We saw Rosie the Riveter's bulging bicep but never her bulging belly.
Once pregnant, the first women to enter "the trades" knew they'd better beat a fast exit as soon as they started to "show." The same once held for females who worked traditional women's jobs as teachers, nurses and bank tellers. I remember my own fifth-grade teacher's mysterious disappearance and the whispers about where she went.
The progress we've forged since those hideaway days is one spark for the celebration today at the 26th Annual Women in Trades Fair (free from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Seattle Center's Fisher Pavilion). It's a networking, job-seeking, success-flexing event and several of those original "Rosies" will attend.
One measure of progress is that newspapers no longer write those cute "first woman" stories about women out on road crews, up on telephone poles and down in auto bays.
But we also rarely write about the problems still plaguing people like Burlington Northern-Santa Fe freight train conductor Jeanette Wallis, now eight months pregnant and several weeks out of money, options and luck.
For months, as she grew bigger and dangerously clumsy on the job, Wallis sought to switch to "light duty" in order to work as long as possible and save her money and her Family and Medical Leave Act benefits to use closer to the birth of her baby girl.
"Light duty" can be touchy and elusive. But it is often the only way a blue-collar woman who must lift, climb or dig can hold on to crucial checks and insurance coverage.
With one week of accrued vacation pay, no paid sick leave and no "retirement fund" benefits available to her until July (well after her due date), Wallis was feeling squeezed by more than her jeans.
She called the Railroad Retirement Board, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, the BNSF Employee Assistance Program, her supervisor, human resources and, finally, BNSF chief executive officer Matt Rose.
I called him too, just to get the gist of current policy on light duty for pregnant employees. But he never called back.
Next I was told to call or e-mail Dick Russack, vice president of corporate communications. But he never called or e-mailed back.
So I called Wallis' supervisor, who said regional spokesman Gus Melonas would have to respond. And he did, by reading me a statement from the manual: "BNSF complies with the FMLA in regard to pregnancy-related issues," he intoned. Beyond that, the company complies with union-negotiated leave benefits. As for light duty, those jobs are for folks injured on the job who can be expected to return immediately to work.
And that can be the prickly part, according to one of "the trades'" pioneers -- Nettie Doakes, the first African American line worker in the country who now runs apprenticeship programs for Seattle City Light.
"Only one 'species' gets pregnant," she laughed. But, if light-duty work is given on the basis of pregnancy instead of illness or injury, male employees can claim discrimination.
Even so, City Light seems to find ways to match "work processes" with physical capabilities often enough that the women in Doakes' program can stay on the job well beyond their sixth month of gestation. Well beyond the point where, at 29 weeks, Wallis nearly fell from a locomotive and reluctantly took herself out of the game.
Karen DeVenaro, who's an apprenticeship coordinator at City Light, is eight months along now, herself. And she said that, while desk jobs aren't always available for all who need them, pregnant laborers, utility construction workers and vault diggers there usually find other meaningful work long enough to avoid Wallis' pregnancy predicament.
And, with one month to go, that predicament is pretty dire.
"Just work as long as you're able. And good luck," is what Wallis heard over and over as she pursued and failed to find light-duty jobs.
"Well, that's the nature of the job," some told her. "Maybe your baby will be born premature (so she could come back to work sooner)," one male co-worker cheerfully said.
Finally, desperate, Wallis asked the Department of Health and Human Services for help. No dice. She had too much money in her bank account -- although it was just 300 bucks over the cost of her rent.
She was given a long list of "faith-based" charities. But they said that if DSHS couldn't help, neither could they. Unless, that is, she wanted to give the baby up for adoption.
Faced with a similar dilemma back in 1989, fellow BNSF conductor Janet Gryson (now with Amtrak) filed and won a lawsuit for light duty with the help of the ACLU.
The victory came long after it did Gryson any good, personally. But the suit did change railroad policy, although it didn't last. With the Burlington Northern merger with Santa Fe came new limitations on access to lighter jobs.
"Do they want to be mommies or railroad workers?" was one memorable sound bite at the time of Gryson's suit.
The answer is that today's Rosies want to be both. Maybe one of the workshops on empowerment at today's Trades Fair will help them find a way.
