Women Strikers Occupy Chain Stores, Win Big: The 1937 Woolworths Sit-Down

Top Reviews Most recent Top Reviews. There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later. It tells the story of the Woolworth strike, led by mostly young, unorganized women.

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This story is so darn inspiring it should be made into a movie - Penny Marshall, where are you? Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers. Learn more about Amazon Giveaway. The Woolworth's Sit-Down. Set up a giveaway. There's a problem loading this menu right now.

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Shopbop Designer Fashion Brands. Withoutabox Submit to Film Festivals. Nobody seemed to care. There were sit-down strikes at retail stores in Detroit, St. She sums it up this way: Few would argue that these conditions exist today for the labor movement. Many are hoping that low-wage Walmart and fast food workers will become the example like the Flint workers.

But we are certainly not there yet. Sort of a like a fairy tale where everybody lives happily ever after, but only for a little while. One has only to look at the nightmare for working class people that Detroit is today to understand that a victory is never final—at least not while capital rules. Ironically, Woolworth lunch counters would become the scene of yet another triumphant fight involving sit-ins in —this time by black folks and their allies, demanding the right to eat at them.

That fight was won, or so the received wisdom goes. But look again at Detroit, today over 80 percent black, and that civil rights victory seems a lot less than what it is cracked up to be, even with a black president in the White House. Workers and exploited people everywhere fight back.

That happens whether unions, activists, and politicos organize it or not. Rebellion is a fact of life. But to make rebellion into victory, and to maintain that victory, takes organization, plus vision and daring. And that means a lot more than Facebook postings, Twitter feeds, press releases, and the assorted media hype. The Woolworth strikers fought hard and well. Their audacity and courage can be an inspiration to us all, especially to low-wage workers. But the lessons of the failure to hold on to that victory need to be learned also.

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His website is www. Incidentally, a few days ago there was a widely circulated video "flashmob" tribute to Nelson Mandela that was a choral sing by employees at an upscale grocery store in South Africa -- in the final credits you gather that this was underwritten and probably stage managed, judging by the high production values, multiple camera angles, etc.

I guess the company goes on overseas. I suppose it's good this corporation feels a need to fund a tribute to Mandela, but it jolts me to see flashmobs so often sponsored by banks and other corporations when they are billed as participant organized Hey, Ken, that girdle-fitting was a fine art, don't scoff! I remember an entire article in my hometown paper, also in the s, about the lost art of bra-fitting. Ladies, you are doing it all wrong.

Indeed, Woolworth's was the "Wal-Mart of its day. That was the minimum wage and the going rate for kids like me. I swept up, unloaded cartons and put price tags on merchandise. And got to take breaks with the high school girls who worked at the record counter, the fish aquarium, and some of the registers.

I also met the many middle-aged women, some of them divorced single wage-earners, who were "department managers" and "assistant department managers. I assumed these grown-ups made a living wage, not the money I was spending on pin-ball machines and drive-in movies.

It seemed surprising and unfair. I paid attention to this question.

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Woolworth's had an early version of calling workers "associates" or something like that and giving them titles as team-mates, managers, and all that crap. The employee newsletter featuring "Wooly," a cartoon character filled with the wisdom of partnership would announce that the Girdle Department Manager would be going over to a new store in Anaheim to help train the girdle lady there. Joy to the world! The experience made me more aware as a young person what people actually make in wages.

That the Wal-Mart of the day could pay so little. That the minimum wage is not just for kids. By the s, workers didn't wear "workers' clothes", but blended in. In civics class I learned we are all in the middle class. Wage rates were to be kept secret.