Child of the Sit-Downs_ The Revolutionary Life of Genora Dollinger - Carlton Jackson [44]
One of the first women ever to be hired by Budd Wheel, Genora tested eighteen-inch shells manufactured for the war effort. Her back-breaking job, testing for leakage by forcing a white, milky fluid into the shell to see if any of it oozed out, required that the heavy shells be moved around and sometimes lifted. She went home, a one-room attic apartment that was a “dirty old firetrap,” every night with an agonizing backache and blistered hands.13 Years later she told an interviewer about how she had been treated at Budd by all the male workers: “Those men were so ‘gracious’ that when women came into the plant they [the men] were resentful that they took all the hard jobs and left them to women and they picked their other jobs. And I had a job that was so hard that I just came home every night and didn’t know if I could go back the next day.”14 Sol explained the men’s behavior this way: “The men thought the women should be home tending the kids and mending the socks. A decent job meant a prolonged life in the industrial plants. Why should women get decent jobs? They would soon be turned out, thought the Budd men, to make way for returning veterans.”15
Genora had to perform satisfactorily on a ninety-day probation period before her employment at Budd could become permanent. She got through the probation period and then some, so she was surprised when she received a pink slip. She had, the personnel officer told her, falsified her application for employment because she used the name Johnson. Michigan, she and Sol believed, would not recognize their marriage of September 1941 for things like health insurance and unemployment benefits, so they deemed it in their best interests to keep her first married name of Johnson. Furthermore, Budd officials had now heard of her activities in Flint dating from 1937 to the present. Sol explained the dismissal: “Detroit plants were hiring the lame, the halt and the blind, but Budd had no hesitation in getting rid of a union strike leader.” The incident caused Genora to comment, “Well, it looks like I have gone as far as I can with the name of Johnson. Now it is time to use the name of Dollinger.”16 And so they legalized their marriage in December 1942, before a Detroit justice of the peace.
Assuming her rightful name of Dollinger made it easier for Genora to get a job than if she had retained Johnson. The name Genora Dollinger was not yet as recognizable as Genora Johnson; it would take a few months for “Dollinger” to be instantly recognized in labor and management circles: in the one instance, as a heroine, in the other, as a notorious troublemaker. She applied for employment at Briggs Manufacturing, which, before the war, employed 18,000 workers who made bodies for the Chrysler Motor Company and now mostly manufactured B-27 aircraft for the government.17 The employment manager asked her why she wanted to work at Briggs. He was so impressed with her “dress, diction, personality, and good looks” that he wanted to hire her as a receptionist in the front office.18 She responded, “Because of the war effort, you know. Everybody’s supposed to do their part.”19 She did not mention her ambition to participate in the activities of Local UAW 212, which, under the leadership of Emil Mazey, was the most militant local in Detroit, so militant that its members were frequently referred to in union circles as the “Dead-End Kids.”20
Refusing to accept the receptionist job because she thought it patronizing, she worked at a drill press at Briggs; it was not as strenuous as working with the shells at Budd but hard enough. She told her manager that she knew how to operate lathes and would like a transfer. He assigned