Jane LaTour joined the staff of AUD in June 1989 and remained a strong ally and friend to AUD until her death in April of this year. LaTour, as she recounted it, was born into a middle-class family in Burlington, Vermont, and was inspired by the social justice struggles of her time to become involved with the labor movement. She attended Rutgers University, earning a bachelor’s degree in history in 1971 and a Master of Arts in Labor Relations in 1977. Contemporaneously, she worked as a factory worker and union organizer for District 65 of the United Auto Workers. While an employee of UPS during that period, she became associated with Teamsters for a Democratic Union, a reform caucus in the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, and took part in a wildcat strike in Edison, New Jersey in 1975.
By 1989, when LaTour first joined the staff of AUD, she was already a well-seasoned veteran of rank-and-file union struggles. She had a particular interest in advancing the cause of equity for women and people of color within trade unions. LaTour recognized that discussions of shattering the glass ceiling seemed to address the struggles of professional women at the expense of women who were blue collar workers. The AUD’s Women Project focused on the struggles of women in unionized (typically male dominated) trade jobs and she became its director. Among many other things, during that period, in November 1989, she organized an AUD-sponsored conference on women in the trades and resultant union democracy struggles .
In Fall 1990, LaTour left AUD to attend Columbia University on a Revson Fellowship. Her activism on behalf of rank-and-file union women did not end, however. In 1991, the NYC Commission on Human Rights launched a probe into discrimination against women and people of color in the building trades. AUD participated, with AUD founder Herman Benson and AUD’s Judith Schneider (currently AUD President) providing testimony, along with scores of workers. LaTour encouraged and coordinated much of the testimony given by women workers, many speaking in spite of their well-founded fear of retaliation. Working closely with these women (many of them union members) would help inspire LaTour to write her first book: Sisters in the Brotherhoods: Working Women Organizing for Equality in New York City. Throughout this period she also worked closely with James McNamara, formerly AUD Research Director and former Director of the Mayor’s Office of Construction Industry Relations on issues of corruption in the construction trades which was pervasive and affected men and women of all races.
In 2000, LaTour took a leading role in the development of Operation Punch List (OPL), an initiative to raise public awareness about women working in the building trades and other blue-collar professions. OPL’s prominence increased after 9/11, as it championed the cause of women taking part in the rescue/cleanup efforts at Ground Zero in New York City. LaTour returned to AUD as the Director of the Women’s Project in 2002, helping conduct a conference on Union Democracy in the Building Trades: (see above illustration). Later she joined the AUD Board of Directors.
She remained a prodigious scholar and activist until the end of her life, working for the New York Labor History Association, the Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at New York University, and as a journalist for Public Employee Press, the official publication of District Council 37 of AFSCME (the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees). Jane LaTour died April 3rd at the age of 76, and is survived by her husband Russell Smith, her son, two sisters, and three grandchildren.
You can find an edited video-recording of the July 8th Jane LaTour Memorial
on YouTube – online, at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgKMoyS1wMc
Questions and comments can be directed to Joe Doyle at joe.doyle54@gmail.com or Russ Smith at 332-237-8140
Celebration of the life of Jane LaTour.
Saturday, July 8, 2023, 5:30 – 8:30 p.m.
Held at: Transfiguration House – 9 East 29th Street, NYC
