Women of Bethlehem Steel - Louise Tusak

Annotation Louise Tusak worked her way up the ladder over the span of a thirty-year career as an office worker at Bethlehem Steel. She started working as a mail carrier in the Accounts Payable Department in 1955 and quickly transitioned into higher positions with more responsibility. She worked in almost every position in the Accounts Payable Department before transitioning to correspondence, where she ultimately worked as a “check checker,” a job responsible for handling the company’s daily bills and tax information. Although she never had children, Tusak shares that women who became pregnant while working for Bethlehem Steel did have access to paid maternity leave, among other benefits. She discusses her impressions about the union's role in negotiating contracts that affected both the Bethlehem Plant workers and the office workers. Although she and the interviewer disagree on some points, she indicates that the office could not function without the Plant workers, and presumably, vice versa. In her final reflections, she indicates that she made a very decent living working at Bethlehem Steel, and that her wages in the late 1980s were actually higher than her sister’s wages in the early 2000s. An oral history interview is an act of memory and hence both highly selective and highly subjective. While it accurately reflects what a narrator remembers (or chooses to tell) of his or her experience and viewpoints, it may not accurately represent what actually transpired or what another person may have experienced. As such users should subject interviews to the same degree of critical scrutiny they would any other historical source. This interview is part of a series of interviews conducted by Lehigh University and the Steelworkers’ Archives and supported by the Lehigh University Mellon Digital Humanities Initiative and the South Side Initiative.