In an era where the automobile continued to boom in production, the manufacturing process and the assembly line became dreaded to its workers of all backgrounds. In “The Assembly Line,” Davie E. Nye mentions that “to workers, intellectuals, and many young people, mass production society appeared to lack individuality, spontaneity, and creativity.” What is interesting is that even after facing the same hardships in the workplace, the unions formed in response did not at first reflect the “union” of the salient identities.
The book mentions that “younger workers (many of them unskilled African American or immigrants) were under-represented in the union’s leadership,” which were older white men. This under-representation was not convenient to the African American workers because management was also dominated by white men. “It called on African Americans to create their own separate union.”
Women also faced challenges in the manufacturing workplace. “In Britain, women workers struck Ford’s Dagenham plant outside London, demanding equal pay for equal work.”
Although the term intersectionality would not be coined for a couple of decades to come since the 70s, it was practiced with the formation of unions as various groups of various identities found common grounds on oppression and victimization.
Link to article:
Nye, David E.. America's Assembly Line, MIT Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3339576.