Workers: Florence St. John

Florence St. John (c.1896-1970) was a General Motors factory worker who led her co-workers in a lawsuit against the company demanding equal pay for women. The win was the first significant damages payout in a discrimination case in the history of America law.

For Further Reading:

• Florence St. John and the Unfinished Fight for Fair Employment
• The Little-Known Story of the Women Who Stood Up to General Motors and Demanded Equal Pay
• Pay Discrimination Laid to G.M. in Women’s Suit, The Detroit Free Press
• St. John v. General Motors Corp
• Equal Pay for Equal Work Legislation

This month we’re talking about workers: Women who fought for labor rights and shaped the way we do business today. They advocated and innovated to make the “office” – wherever it is – a more equitable place.

History classes can get a bad rap, and sometimes for good reason. When we were students, we couldn’t help wondering... where were all the ladies at? Why were so many incredible stories missing from the typical curriculum? Enter, Womanica. On this Wonder Media Network podcast we explore the lives of inspiring women in history you may not know about, but definitely should.

Every weekday, listeners explore the trials, tragedies, and triumphs of groundbreaking women throughout history who have dramatically shaped the world around us. In each 5 minute episode, we’ll dive into the story behind one woman listeners may or may not know–but definitely should. These diverse women from across space and time are grouped into easily accessible and engaging monthly themes like Educators, Villains, Indigenous Storytellers, Activists, and many more. Womanica is hosted by WMN co-founder and award-winning journalist Jenny Kaplan. The bite-sized episodes pack painstakingly researched content into fun, entertaining, and addictive daily adventures.

Womanica was created by Liz Kaplan and Jenny Kaplan, executive produced by Jenny Kaplan, and produced by Grace Lynch, Maddy Foley, Brittany Martinez, Edie Allard, Lindsey Kratochwill, Adesuwa Agbonile, Carmen Borca-Carrillo, Taylor Williamson, Sara Schleede, Paloma Moreno Jimenez, Luci Jones and Abbey Delk. Special thanks to Shira Atkins. Original theme music composed by Miles Moran.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello from Wonder Media Network. I'm Jenny Kaplan and this
is Womanica. This month, we're talking about workers, women who
fought for labor rights and shaped the way we do
business today. They advocated and innovated to make the office
wherever it is, a more equitable place. Today we're talking
about one of the first class action labor victories in
America and the woman behind the suit. Let's talk about

(00:24):
Florence Saint John. In nineteen twenty eight, Florence walked into
the Old's Motorwork Factory in Lansing, Michigan for her first day.
The factory, a division of General Motors, housed large machines
that made Oldsmobile car parts. Florence was a thirty two
year old mother of three tasked with operating the heavy machinery.

(00:47):
She was one of three hundred workers in the factory
and one of thirty women. For years, she spent her
hours cutting steel, welding, and dragging around heavy car parts.
Florence and the other women and felt a sense of
respect in the factory. They did all the same work
as the men and were treated the same too, or
so they thought. One day, Florence and some other workers

(01:10):
were playing paycheck poker, betting their paper checks in the game,
and Florence began to notice a pattern. The men on
the same shifts as the women, Men with less seniority
than the women, were making more money than the women
they were playing. In some cases, men made fifteen to
twenty dollars more than their female coworkers. Florence knew that

(01:32):
this was not fair. The women were just as strong
and skilled as the men, They met the same quotas,
and they deserved the same pay. Florence enlisted the help
of her union representative, Forrest Brown, to negotiate on behalf
of the women. To no avail, the managers at General
Motors would not change the wages. If anything, their true

(01:53):
colors showed. Some managers said they'd prefer not to have
any women workers on the floor in the first place.
At the time, Michigan law made it a misdemeanor to
discriminate in any way in the payment of wages between sexes.
So the next year, when Forest Brown took a job
with the Michigan Department of Labor and Industry, he applied
new pressure to GM. He investigated the factory's in equities,

(02:17):
knowing that they were violating that statute. Unfortunately, for Florence
and the rest of the women, it was not the
change they hoped for. GM created a women's division that
gave the women remedial tasks, though they still ended up
doing their more labor intensive tasks too. Now that the
women's work was officially separated from the men's forest Brown's

(02:39):
investigation ended. Many women, fed up with the low wages,
quit in nineteen thirty eight, ten years into working at GM,
Florence decided to take action. She called well known trial
attorneys Bernard Pierce and Joseph Plank to form a legal plan.
The lawyers gathered twenty eight claims from other women, transferred

(03:00):
them to Florence, and filed a lawsuit against General Motors.
This maneuver is similar to today's class action lawsuit, which allows
one or more plaintiffs to file a lawsuit on behalf
of a larger group. The suit was unprecedented. It was
the first time women banded together to legally demand lost wages.

(03:21):
The lawsuit dragged on for three years before the Michigan
Supreme Court ruled that Florence even had standing for the lawsuit.
The trial began on June second, nineteen forty one. Over
the course of six weeks, the trial reviewed more than
ten thousand exhibits and about seventy witness testimonies. While some
of the male workers said the women were not as

(03:41):
strong or versatile as the men, others admitted that the
women worked alongside them on heavier operations, but General Motors
still argued there was no proof that the women were
paid less. Finally, Florence's lawyer convinced the judge that GM
needed to present their payroll records. Once the paychecks for
men and women and the stark difference between them were reviewed,

(04:04):
the judge ruled in favor of the women. GM was
ordered to pay fifty five thousand, six hundred and ninety
dollars to Florence and the twenty eight other women. Today
that be the equivalent of three quarters of a million dollars.
Thanks in part to Florence's court victory, women working at
the GM factory were now entitled to equal pay. Her

(04:25):
case had large ramifications as well. Two women in the
Department of Labour's Women's Bureau convinced the War Labor Board
to equalize pay rates between men and women, citing Florence's case.
As proof of the necessity of equal pay, and Florence
inspired other wage discrimination lawsuits. Over the next two decades,
twenty one states passed wage equity bills, then in nineteen

(04:49):
sixty three, the US passed the Equal Pay Act. However,
only two of those state laws provided groundwork for women
to sue for equal pay if the rights were violated
by an employer, and at the time, employers and union
leaders alike saw the courts as a threat to their
respective power in the workplace, so they lobbied against many
of these equal pay laws. While Florence's win was significant

(05:13):
to Michigan, her lawsuit was largely forgotten in history. Florence
Saint John died on December twenty first, nineteen seventy. Almost
fifty years later, her case against General Motors was repopularized
by a Stanford Law school professor while he was tracing
the origins of employee class action lawsuits. The rediscovered suit

(05:33):
shows that despite Florence's victory, the fight for equal pay
still has a long way to go. In America, all month,
We're Talking about Workers. For more information, find us on
Facebook and Instagram at Wamanica Podcast special thanks to Liz Kaplan,
my favorite sister and co creator. Talk to you tomorrow.