Fair Labor Practices Improve

With access to both highway and rail transportation, national companies were attracted to McLean County. Local hiring practices began to change.

Featuring:

Ruth Waddell, (1923 – 2021), General Electric assembly line

Job opportunities for African Americans, like Ruth Waddell (1923-2021), were generally limited to domestic work until WWII, when factories doing defense work were required to practice equal opportunity employment. Ruth worked in a segregated part of the Williams Oil-O-Matic plant for 26 months during the war and liked it, but was dismissed after the war and had to return to lesser paying domestic work.

When General Electric (GE) located in Bloomington in 1954, Ruth was determined to get an assembly line position. That determination helped to change hiring practices in Bloomington factories.

Picture of Ruth Waddell, an African American Woman, sitting at a desk surrounded by electronic components — At her assembly line station, Ruth soldered wires to the components as they came to her on the line, then placed them back on the line to go to the next station, repeating the process over and over each work day.

Ruth applied at GE and was hired, but was never called to work. She waited and watched as many white women were hired and put to work.

What would you do if you were accepted for a job, but did not get called to work?

Frustrated and angry, Ruth decided to go to the GE personnel office every day, demanding . . .

“Either you put me to work, or I’ll sit here until you do.”

Ruth eventually confronted the plant’s manager, who had chosen to avoid her. Two weeks later they put her to work on the assembly line making motor switches, relays, push buttons, and limited switches.

Within weeks of her employment Ruth was recruiting other workers to join the machinists’ union. She visited employees living in Arrowsmith, Clinton, and Gridley, often as the only African American or woman involved in the effort. She and other company members successfully organized that December.

Ruth retired in 1989 after 35 years on the GE assembly line.

At the height of its success in the 1970s, GE employed 1,400 workers. The plant reduced its workforce beginning in the 1980s, and closed in 2011.

Ruth and her coworkers used chairs, like this one, at their assembly line stations.

Donated by: General Electric
2010.63

Donated by: General Electric
99.43.16, 23, 4

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