you laugh...
...I am unequivocally for equality...
...On tips...
...But I just believe that the Equal Rights Amendment is the wrong instrument...
...I personally and as a unionist working with women have been very much involved in the whole question of equal rights for men and women...
...That is because of the general closing of businesses in the inner city...
...WOLFGANG: More and more conflict...
...They go on to say that the reason for this difference is that women are so badly discriminated against in medical schools...
...I have come to the conclusion that those who do join want the union because they would like to have someone around who will call the boss an s.o.b...
...This is no longer a small business...
...They weren't even ready to open...
...WOLFGANG: I admire that in the kids...
...She was interviewed by Keith Heffner, that's Hugh Heffner's brother...
...We got our basic training in the working-class political movement...
...WOLFGANG: To explain that I have to be critical of the International Union, which is always bad politics...
...WOLFGANG: Who didn't...
...You know, under the Taft-Hartley Law, we can't approach them until 30 days are up, and by that time they're gone...
...If you're talking about waiters, some blacks make enough money to own a car, so they can follow a job...
...Well, Mr...
...WOLFGANG: All tips...
...Chuck Muer, who has quite a few restaurants around the Detroit area, opened one in Ann Arbor called the Gandy Dancer...
...I said, "Jo, you were a member of the bargaining committee, you were the shop steward there, did it ever dawn on you that the real reason you were fired was because of your activity in the union...
...In those days our liquor-control law didn't permit anyone under the age of 21 to work in such an establishment, which is why I had made the point that she was 17...
...She said, "I didn't ask you what I would make...
...I'm going to make it while I can and then off to Europe for two years...
...They got a location on West Grand Boulevard near Second...
...WOLFGANG: Because the Equal Rights Amendment, even though it wouldn't affect the private sector, would automatically repeal all legislation that applies to women only...
...The new manager was from the Country Club of Detroit which is the place—you know, the Fords who only talk to the Sloanes who only talk to God...
...Unfortunately, that's the history of black breakthrough in this area...
...36 AN INTERVIEW WITH MYRA WOLFGANG...
...They have their own frozen foods plant...
...You know, it's a very strange thing, the question never dawned on me until this moment...
...WOLFGANG: Playboy magazine announced that their next club would be opened in Detroit...
...In the meantime, we are also filing a case locally with our Civil Rights Commission, created by the Fair Employment Act we have here...
...WOLFGANG: I mean no wages, nothing...
...Originally the blacks in Detroit were used as strikebreakers...
...50, and of the 50, I'd say that half are manned by the owners...
...ROSENBERG: What happens when suburbanization leads to increasing black unemployment...
...Then, too, we have difficulty appealing to young people—and there're many in our industry—because of the position labor has taken on the war...
...But I never recall seeing a woman being trained there...
...WEINMAN: Well, then, why would you fight it...
...ROSENBERG: That's nationwide...
...And that's true of the restaurants too, except for gourmet houses...
...It was simply in the old days in the South, that black skin was not palatable to the plantation owner while he was having his dinner, so he had his slaves cover their hands with white gloves...
...ROSENBERG: Can you tell us about the ra cial composition of your local...
...That is why my public posture has to be one of a general hell-raiser...
...Also, it's an industry that allows you to work days if your husband works nights, or vice-versa, so that child-care responsibilities can be divided between parents...
...If we start to make exceptions, then the plan is no longer actuarially sound, and we can't fulfill our commitment to our older people...
...Our own international officers were startled at the approach of these girls...
...Why go to school...
...Young people feel that very much...
...So they look for a mouthpiece in the union...
...But we are not organizing the chains either, and they are the ones that are growing, and the mergers that are taking place are tremendous...
...So the agreement has the usual language according to which no one shall be fired for union activity, but it goes on, unfortunately, to state that the employer may discharge a bunny for "loss of the bunny image...
...That's why my local union, for instance, is very active in working with the City Administration, and trying to promote a downtown sports stadium that would at least bring people back into the city...
...32 AN INTERVIEW WITH MYRA WOLFGANG WOLFGANG: Most of the women who are sponsoring it are business and professional women...
...It involved not only the shop steward but a member of the bargaining committee...
...The housekeeping department at the downtown Sheraton Cadillac Hotel is, oh, I'd say 90 percent black, and I think that the reverse pattern holds in most of the mo tels in suburban areas...
...They refused to go into arbitration...
...WOLFGANG: Well, of course, it does...
...The employees with seniority are going to beat me out...
...Well, when they came back from the national bargaining, the member from the Detroit team, who was called Bunny Jo, within a month's time was fired for loss of the bunny image...
