Abstract
We Keep Running the Line is an engaging book with both historical and contemporary relevance, and which places workers’ voices at the center of the narrative. Through interviews with workers and community members in South Arkansas and North Louisiana, Professor LaGuana Gray examines how black women came to be the primary workers in the poultry processing industry and how and why they stayed in jobs that were demanding, dangerous, and oppressive. The book relies on these women’s stories to understand their positions in poultry processing and places their experiences in the context of systems shaped by racism, sexism, and economic power. The book also recognizes ways workers have supported each other and gained power at work, with or without a traditional union. We Keep Running the Line is relevant to a range of audiences, from labor historians to union members, especially those interested in topics including organizing in the South, labor’s role in dismantling racism, race and gender in the workplace, and the future of the labor movement.
A key strength of this book is the way in which it highlights the importance of place in understanding power. Leaders in the South have long relied on the region’s reputation for disempowered workers, low wages, low union density, and tax incentives to attract new industries to the region. Power dynamics from the Old South have been present in industrial worksites. For example, dehumanizing stereotypes about black women’s ability to withstand inhumane working conditions that were once used to justify slavery have also supported the dangerous conditions and speed of work in poultry processing. Gray shows how the industry was built to rely on vulnerable workers and argues that, “The assignment of brown and black women to this particular work is rooted in the larger, structural problems of racism and sexism that sustain the employment of women of color in dangerous, dirty jobs for low pay” (p. 108).
Through the stories of poultry processing workers, we see how racism and sexism function at a systemic level to benefit those in power. Gray describes policies ranging from New Deal exclusions, to state monitoring of welfare recipients that disproportionately affected black women and writes, Thus, black women in Bernice faced the dilemma of living in a town clinging to segregation, where old job opportunities were fading and others were the domain of men, and living in a state where social provision was a much-maligned system. (p. 60)
Despite the deplorable working conditions, poultry processing work provided an alternative to domestic work or welfare and paid above minimum wage. Limited job opportunities for black women in this region of South Arkansas and North Louisiana gave plant owners tremendous control in the workplace.
For the women in this book, unions sometimes functioned as another system and another barrier to having a voice. Other times, unions were organizations for gaining power. These stories highlight the failures of service unionism and encourage us to think critically about building inclusive, relevant organizations. Gray intentionally seeks black women’s accounts of their work and relies on their knowledge and experience to understand their position in the poultry processing industry. This reliance on workers’ knowledge and experience is a foundation of the book, and it is also a recommendation for the future. As Latino workers are increasingly hired into poultry processing jobs, Gray challenges unions to do a better job being responsive to these workers’ issues and working with them to solve problems at work and beyond.