A Heart of Glass: Women, Work Culture, and Resistance In Huntington, West Virginia’s Glass Industry

This study analyzes women in Huntington, West Virginia’s glass industry through an examination of interviews with retired selectors of the Owens-Illinois plant that operated on Huntington’s west end for nearly eighty years. It explores the particular ways in which those selectors formed their own work culture and a collective identity of themselves as a group in the years prior to their being organized into the Glass Bottle Blowers Association Local 256. This project argues that the work culture of selecting acted as an “informal organization” through which selectors at Owens-Illinois could act together and separately to resist gender discrimination in the plant. Furthermore, it demonstrates how work culture was not replaced by Local 256 as the primary organizational force for workplace resistance; instead, work culture remained a key factor for selectors at Owens-Illinois, and, in fact, enhanced selectors’ experiences within the union