...We've got craft unions, and you can't use a craft union approach in a restaurant when there are no longer any craft demarcations...
...Now, even though structurally we are all in one council and make one set of demands on an employer, with one set of goals for negotiating purposes...
...Incidentally, after World War II when men came back and couldn't find the housing, they all bought small houses, and built recreation rooms...
...Well, then how will I make $250 a week...
...And they had a very good interview, and he hired her, and after she was hired, she inquired, `By the way, what will I get paid...
...Stouffers is not relying on anybody to make deliveries...
...WOLFGANG: It's nationwide, but I speak with direct knowledge of Detroit...
...WEINMAN: Can you begin by telling us not consulting with our people we lose touch something about restaurant workers...
...But it hasn't done that, and the result is that you have all of this propaganda about unions, although some of it is justified...
...Very quickly New York charged that she was discriminated against for union activities and the contract there required arbitration...
...We knew that they were not paying bunnies any wages anywhere in the country...
...And we organized the white-collar people, too, into a separate union...
...We had a contract that gave the employees seniority and if they were not fired, for instance, in the 1968 season, then their seniority carried over to the 1969 season...
...ROSENBERG: Why does that disturb you...
...WEINMAN: Was this episode related to the strike in New York...
...WOLFGANG: Yes, I still am theoretically...
...Myra Wolfgang is International vice-president of the Hotel, Motel and Restaurant Employees' Union, as well as secretary-treasurer of its Local 705 in Detroit...
...So, we put a picket line out, a very dramatic one, to stress the evils of working for no wages, you know, Sodom and Gomorrah, hell on earth...
...At Stouffers it's almost entirely women...
...We had a war of nerves...
...WOLFGANG: One thing we do, although not too successfully, is try to redevelop the inner city...
...It represented the first appearance of black waiters in Detroit...
...Go out and work for it...
...I don't recall ever seeing a woman student there...
...Now, I asked how long are you girls going to stay in this industry...
...YOUNG WOMEN WHO WORK In many of our cities, we have our diningroom employees in local unions based on sex, which I consider not only a bad approach, but possibly illegal...
...The legislation was designed specifically for women, it gave them special benefits...
...Here for instance in my local I am not permitted organization north of 14 Mile Road, and if some restaurant just happens to be right on the corner of 14 Mile Road, then, boy, we've got to go to the Supreme Court to find out who can organize it...
...In other words, I didn't change, the world just changed around me...
...If somebody had told me 35 years ago that I would be worried about such a problem, I would have said he was absolutely crazy...
...Bear in mind, for instance, that women are farm workers, and are covered by the federal law, which is $1.30 an hour...
...I said because the damn fools just hired my 17-year-old daughter...
...We depend an awful lot on conventions...
...Our national agreement with Playboy International requires that whenever we reach a 51 percent majority of the membership in a given area, the company agrees to become bound by the highest contract of that area...
...Big Boy is about the ninth largest purveyor of food in this country, and that's starting with the United States Army as number one...
...That's how they broke the strike...
...And I am certainly not saying that discrimination against women hasn't existed with us...
...Here they are, working in a restaurant and we come along and give them a big speech about job security...
...He may even buy it in partnership with three other kids...
...Finally I sat some of them down and said, `By the way, do you know where the white-gloves tradition comes from...
...When I found out about that, I was just furious...
...I cite that as an example of how by not consulting with our people we lose touch with them...
...Most of them were married to union members...
...Answer: "You'll make $250 a week...
...Along came Mother's Day and Franklin Hills Country Club was determined to have waiters with white gloves...
...They insisted on white gloves...
...What about the uniform...
...I never was a joiner...
...However, that's for cooks, bartenders, waiters, buffet workers...
...We finally negotiated for commission...
...I'll never have a chance to take a vacation with my kids...
...I sent out a letter about 15 years ago to every caterer in the city pleading with them not to specify female, male, white, or black preference...
...I can't make the money as a teacher I can make here...
...In 1968 they had all women there, so I said, "You're crazy...
...Jo was anxious to test the agreement she had negotiated...
...They gave men a skill and a very great skill, one that is much needed in this country...
...The classic one that they use all the time is, 78 percent of the doctors in the Soviet Union, but only 9 percent of the doctors in this country, are women...
...One said, "I'll stay until I find a job teaching...
...She said, "Of course it dawned on me...
...It's usually the first job a youngster works at...
...And in organizing in Charleston, they have become the symbol of a fighting union interested in the blacks...
...The big thing in the restaurant industry right now is that it is becoming de-skilled...
...You take the Culinary Institute, the country's leading school for training chefs...
