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1943 – 1982
The majority of 1943: the documented female share of Mishawaka's industrial workforce stands at its fullest in one figure. In 1943, at the wartime peak — 9,446 employed at Ball Band in De Kever's count, rounded on the plant's marker to nearly 10,000 — women were more than half the labor force of the Mishawaka Woolen & Rubber Company. They worked the rotations the plant ran, among them the swing rotation the workforce called the "victory shift." The plant system itself — the rubber and woolen mills, the departments, the product lines — stands in this build's Industrial Revolution and Ball Band sections; what is recorded here is the share: for the war years, the typical Ball Band worker was a woman, and that is the record's statement, not an inference from photographs.
Where the women stood in the plant: the same record that gives the majority gives its concentration. When the company announced on 22 March 1968 that footwear production would be transferred to Naugatuck, Connecticut, and Woonsocket, Rhode Island, over a two-year phase-out, footwear employed about 42 percent of the workforce — 1,364 people, 562 in one count and 802 in the other as the build's Ball Band section carries the split. Within that department the sexes were not evenly spread: about 59 percent of the plant's women worked in footwear, against about 30 percent of its men. The women's majority of 1943 was thus concentrated, a generation later, in the one line of work the company was sending east. In November and December 1969 the company mailed form letters to 260 laid-off women declaring their layoffs permanent, which cut off the supplemental unemployment benefits that depended on the layoffs being temporary.
Alta Chrapliwy and the case: Alta Chrapliwy had been hired in 1959 and was laid off in August 1969. On 13 January 1970 she and seven fellow workers filed charges with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in Chicago; on 28 November 1972 they sued — Chrapliwy v. Uniroyal, Inc., the plant's new owner, and Local 65, the union. The case ran a decade in the federal court for the Northern District of Indiana. In 1973 Judge Beamer, on partial summary judgment, held that the layoffs had been conducted on a sex-segregated basis and that the company's starting pay rates had discriminated through 1970. In 1981 Judge Grant's settlement decree closed it: 526 women; 4,758,000 dollars in cash and approximately as much again in pension benefits; 296 women reinstated at full seniority; and the plant's employment system reformed. The case is reported at 458 F. Supp. 252 (N.D. Ind. 1977) and 509 F. Supp. 442 (N.D. Ind. 1981), with the fee ruling at 670 F.2d 760 (7th Cir. 1982). The South Bend Tribune, looking back in 2000, called it a landmark sex discrimination case. It is the largest legal act in this city's women's record, and it was brought not by an organization but by eight laid-off footwear workers, of whom the record names one.
Sources:
- De Kever, commissioned history of Mishawaka, and the Ball Band section of this build — the 1943 peak of 9,446 and the marker's "nearly 10,000"; women more than half the 1943 labor force; the victory shift; the transfer announcement of 22 March 1968 and the two-year phase-out; footwear at about 42 percent of the workforce, 1,364 employees; 59 percent of the plant's women in footwear against 30 percent of its men; the November–December 1969 form letters to 260 laid-off women.
- Chrapliwy v. Uniroyal, Inc., 458 F. Supp. 252 (N.D. Ind. 1977); 509 F. Supp. 442 (N.D. Ind. 1981); 670 F.2d 760 (7th Cir. 1982) — the EEOC charges of 13 January 1970, the suit of 28 November 1972, Judge Beamer's 1973 partial summary judgment, and Judge Grant's 1981 decree: 526 women, 4,758,000 dollars, approximately as much again in pension benefits, 296 reinstated at full seniority.
- South Bend Tribune, retrospective of 2000 — the case as a "landmark sex discrimination case."