Gender and the Impact of Deindusrialization on West Virginia\u27s Glass Industry: Fostoria Glass, 1948-1968

This paper explores the impact of post-World War II deindustrialization on workers in West Virginia’s glass industry with particular attention given to how industrial decline affected the women at Fostoria Glass in Moundsville, West Virginia. Since the 1930s, the American glassware industry had been experiencing a general decline that was temporarily halted by World War II. After the war, production of glassware at hand plants, which included Fostoria, dropped from 7.1 million dozens in 1946 to 2.5 million dozens in 1960. Declining sales forced Fostoria to reduce the number of furnaces it operated from a high of five during the war to only three furnaces by 1955. Attrition reduced the factory’s workforce only slightly, and as a result plant management reduced the number of work hours given to employees. From 1948 to 1958, the average number of work hours per employee dropped by twenty percent. By the mid-1960s, many union women in the United States were charging employers with sex discrimination in the wake of Title VII’s passage, but women at Fostoria were not. Instead, they were fighting management over issues related to industrial decline. As work hours were divided among employees, it became increasingly common for workers to receive fewer than forty hours per week. Consequently, in attempts to hold onto as many work hours as possible, women fought management over proper administration of seniority and division of work