...ROSENBERG: It's like working to buy a car...
...I mean raising hell...
...so right there you have three unions, under our present structure...
...That was true for most of us who became leaders in the trade unions...
...Many of them are housekeeping employees...
...WOLFGANG: New York followed...
...There was no milk, there were no vegetables, there was no bread, there were no lemons...
...WOLFGANG: On the war issue, this local has taken a very clear position...
...The result was that for years, whenever I had told my daughter to stay in school (she is about to get a second M.A...
...Yet, Union Street, which is covered with restaurants, has no union restaurants...
...It has absolutely nothing to do with cleanliness...
...It was recently amended to add age as an illegitimate basis for job discrimination...
...Also, we say, the senior employees will have a choice of vacations...
...Okay, the chain operations now, not only do they have their own deliveries, they have their own merchandise...
...The second occurred during a strike we had at the Statler Hotel when, once again, they brought in black waiters...
...ROSENBERG: What about the war...
...We do have the summer clubs and the winter banquet circuit which is mostly fundraising affairs and conventions...
...The first three girls I talked to were college graduates—all three of them had their degrees in education, and all three couldn't get jobs as teachers...
...It's fine for the head of the labor movement to say, "I support the military," and, "we have to leave Southeast Asia with honor," when he is talking about somebody else's life, and not his own...
...This kid is going to earn exactly enough for a down-payment on that car, the insurance and gasoline money...
...I said, "Well then, okay, put white gloves on the women, but you're going to have women...
...Still, the local unions are separate, and that in itself produces the seeds of jurisdictional fights...
...In the summer it was the outdoor barbecue, and in the winter it was the recreation room or beer bash...
...they just look upon the job as a temporary thing and they aren't interested in unionizing it...
...Here in Detroit, the same thing happened...
...Always the first to be hurt because you don't eat dinner out...
...Not only are they cooking and serving you, but they are also taking your cash...
...You will get the person who's first on our numbering system...
...If we find that Bunny Jo is older than the other bunnies, we will contend that is why they say she has lost her bunny image...
...I'm particularly concerned about the young, because as you know, the restaurant industry is an entry occupation...
...My daughter was then 17 years old, and I dressed her up in a very becoming black-and-white checked skirt with an orange velvet top...
...White gloves were a big deal...
...degree and I've kept her in school now for seven years), her answer was, "But I 34 AN INTERVIEW WITH MYRA WOLFGANG could make $250 a week as a bunny...
...The first strike we had at Stouffers, we of course had not only 100 percent support of employees working there, but when gradually some of them began seeping back in and the company considered bringing some staff people back from Cleveland, absolutely no deliveries were made...
...One of the elegant clubs here, the most expensive of upper-middle-class clubs, is the Franklin Hills Country Club, originally set up by Meyer Prentice, the only Jew in the General Motors hierarchy...
...But meanwhile, what do these young guys care about pensions...
...Local 1199 has its base in New York but is organizing even in Charleston...
...As far as the union is concerned, if we have a contract, we never can catch the girl because she's never there for 30 days...
...Right now, that's down to about, oh...
...ROSENBERG: Let me know if I am wrong on this, but isn't it so that in early America there were only waiters and at some point women appeared as strikebreakers...
...but in California, because of a state minimum-wage law, they are paid $1.65 an hour...
...This is now changing, and the majority is again becoming white...
...WOLFGANG: I think you've had that kind of history in all our industry...
...Consequently, when a woman is interning to become a doctor in Russia, the hospital is not permitted to let her work on Sundays, on holidays, or on any days her children are not in school...
...The Holiday Inns here have more beds than the Statler and the Hilton combined...
...The first thing they realize is that they are going to organize the whole industry and they have got to expand and have one union, regardless of the geographical area...
...And that goes back to what I was saying before about young people being less interested in unions...
...It got very Biblical...
...WEINMAN: I'm not clear on why it takes more to organize these...
...If we did, they'd probably tell us that they would prefer to work part-time, and let the new person be stuck for eight hours...
...Still, you do have more women cooks coming up in the industry now...
...Quite a merger...
...ROSENBERG: You have a reputation for some flamboyance in this city, recently because of incidents at the Playboy Club...
...The black waiter was brought to this city through the Detroit Athletic Club because we had a strike there in 1921...
...Center and is a member of the UAW the other girl's husband was a member of the Musicians' Union...
...I've kept tallies on how much money it has cost me to be steward, and all an employer has to do in our industry is give you a different station or different hours...
...I am particularly concerned with the recklessness coming from liberal women who should be more responsible in their arguments for the Equal Rights Amendment...
