Child of the Sit-Downs_ The Revolutionary Life of Genora Dollinger - Carlton Jackson [101]
Genora Dollinger had every right to settle down, enjoy her grandchildren (Kenneth Vincent Dollinger joined Danielle Genora in Ron’s growing family), and be feted and honored after so many years of struggle. Nothing of the sort even crossed her mind. As the new decade opened and she reached her seventy-seventh birthday, she was more determined than ever to make a difference in the world.
The first opportunity came from the heart of Genora’s life and experiences. Dan La Botz wrote a book for Labor Notes (a labor conscious press in Detroit) titled A Troublemaker’s Handbook: How to Fight Back Where You Work—and Win, and he asked Genora to write a foreword, just up her alley. The book’s topic was the exact motif to which she had dedicated her life so many years ago. She attacked unions as they expressed themselves in 1991 rather than in 1937. Most unions acquired bloated budgets to the extent that, “if finances were the measure, the big established unions would pass muster with flying colors.” Unions had changed since “the feisty days of the 1930s. Many seem arthritic, with recurring symptoms of Alzheimer’s.” Present day (1991) union leadership had lost its will to lead and showed no imagination and certainly no boldness because they sup with employers and “forget what is fundamental to unionism—that management and labor are on opposing sides.” The odds against labor were “just as formidable” in 1991 as they had been in 1937, perhaps even more so. In 1991 women made up almost 50 percent of the workforce in the United States, yet they routinely and scandalously failed to receive equal pay for equal work. Neither the corporations nor the unions had incorporated the full interests of the workingwoman into their schemes of management. Over the years labor had become too close to the Democratic Party, and this alliance was a big reason for “thousands of factories and millions of jobs being transported to foreign shores.” Not only must this industrial flight be stopped, but also a national health care plan, adequate pensions, and child care centers for working parents were necessary for the workplace to become decent. There was a “current stagnation” in the labor movement that either “could not last much longer” or would destroy the hopes of working people once and for all.51 She hoped La Botz’s militant frame of mind would create a new labor impetus throughout the country. Such was not to be. The decline and deterioration of labor interests continued throughout the remainder of the 1990s.
As her body weakened, her mind quickened. She yielded to the spirit of the times and bought a computer; this caused her written output to increase considerably. An anthology on the labor movement came out in 1991, and Genora, two years before, had been asked by UAW Local 659 in Flint to contribute to it. She sent some articles but never heard from the editors. Her articles were not included in the book, which “perpetuated many inaccuracies” about the role of women in the 1937 strike. The anthology, she told Labor History editor Daniel Leab, exaggerated the role of the CP in the sit-downs, to the detriment of the Socialist Party, one that did make contributions, she believed, to the successful outcome of the strike.52
She got a lesson in the capricious world of publishing when she sent an article to Labor History, “Shedding Light on Some Unrecorded Pages of History.” Leab accepted the article and sent his approval to Genora in November 1993.53 In June 1994, however, he had to tell her that “my initial enthusiasm was not seconded by the editorial readers.” He meant, of course, “peer review,” which, in her case, he thought would “only be a formality.”54 He sent everything back to her, and that was that. There exist few, if any, appeals of editorial judgments. Leab did not even tell her what the outside