Victory And Beyond Women’s Work World War Ii Brought Women To The Forefront Of The American Labor Force

When she was good enough, when nobody else wanted the job, Verona Connors climbed into an overhead ingot crane at the Trentwood aluminum works.

It was traditionally a man’s job but times had changed almost overnight. To win World War II and keep the economy booming, 1940s America needed women in heavy industry.

Production soldiers, they were sometimes called.

One woman working in the aircraft industry was quoted in a news magazine as saying that driving rivets “is a kind of needlepoint in metals.”

A direct quote or a product of creative editing? Either way, it added to the image of Rosie the Riveter - the feminine symbol of an adaptable American work force whistling while she worked.

The jobs that real-life Rosie did in the war years were less than glamorous.

Connors was working for 55 cents an hour for a dress manufacturing company in Spokane when the warcreated shortage of manpower opened the door to industry and higher wages.

“When I found something better - a chance to go to work at the magnesium plant in Mead - the lady I worked for at the dress company wouldn’t release me,” Connors said. “I cried and carried on. My husband was in the Army in Europe and I was trying to keep the home going.

“She said she needed me. I made her a deal. I said, ‘Give me a (release) slip so I can go to work at the magnesium plant and I’ll do for you in four hours - the bundling and the stamping - what I usually do in eight.’ “

Connors said she did that for a month and a half until her brother-in-law, John Connors, a Marine later killed in action on Iwo Jima, came home on leave.

“He said, ‘You’re not going to do this anymore. Tell that old lady to go to the devil,”’ Connors recalled.

So in 1942 she was on her way in a man’s world, moving from the magnesium plant to the aluminum works at Trentwood, where she started on a battery truck, a 1940s forklift.

“I was the only person who could take a loaded battery truck inside a car loaded with ingots (aluminum massed for storage and shipping),” she said. “I got so I could run a battery truck like nobody’s business.”

When a job opened as a coal crane operator - heaping coal on the furnaces that melted scrap - Connors jumped at it.

The money was better. The flip side was the grime from the coal fires.

At times she was too tired to care.

“One Fourth of July everybody was going to the lake to celebrate,” she said. “They picked me up after my shift. I didn’t have a chance to clean up - there were no showers there for the women - and I smelled like coal. How they made fun of me. I thought about going into the water, but I was too tired to dive into the lake.”

Connors graduated from the coal crane to the overhead crane - the ingot crane - and her pay went to $1.44 an hour.

“I didn’t mind it,” Connors said. “I’d get a little scared on the outside crane when I had to unload open boxcars full of scrap metal. You were up maybe two stories or more. I was scared of height, but I didn’t let it bother me. I needed the money.”

The job “was dangerous with men working below you,” she said. “You pulled out big aluminized blocks two at a time. They must have weighed 1,000 pounds apiece. The workmen below would guide you to where you’d stack them. The hooks had to be on just right. It was a job where you had to be careful.”

By then, Connors’ mother, stepfather and younger sister were living with her in the North Side home where her husband, Bill, had grown up.

Bill Conners served in Europe, supplying troops by rail.

“We worked hard, but then we were young and had a lot of energy,” Verona Connors said. “You can do things you didn’t think you could every day. I look back sometime and wonder how in God’s name did I ever do that?”

Connors, now 75, made enough money to send some to her serviceman husband.

“The Army sent us $50 or $75 a month - I can’t remember now,” she said. “I’d send it back to him. I wanted him to have some things. He could take the boys out if he wanted. I still saved money but don’t ask me how.”

Connors was happy when she was no longer needed in industry.

“I had to work. Everybody did,” she said. “I said I’d quit the day the war ended, and I didn’t stay too long afterwards.”

“The women always knew they’d get laid off,” said Sue Armitage, history professor at Washington State University. “Besides, they weren’t making bombs anymore, and for a while no planes or ships.”

In addition, agreements with labor unions guaranteed servicemen their old jobs after the war, Armitage said.

“Industry slowed down. Some women who learned welding and riveting skills that had been men’s work before the war wanted to find other jobs using those skills. That’s when the discrimination came in, because companies refused to hire them, saying we don’t hire women to do men’s work,” Armitage said.

Women were expected to return to traditional women’s work, which paid less, Armitage said.

“It wasn’t until the buildup for the Cold War in the late ‘40s and the Korean War that women began working in auto plants and heavy industry,” Armitage said. “By then, a lot of them were using the skills they’d learned during the war.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 3 Photos (1 Color)