...However . . . I think it requires organizing on a national scale with national effort, not just by local unions as they are now structured...
...WEINMAN: There are also a lot of kids who work in department stores...
...Now, if you just will look at the school's statistics, it would appear that there's great discrimination...
...And I am pretty sure it's because none applied...
...WOLFGANG: That is right...
...WEINMAN: What is the sex distribution...
...They grossed over $90 million last year, and they are going not only into the motel business, and very successfully, but also into frozen foods and in-plant feeding...
...All of your social life began to center around the home...
...I was out there talking to some waitresses...
...That produced a certain sense of shame, and it ended the business...
...I think, frankly, that there is discrimination in many, many cases, and no doubt about it...
...ROSENBERG: All commission...
...We oppose it...
...WOLFGANG: Because they are not being organized...
...So, he repeated himself, "You don't get paid...
...Who works exclusively as a cook at a Big Boy Hamburger...
...We don't have to stop being a craft union, but we have to stop organizing along craft lines...
...The result is that these people just don't go out and it affects our business immediately, which is why, as a local union, we are so very interested in theater or any social activity that will get people out of their home...
...That's part of how the suburbia bit got started—and on a Saturday night, you invited five couples over, and you did whatever was at your particular level, played cards, had beer and potato chips, and that was it...
...The theory is that you guys get tired of looking at the same face, if anyone bothers looking at a bunny's face—but anyhow, they keep sending them from city to city...
...There a very interesting thing happened, only they won their argument and we lost ours...
...WEINMAN: Does that have any strategic value...
...They refused, claiming that she could not use two remedies of the contract, and that she had selected one of them, but still we went to court...
...We would be driven absolutely crazy on weekend orders, particularly for Bar Mitzvahs, when someone would ask us to please send waiters with white gloves...
...It wasn't until I explained to her that it wouldn't be long-lasting that she decided to become a professional...
...We also tell them that if they stick around long enough, we have a very good health, welfare, and pension plan...
...But they're thinking of just one thing—to make enough money to get the hell out of the job...
...They may have a porter come in and clean up, or 30 AN INTERVIEW WITH MYRA WOLFGANG a waitress who works on Saturday night, usually a woman from the neighborhood...
...with them...
...You take the Stouffer Restaurant Company...
...DeHart, who had been manager at the Country Club, came over, and he wanted to bring the black waiters with him, and at Franklin Hills they were dying to have approval from these Country Club people...
...And let me tell you something —that's quite a price for working women to pay in behalf of a mythical equality that professional women are supposed to attain through an Equal Rights Amendment...
...She also heads the Coalition for Women's Advancement...
...But the new employee says, "Oh, to hell with this, I don't want to work in a union house...
...ROSENBERG: Were you a Socialist...
...All right...
...We don't even bother asking senior employees whether that's what they want...
...WOLFGANG: The restaurant industry provides low-paying service jobs...
...It's $1.30 versus $1.65...
...What happens is the blacks simply do not follow their jobs out to the suburbs...
...WOLFGANG: I'd say that the closest anyone has ever come to that is Local 1199, the Hospital Union in New York...
...Our pension plan is predicated on the idea that everyone in the union must be covered...
...Detroit is the only city where Stouffers is organized...
...ROSENBERG: Did you have any politics in the '30s...
...We have one good month a year, which is January, when the Society of Automotive Engineers meets in Detroit...
...It's a charming restaurant...
...I remember about 15 years ago, there were 500 organized restaurants and bars from Jefferson, where Detroit starts at the side of Canada, out to Eight Mile Road, which is the city line...
...Your situation sounds a lot like the Retail Clerks...
...Well, when they were getting ready to open here, they advertised for help...
...The courts upheld Playboy International, but our International union has authorized that it be appealed to the higher courts, and we are going all the way with it...
...You have the kids going to work for some immediate purpose, like accumulating enough money for college...
...WEINMAN: Are the majority of your members women...
...Besides, prices in the suburbs are geared to getting employees who live in the general area...
...WOLFGANG: Very simply, we are the first to be hurt...
...It was a fine institute on the YOUNG WOMEN WHO WORK Yale campus...
...You invite six friends over instead of going to the movies...
...And our International contributed funds to the Culinary Institute...
...They have exactly the same problem with the package girls and boys...
...At last he admitted that they didn't pay anything...
...Go to any hamburger drive-in, and you find that's the case...
...Now, in New York, the bunny who "lost her image" first, naturally, was the shop steward...
...They are just dying to call him that but they don't dare because they want that extra money...
...I asked you what I get paid...
