Archives West Finding Aid

Megan Cornish was born in 1947 into a military family and grew up in various locations around the United States. After graduating from Cornell University in 1969 with a BA in literature, Cornish moved to the Puget Sound region and worked at The Shelter Half, an anti-war GI coffeehouse in Tacoma. In her early years in the Pacific Northwest, Cornish was not a member of a formal group or organization. However, Cornish joined Radical Women after being drawn to the group's intersectional approach and became more interested in labor organizing. She took a job at a nursing home and also briefly worked in an industrial laundry facility.

In 1974, Cornish was recruited by Clara Fraser, a cofounder of Radical Women and education coordinator at Seattle City Light, to apply for a position as an Electrical Trades Trainee (ETT), an all-female affirmative action program designed by Fraser to integrate women into the electrical trades. Cornish was selected to be one of ten women ETT's out of an application pool of over 300. In the first weeks on the job, the sense of solidarity between workers as the result of a walkout that occurred just weeks before caused Cornish and the other female ETT's to be received well. The shared resentment towards City Light Superintendent Gordon Vickery and management created a sense of unity amongst the electrical workers and reduced their hostility towards their new female coworkers. The severed relationship between Fraser and management, however, left the ETT's in a highly vulnerable position as management sought to retaliate against Fraser through damaging the ETT program.

Only a week after starting, the ETT training program was canceled and Fraser was removed from her position as the training coordinator. Trainees were told on a Friday afternoon to report to field work the next week, where they made $1 less per hour than the other electrical helpers. In response, the ETT's filed a complaint with the City of Seattle Office of Women's Rights (OWR) stating that they were being denied the typical amount of training and pay reserved for male employees. After a year of training, Cornish and seven of the other ETT's were laid off, along with Fraser. The ETT's and Fraser saw their terminations as politically motivated and retaliatory, and they added the lay-offs to their OWR complaint.

As their case was being reviewed, the former ETT's engaged in a massive public relations campaign to win the support of the public. Numerous articles about the case were published in the local press, and the case became a central focus of the local women's movement. In July 1976, in a major victory, City Light was ordered to reinstate six of the terminated trainees, including Cornish, as well as to pay a settlement, give them back pay, and make them eligible for apprenticeship programs.

After the victorious court ruling, Cornish applied for a City Light apprenticeship as a lineworker, along with two other Radical Women members Teri Bach and Hildreth (Heidi) Durham. Cornish described this period as the "roughest" time during her career at City Light. Vickery and management, angered by the ruling, placed Cornish and her female colleagues into positions that were designed to be the most difficult to succeed in. Each of the women were placed into divisions that were known to be hostile to them, which ultimately led to Durham falling from a pole and breaking her back in a near fatal accident.

In addition to being antagonized by management, Cornish and the other women apprentices were also met with animosity from the male electrical workers that they worked alongside. In 1975, Local 77 of the IBEW staged a failed strike that led to harsher working conditions. Many male electricians, frustrated and demoralized by their strike's defeat, held resentment towards the former ETT's for winning their discrimination case, and these feelings were exploited by management to increase the sexist hostility of the work environments.

Despite having an affirmative action plan to diversify its workforce, Cornish, Bach, and Durham remained some of the only female electrical workers at City Light for nearly ten years. The three regularly gave public comment at Seattle City Council meetings to demand the hiring of more women and people of color at City Light. In the early 1980's, City Light hired its first new female electrical worker in nearly a decade.

In 1983, Cornish helped establish the Employee Committee for Equal Rights at City Light (CERCL) to fight workplace harassment and discrimination in response to inaction from management, union leaders, and the City of Seattle Human Rights Department (HRD). CERCL membership grew rapidly in the mid-1980's and pressured the HRD to investigate discrimination cases. In 1991, Cornish and Durham were jointly named Advocate of the Year by the Washington Women in the Trades.

Cornish retired from Seattle City Light in 2004 after 30 years. At the time of her retirement, she held the position of outage dispatcher, the highest position in the utility trades. She credits her adherence to feminism and political radicalism as essential to her successful accomplishments in her organizing at City Light. She remains an active member of Radical Women and the Freedom Socialist Party and continues to write for the Freedom Socialist newspaper.

Adapted from the Megan Cornish article on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megan_Cornish