Even in our supposedly more enlightened times, when people hear the word ‘labor,’ they are likely to conjure up a predictable set of mental images: Burly white guys in hard hats. Nevermind that the labor movement’s momentum in recent years has been almost entirely due to the organizing efforts of women and people of color in lower-paid service industries. As Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert’s new documentary, “9to5: The Story of a Movement“, explains, that was even more true in the 1970s. Even though millions of women were flooding into the workforce, they were still mostly invisible in terms of recognition or representation. “9to5” tells the story of the women in Boston who changed that, and also got Dolly Parton to write one of the catchiest pop anthems of all time just as a bonus.
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Although those aforementioned male construction workers were expected to have union protection in the early 1970s, the women who by then made up the majority of corporate America’s clerical ranks, were barely even considered workers. As many of the activists Bognar and Reichert interview point out, at the time secretaries and other female office workers were barely visible. Badly paid, endlessly harassed, and forever passed over, they were a quiet revolution waiting to happen. By the time that women like Ellen Cassedy and Karen Nussbaum started the 9to5 movement in Boston in 1972, the nascent women’s labor movement was perfectly timed to intersect with the mainstreaming of feminism.
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At times, “9to5” feels like a reunion of old friends, as veterans of the movement talk with wide-eyed excitement about the heady challenges of those early years. They still carry that flush of optimism and surprise they first felt while watching a broad intersection of women office workers come out of the woodwork to picket, organize, and demand their rights. Footage inserted in between the interview segments and not always imaginative pop-culture clips (“Mad Men” and “Mary Tyler Moore” in particular) bears them out: Amongst the excited young veteran protest marchers were many more conservative-looking women who would not have been caught dead at a feminist rally but were sick and tired of fetching coffee for the men in their offices. Because of the mixed nature of their membership—something that became more pronounced later in the decade when the movement spread across the country—9to5 adopted a variety of tactics. Instead of sticking with the usual playbook of marches and demonstrations that might have turned off women not familiar with the political activist playbook, 9to5 tried more playful “actions” that were less threatening and upended expectations.
9to5’s surprise attack on male corporate privilege could have been foreseen by a culture that viewed female employees as workers. But, in the words of one labor historian, their labor insurrection was “like the wallpaper came alive.” Addressing that culture of quiet appears to be what drew Jane Fonda to the movement. Fonda shows up in the movie to describe the interviews she conducted with 9to5 women in Cleveland when she was doing research for the 1980 office sexism satire “9 to 5.” (The movie’s main storyline about women who kidnap their sexist boss, came in part from interviews with women workers about the revenge fantasies they indulged in about their male bosses.)
Once it crosses into the 1980s, the movie loses some of its steam, as did the movement. The times were not exactly friendly towards unions, as the clips of President Reagan firing the striking air traffic controllers helps explain. The movie makes clear that at the very least, 9to5 was instrumental in making at least some of the country understand the valid concerns of female office employees and also appreciate that they were not just pre-wives killing time in a clerical gig while waiting to get married.
As documentary historians, Bognar and Reichert tell the story with great sympathy while placing it in the context of wider social changes. However, they are not able to sustain a consistent level of energy throughout, sticking to a somewhat monochromatic tone. This is somewhat surprising, given the dramatic urgency of their last work, ‘American Factory’. But one thing both movies share in common is the message that when it comes to the ongoing campaign for dignity and equality in the American workplace, there are no easy victories, and no rights obtained without a fight. [B]
