The Saber and Scroll Journal Volume 7, Issue 1, Winter 2018 | Page 26

Boilermakers Union expanded from 28,609 in 1938 to 352,000 in 1943. 27 Despite
this juxtaposition, labor unrest and racial bigotry in the workplace were a
disappointing feature of the war on the Home Front and clouded its positive
accomplishments.
Corporate welfare programs, intended to raise morale and increase
wartime production, resulted in enduring social institutions Americans take for
granted today. For example, women and minorities in industrial jobs, employer-
subsidized healthcare, and daycare for children of working mothers are enduring
legacies of all East Bay shipbuilding. With the Selective Training and Service Act
of 1940 and the subsequent draft of millions of Caucasian American males into the
armed services, the traditional labor pool for heavy industry began to shrink. As
such, women and minorities played a significant and nationally recognized role in
jobs previously denied them.
Kaiser employed the largest number of women and minorities, in shifts
running around the clock. Company statistics showed that, on average, during the
war years from 1940-1944, for every one hundred male workers Kaiser employed,
there were ninety-four female employees. 28 America recognized women working
in the war industry collectively as “Rosie the Riveter.” Recognized as shipbuilders
in the Bay Area, Rosies filled jobs in all facets of arms production in America’s
“Arsenal of Democracy.” Rosie was not a single person, but many thousands of
women of different races and very different from her portrayal by propagandists as
a white, middle-class and urban woman. In fact, many women left the rural
countryside and migrated to urban areas to take jobs in factories.
Most of these women had never worked outside of their homes and farms
or worked for wages before. Being primarily from agricultural regions in
Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma, these war migrants were mostly
African American. Shipyard records show that 80 percent of the non-white
workforce were blacks from the South. 29 Several decades before the era of civil
rights, Rosie and her male minority co-workers found themselves united against
oppression abroad but forced to deal with their country’s hypocrisy at home. In
addition to day-to-day prejudice and bigotry in the workplace, they had to deal
with unequal pay and working conditions. During the war, there were labor
strikes, sit-down work stoppages, and organized protests, some of which led to
better conditions for many workers. Nevertheless, minorities received little union
support or benefits after having been shunted off into “auxiliary” unions like the
Independent Welder, Burners and Helpers Union.
Henry Kaiser was President Roosevelt’s model of a “New Deal”
entrepreneur. Kaiser believed every worker should have access to prepaid medical
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