“For Six Nights and Five Days We Never Left That Line for More than Five Minutes:” Cynthia Long Recalls Applying for an Electrician Apprenticeship

The women’s movement of the 1970’s sent shockwaves into every recess of American life. Women organized to seek enforcement of the ban on sex discrimination included in the 1964 Civil Rights Act, demanded equal pay at work, and sought access to non-traditional jobs, from which women had long been barred. After becoming dissatisfied with the low pay and lack of opportunities in traditional women’s office jobs, Cynthia Long overcame the opposition of the union and male workers to seek training as a construction electrician. In 1978, she was one of the first women to gain access to a union apprenticeship program in New York City, where she continued to face opposition and harassment from male supervisors and co-workers.

BERNHARDT: So how did you get into the construction industry?

LONG: Oh that was a long time in coming, really, because I had worked in offices. I had done those traditional female roles. And I didn’t like them, and my analysis of them was that they were very low paying. For all the garbage that you have to put up with, its extremely low-paying, and any money that you did make was basically turned back into your job, because you’d be spending your money to buy clothing to look attractive for the office. So you never ended up getting ahead. That was one point that I didn’t like. And also because it seemed that many jobs that I felt capable of doing, they would eliminate me because I didn’t have a college degree. I started to think about things — even people who live in $100,000 homes still need an electrician to come in and fix it if something goes wrong, or if they need re-wiring or whatever.

I by chance heard of All-Craft Foundation, which is located on St. Marks Place. I attended that, and I received a CETA stipend for about a month. After that training, or exposure really, to four areas, electrical work, plumbing, carpentry, and cabinet making, I pursued it further. I was told of another training program, again CETA-funded, through the New York Department of Labor, which was training women in non-traditional work. And the two choices were air-conditioning and refrigeration, or automotive mechanics. I selected air-conditioning and refrigeration. I attended a nine-month training program at Apex Technical School and completed that program.

And I was informed that the electrician’s union was opening up in June of that year — that was 1978. And that notice came to me from Mary Garvin, who was then trying to get together funding for the Women-in-Apprenticeship Project. So she organized us women that she had known who were interested in electrical work and we organized a sleep-out. We went out there on a Wednesday night, and slept on the streets of Flushing, outside the Joint Industry Board, for I believe, six nights and five days. And we never left that line for more than five minutes at a time, because if you left the line, and they did a spot check, you had to get back in five minutes or they would cross your name off and you would have to go to the end of the line. And it was real important that since most of the applicants out there were men, that the women stay together in an area, rather than being isolated. Being isolated, just made you such an easy target. So we were on that line, and this was just to get the application. This wasn’t even the application process yet.

BERNHARDT: Can you tell what that experience was like?

LONG: Most of the electricians would say to us, “You don’t belong. You shouldn’t do this. This is hard work.” And things like that, “This is men’s work.” And so we would have to respond to that — try to calm them down a little, but also get our point across. Because it certainly wouldn’t do for us to escalate into a screaming, yelling argument with this individual, especially if you got accepted. This may very well be an individual you might have to work with later on. So whenever they said, “Well it’s really terribly heavy work.” We would say, “I don’t think that it would be that much heavier than carrying a sleepy five or seven-year old child, or carrying wet laundry, or carrying two full bags of groceries up a six floor walk-up. We have done these things, and we don’t think that it would be that much heavier. And if it were, I assume that men ask each other to help each other. So we would do the same. If it’s that much heavier, we would ask for assistance. We are not here to prove that we’re super, we’re here to get the job done. That’s what we’re interested in.” And just about any kind of attack that they had, or reservations that they had, since we had encountered enough of these, we had some answers ready for them. And some of the guys, after they heard our responses, would say, “Yeah, I hope you make it. Good luck to you.” So we felt like we made at least one friend.

And then once we had the application, fill it in and have it filed. And Women-In-Apprenticeship Project assisted in that. They sent our applications in certified, return receipt requested. This was to make sure that our applications would not accidentally get lost. This was a real concern of ours, because this was probably one of the first times women had applied. I later learned that at other times women had applied, been accepted into the apprenticeship program, but never started work. So in fact, Melinda Hernandez and myself are the first two women accepted and started work in the apprenticeship program. And that was August 1978

I’m very proud of the fact that I’m a construction electrician in a very strong union, that’s known to be progressive as far as benefits, wages, and hours and concerned about the working conditions of their workers. So I’m real pleased. I take a great deal of pride and pleasure in this. I feel it’s a real accomplishment and I really look forward to having that "A" card in my pocket and being a journeyperson.

Source: Interviewed by Debra Bernhardt, 10/19/80
Courtesy of the Wagner Labor Archives