This Day in Labor History: June 16, 1958
By 
On June 16, 1958, the Chicago Crossing Guards Association rejected an offer from AFSCME to join the union because these women did not believe the union would fight effectively for them. This is a date that allows us to explore the fascinating history of crossing guards in postwar America and their labor militancy that did eventually lead to widespread unionization.
After World War II, with the rise of the Baby Boom, school districts began taking the issue of children crossing streets near schools seriously. So they hired people to be crossing guards. This practice started in Cleveland in 1925, but was rare elsewhere until the late 40s. Initially, these were usually men, often retired from other jobs. But this turned to women primarily, often against the will of the police, who felt that all patrolling was a male job. But ideas of women as mothers getting their kids to school safely won out. Gender roles always play a role in work cultures and almost certainly will forever. Often these were married women whose own children were among those attending the school where she worked.
Women at various schools started meeting because the police were involved in training these women (again, often against their desires) and so they would meet at these training exercises. In many cities, the police technically were the employers, though police unions were strictly gender segregated and these were civilian employees of the police departments. Naturally, these women would start talking about their working conditions, issues with catcalling male drivers (the media often sexualized these women when covering them, which did not help), issues with the cops, etc. And since these crossing guards mostly existed in northern cities and northern cities were segregated by neighborhood, women from different races patrolling their own schools would also meet at these larger training sessions and compare notes. So in cities across the country, women formed crossing guard associations that became sort of proto-unions.
The women had complaints. They had to work without proper equipment in all weather. They didn’t receive enough money or medical insurance. They had to buy their own uniforms. By 1954, crossing guards in Philadelphia, under what they called the Philadelphia Crossing Guards Association, organized enough to have a coordinated letter writing campaign to the mayor about their issues. But the city didn’t care and didn’t even respond. This just organized the women more and by the end of 1955, the police commissioner announced medical treatment for women injured on duty that was the same as actual police received. There was a slight pay increase too. Similar organizing took place in Chicago, with similar slow responses from the Richard Daley administration, but also eventual gains. And let’s be clear, this could be a dangerous job. In New York, a crossing guard was run down and killed by a car in 1957 as she saved a child’s life, which led that city to expand medical compensation to the guards.
Not surprisingly, unions began to show interest. In 1958 in Chicago, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) tried to organize the crossing guards in that city. The crossing guards association rejected it outright and in remarkable language. Said Chicago Crossing Guards Association vice president Kathryn Lisle:
“1) Our association leaders have a more natural aptitude for verbal combat 2) We have more endurance and determination than male negotiators 3) Women are much more practical than men at the bargaining table and 4) It is much harder to fool a woman.”
On the verbal combat, there’s no question. Shortly before this, a Chicago alderman named Paddy Bauler said against the women, “All you crossing guards do is stand on corners and do nothing. Or you hide in doorways and smoke cigarettes. I’m against women who smoke cigarettes.” This led CCGA president Dorothy King to shoot back, ” “Your English is poor. Your manners are repulsive. And your clothes are sloppy.” Lisle herself chipped in, telling Bauler, “Alderman, if you come near my corner, I’ll push you under a truck.” Now that’s standing up for yourself! Basically, the women did not trust AFSCME to be useful to them and that’s probably a fair point. Since public sector unions did not have collective bargaining rights yet, the CCGA felt that working with the Daley administration made more sense to them. It also did not want men leading it at all and there’s no way AFSCME was going to let women run the show.
The 1960s saw a rise in public sector unionism throughout the North, with the expansion of collective bargaining rights. For several years still, crossing guard associations rejected union advancement, but as unions grew more powerful, some joined. In 1967, the Philadelphia association merged with AFSCME Council 33, which was at the time a pretty militant union that had seen democratic upheaval based around civil rights and sanitation work, appealing to the crossing guards in way the old guard had not. AFSCME soon won the guards a big pay raise, vacation pay, paid holidays, and more benefits. That led to more crossing guard actions across the country, including a one day strike in Hartford in 1969 and the rapid unionization of the crossing guards throughout Connecticut later that year.
As a general rule though, the crossing guards avoided direct labor action and preferred to use maternalist language to work with the cities as their strategy to fight for better wages and working conditions. By the 70s and 80s though, unions such as Service Employees International Union, Laborers International Union of America, and Communication Workers of America started representing crossing guards. They became a part of the union map during the period of growing labor power in the cities.
More broadly. we can and should look at these crossing guards as an important moment in the rise of labor feminism, with women taking on new forms of work and making it their own, making their own demands on the cities and using their own strategies to achieve their aims. This could change unions as well–AFSCME generally became much better about pay equity issues once it had crossing guards. A few of the guards in Philadelphia also rose to positions of real power and authority within AFSCME as well. By the 70s and 80s, AFSCME became a serious ally of labor feminism more broadly due to all of this, often working with women’s organizations on the state and federal law for legislation to promote women at work. Crossing guard associations also still exist today and sometimes still have a good bit of labor militancy in them, including public protests for a living wage in New York in 2015.
I borrowed from Francis Ryan, “You’ll Never Walk Alone: School Crossing Guard Associations and Labor Feminism in the Postwar United States” published in the February 2023 issue of Labor to write this post.
This is the 569th post in this series. Previous posts are archived here.