Women have always been vital leaders in the global labor movement. Oregon has its own history of fierce women organizers and labor allies, as chronicled in Dr. Laurie Mercier’s article for the Oregon Historical Quarterly, “Breadwinning, Equity, and Solidarity: Labor Feminism in Oregon, 1945–1970.”
From Mercier’s research, here are five female labor leaders from Oregon’s history that you should know:
Gertrude Sweet
Gertrude Sweet was a secretary for the Oregon State Federation of Labor during the 1940s and a Laundry Workers’ union member. Sweet played an active role in pushing the labor federation to expand leadership opportunities for women and also helped lead a campaign to extend her union’s membership across the state.
Maurine Brown Neuberger
In 1950, Oregonians elected former teacher and union member Maurine Brown Neuberger to the State House of Representatives, later electing her to the U.S. Senate. Neuberger was a consistent champion of working women’s issues, including consumer protection, child care for working mothers, and an equal pay act.
Edith Starrett Green
In 1954, Edith Starrett Green defeated Tom McCall for Oregon’s Third Congressional seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Green focused her policy primarily on increased funding for education and equal rights, including championing the 1963 Equal Pay Act and the Title IX amendment in 1972, prohibiting federally funded colleges and universities from discriminating against women.
Diana Richards
Working at the Griffith Rubber Mills in Portland in 1969, Diana Richards filed Oregon’s first sex-discrimination case against the mills based on their refusal to promote her to press operator. Richards won her case, also leading the state to change its protective legislation, which prohibited women from lifting objects heavier than thirty pounds.
Nellie Fox-Edwards
As a member of the Retail Clerks Local 1257 and the only woman on the Oregon AFL-CIO’s board in the late 1960s, Nellie Fox-Edwards rooted out sexism within Oregon’s labor scene, sitting on the state’s Committee on Sex Discrimination in Employment and pushing for reform within the AFL-CIO itself. Fox-Edwards organized an annual luncheon during the national convention to address women’s issues, later founding the Oregon Chapter of the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW).
Today, Oregon is packed full of women labor leaders at every level of union activity and in every industry. We’re proud to be the home state of the national AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, an uncompromising leader in America’s labor movement.
Out of the legacy of these Oregon women and labor leaders, the Oregon AFL-CIO continues to fight to ensure women in the workers’ rights movement – including women of color; women of all religious faiths, industries, political affiliations, economic backgrounds, and abilities; queer women; and women of different immigration statuses – have the right to self-determination in their workplace and communities.
The state federation supports the Oregon Women Labor Leaders (OWLL), aimed at upholding these values and liberating women from historical and structural barriers that have actively excluded them from leadership in the labor movement.
Read more about these Oregon labor leaders and feminism within Oregon’s labor movement in Mercier’s article here. Reading this article is free through the Multnomah County Library’s JSTOR subscription.
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