Anecdotage of this sort is seriously misleading, because similar anecdotage can be collected about every segment of the population. About the most serious demonstration in support of capitalist skullduggery ever held in central illinois was held by line workers at the Mitsubishi plant in Normal Illinois in support of the company's and the workers' right to engage in really vile sexual harassment of fellow workers. I give some excerpts from a news story written early in the conflict. The women finally won it -- no thanks to either the UAW local or the majority of the scabs (male and female) who made up a large proportion, perhaps a solid majority, of the workers in the plant. Incidentally, I made this point, using the word "scab," in a letter to the local paper. At that time Jan was working for the post office, in fact president of the Local, and all she got at work the following day was positive feedback. Of course both the letter and her prominence in the local might have had an intimidating effect on those who felt otherwise. I've lost the URL for this interview, and it is too long to give in full.
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ISOLATED INCIDENTS? APRIL 26, 1996 TRANSCRIPT
Complaints of sexual harrassment by women at a Mitsubishi automotive plant in Illinois have prompted an investigation by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and a number of law suits. Elizabeth Brackett of WTTW Chicago reports.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Looming over the farm fields in Central Illinois, the Mitsubishi auto plant seems oddly out of place. Forty-two hundred people work at the plant, producing close to eight hundred cars a day. It's the largest employer in the small town of Normal. But now, there are charges that what was going on inside the plant was not normal at all. Twenty-seven-year-old Sandra Rushing spent two years on a production line in the plant. She says she left in disgust in 1991.
SANDRA RUSHING, Former Mitsubishi Worker: Not only did they touch me. They used their wrenches, you know, umm, and their air guns and that was just, in the front of my mind, I knew that they were going to be doing something when I got there and will I make it through this day or, how am I going to make it?
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: What did they do with the wrenches and the air gun?
SANDRA RUSHING: In-between my legs. They'd pretend like they were extensions of themselves. That was one thing they really liked doing because we have very large wrenches there, good-sized wrenches, and they just thought that was hilarious.
[clip]
[The woman quoted next was almost certainly lying, or worked in an exceptional part of the plant]
JEANNETTE POTRZEBA: (going to work) I'm late. I'm late. I'm late.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: About 20 percent of the plant's employees are women. Jeannette Potrzeba works on the production line with 17 men. She says she's never experienced any sexual harassment.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Have any of the men ever teased or done anything that some other people might think of as sexual harassment would you say?
JEANNETTE POTRZEBA: Not to my knowledge. I mean, yeah, we all laugh and joke and try to have a good time, but I don't know if they would construe it as sexual harassment. I'm with these guys, you know, eight hours a day. I get to see them more than my family, and, uh, it's very tight-knit.
[clip]
JOHN ROWE, EEOC, Chicago District Office: There were hundreds of instances of sexual harassment, that is, harassing conduct. But that covers a whole wide spectrum of activities from graffiti on walls and on parts of cars to physical contact of an unwelcome kind. In one way or another, we do believe that the, that the individuals harmed by this conduct number in the hundreds.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Mitsubishi declined our request for an on-camera interview, but off-camera, company spokesperson Gary Shultz admitted to isolated incidents of sexual harassment but said the company had a zero tolerance policy which had been effective in deterring such behavior since the day the plant opened.
SANDRA RUSHING: They're liars, just flat out lying. I know that they've changed and have fired some people, but not that I saw. They didn't care in some areas. So long as the work was getting done, they didn't care what went on.
[The following is the scab demonstration I spoke of in introducing this interview]
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: The lawsuits triggered a strong response from Mitsubishi employees. Last Monday, 2700 workers took a three-hour bus trip to Chicago to show their support for the company.
DEMONSTRATORS: EEOC doesn't represent me. EEOC doesn't represent me.
[clip]
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Mitsubishi paid for buses, provided lunch, and a day's pay, but most insisted they were not pressured to join the rally.
JEANNETTE POTRZEBA: It was actually employees that put this all together. It had--the company supported it, of course, umm, which is great, and, uh, we're all very excited to come up.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Employees had attended an organizing meeting at the plant before the rally. Company vice president Gary Shultz told the crowd:
GARY SHULTZ: We've got to win the media by parading thousands strong in Chicago. We'll paint Chicago maroon that day.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Some employees interpreted this as pressure; others did not. Troy O'Hare felt pressure, but he stayed behind, angry over the sexual harassment he had seen in the plant.
TROY O'HARE: There was some sexual harassment that happened there and it wasn't dealt with correctly. I didn't go on the rally because I didn't want to be put in that predicament where they were saying that I stood up for them and said they're not guilty.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: O'Hare and others who didn't go had to report to work.
TROY O'HARE: There was probably 25 people in there that had stayed behind and we all had sexual harassment training while all the buses left, so I don't know if that was their idea of poking fun at us or not.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Had you had any sexual harassment training at the plant before the day of the rally?
TROY O'HARE: No.
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My wife, who worked in the Post Office for 20 years, could tell plenty of the stories that Gar alludes to. But there is simply no doubt but what the men and women (supervisory personnel) acting like assholes were fellow members of the working-class, not a separate class. You should also look up material on the horror of being declared "exempt." What that means is you get a promotion, nominally into management, but the material difference is that your pay goes down because you have to do more overtime but no longer get paid for it. Jan is hoping she can retire from State Farm (where she now works) before that "promotion" happens to her.
But none of this, Gar's suggested anecdotage, or mine, proves a damn thing about class membership. Class analysis is at the highest level of theory, and it is utterly obscurantist to haul in anecdotage or even, except very carefully, demographic statistics. And consciousness, of course, arises from practice - not from mere membership in a class.
Carrol