Seattle City Light career
In 1974, Durham was recruited and accepted into the all-women Electrical Trades Trainee training program, an affirmative action program designed by Clara Fraser at Seattle City Light to integrate women into male-dominated trades jobs. Durham was the youngest trainee, having recently turned 21 when the program began. Two other members of Radical Women, Megan Cornish and Teri Bach, were also accepted into the program. The program was cancelled after the first week, however, due to souring relations between Fraser and management. After a year, eight of the ten female trainees were laid off, officially due to budget cuts but widely seen as an act of retaliation. Fraser was also terminated within months. Durham joined in a lawsuit along with seven of the other female trainees against Seattle City Light alleging discrimination on the basis of sex. In 1976, a court ruled in the women's favor, ordering City Light to reinstate them and make them eligible for apprenticeships. [4]
Durham returned to City Light and was accepted as a lineworker apprentice following the court ruling. Management, angered by the order, intentionally placed Durham, along with the other two women apprentices, on teams that were known to be the most hostile. [5] Durham's team, in particular, had members who were especially hostile and was supervised by a man known by everyone to be a sexist, racist, and heavy drinker. [6] In addition, many male electricians who Durham worked with had become demoralized after a failed strike in 1975 and were angered by the women trainees' court victory. [7] Durham faced persistent harassment and unfair performance evaluations in which she was given worse ratings than her male colleagues that accused her of not possessing adequate strength for the job. On July 1, 1977, the day after she was given a particularly bad evaluation, Durham fell 28 feet from a pole and broke her back. [8] Durham was hospitalized for 13 weeks, during which learned that her union, IBEW local 77, had issued an accident report claiming the accident was her own fault because she refused to listen to the advice of her male coworkers to get out of the trade. [9] From her hospital bed, she organized with other members of her union to rewrite her accident report, to no avail. Despite the obvious and pervasive sexism she faced, Durham chose to not sue the union, as she did not want to sow further division among City Light workers. [9]
After her recovery, City Light management offered Durham a secretary job, and she did not get to return to utility work for another three years. [8] She believes that the decision to allow her to become a power station operator was motivated by the political pressure placed on City Light from Clara Fraser's lawsuit. [10] Durham became junior power station operator at City Light and eventually rose to the rank of senior operator. In 1983, Durham worked with other women and pro-affirmative action men to establish the Employee Committee for Equal Rights at City Light (CERCL) to pressure the City of Seattle Human Rights Department to investigate instances of discrimination. She also helped to form and co-chair the Ad Hoc Committee for Fair Employment and Open Housing. [3]
Durham has stated that over time, Local 77 became more friendly to her and other women electrical workers, and many rank-and-file members came to respect the members of Radical Women for being hardworking, committed, and principled. [11] In 1991 Durham was jointly awarded the Advocate of the Year award, along with Megan Cornish, by Washington Women in the Trades. She retired in 2004. [2]