...I as sure you, I really am a very peaceful per son...
...California has a minimum wage law of $1.65 an hour for women...
...Now, the Holiday Inns are all out there at the edge of town, with the exception of one on Trumbell Avenue here...
...So we claimed that she was fired for union activity and asked the company to go into arbitration...
...If the Equal Rights Amendment were passed, and with the turnover on your farms there, growers could cut the pay of women workers 35¢ an hour...
...Nothing went in there...
...The two Detroit bunnies who sat on the national bargaining committee—one girl was married to a fellow who works at the General Motors Tech...
...Five cities elected two bunnies to sit on a national bargaining committee...
...WEINMAN: What do you do about that...
...You have restaurants and bars closing daily in the inner city, and they are all going out to the suburbs...
...San Francisco may be better organized than any other city in our industry...
...Before they merged with Litton Industry they were grossing $55 million a year, and even then it wasn't a small institution...
...The courts directed that they do so, and this bunny was reinstated with full back pay, about $4,000...
...I don't know what the reasoning was, but the California legislature didn't include men...
...But I am saying that in the Soviet Union, the reason why so many women were able to become doctors was that the government by legal decree established legislation which made it tenable for them to become doctors...
...That was the Teamsters helping...
...You're going to have the women who worked there last year...
...I then knew for sure that they were not planning to pay any wages...
...Historically, we have all of the gourmet houses organized along craft lines: chefs' and cooks' union, a bartenders' union, a dining-room employees' union...
...We are very interested in the theater, not only because of its cultural contribution, but I, for instance, am on the board of directors of the Detroit City Theater because I have a feeling that if you want to get people out of the house, you know, and away from the boob tube, they are going to wind up either having something to eat or going to the theater and then to eat...
...WEINMAN: Is the model that you are talking about present anywhere in the trade union movement...
...But about that, in our industry, an interesting thing has happened...
...Bunny Jo, naively and without telling the union, agrees to the appointment of a committee of three of her peers who immediately agree with the boss that Jo had lost her bunny image...
...On top of that I think there are real injustices in the unions, though they're blown up out of proportion...
...as far as bunnies are concerned, they are supposed to be covered by a national agreement, presumably because of the interchange from one city to another...
...It's not because they are franchised chain restaurants, but because, you should pardon the expression, these are "hippie tearooms...
...For instance, you have the Nixon administration laying responsibility for unemployment among black building tradesmen on the alleged racism of the building trade unions...
...End of interview...
...WOLFGANG: Our union, about four years ago, was reaching the point where the majority was black...
...And do you know, they figured if they asked these women to wear white gloves, that the women would quit, because it was so ridiculous...
...One part of the agreement stipulated that the employer could not arbitrarily fire someone for loss of the bunny image, but the bunny could name a committee of three of her peers to adjudicate...
...The television cameras arrived and newscasters wondered how we knew Playboy wouldn't pay wages...
...I recall long before we had an FEPC in this state, many people thought that there was something "high-class" about a black waiter rather than a waitress working a banquet...
...I simply had to find out what and whether they were going to pay anybody...
...Her hair was flowing, she had a guitar under her arm, the whole bit...
...She went down and applied for a job...
...Now they have merged with Litton...
...But then she gave me a real broad smile and added, "but I am not going to look for a job teaching...
...also the top cooks usually are males...
...And everyone thought this was going to be a ball, that they were going to have some real fun...
...No one else has made that kind of money...
...Possibly it would help them, although in employment it only affects public employees...
...ROSENBERG: Why not...
...So we are finding it difficult to give young people enough reasons to join the union...
...The other is that one of the real strengths we had in organizing— at least I speak of Detroit and my own experience— has been the cooperation of the Teamsters, for instance...
...The blacks and whites who are building tradesmen would all be working if the Nixon administration met the needs of housing in this country...
...All of them are outside the inner city, and the black maids just haven't got the transportation to get out there...
...ROSENBERG: Would the Equal Rights Amendment benefit some women...
...This is a new phenomenon...
...But this is a recognition of the role of the mother, and, incidentally, special protective legislation that would be outlawed with an Equal Rights Amendment...
...Well, between the war position and the racism, there isn't too much to attract young people to the unions...
...That's commendable, I mean it's a vested interest that they have in the job...
...Now, along come the unions with their pre-conceived ideas...
...For the next five Saturday nights, they were busy on return invitations...
...And she was hired...
...OK, that's what the customer will be giving me, but what will you be giving me...
...It is the one industry that gives married women an opportunity just to work from eleven in the morning to two in the afternoon...
Vol. 19 • January 1972 • No. 1
