Toxic Work: Women Workers at GTE Lenkurt

In 1971, when General Telephone and Electric relocated its GTE Lenkurt plant to Albuquerque, New Mexico, the city fathers were elated. GTE Lenkurt became the largest manufacturing employer in the state. The modern exterior of the plant and the clean reputation of the industry, however, effectively camouflaged conditions on the shop floor where unskilled assemblers, mostly minority women, used solder, epoxy, solvents, acids, plastics, and other toxic chemicals to assemble the solid state devices inside electronic components. The numerous deaths and virtual plague of physical disorders that resulted from these working conditions convinced attorney Josephine DeLeon Rohr to initiate the largest occupational disease and disablement trial in New Mexican history.In this compelling expose, Steve Fox presents the sole public record of six years of legal and medical investigation into the lives of these workers. Their devastating testimony as well as the personal and professional risk incurred by Rohr documents the tragic legacy of the electronics industry. Rohr’s meticulous investigation uncovered more than two hundred GTE workers (95 per cent of them women, 70 per cent of them Hispanic), each of whom had a strange array of health problems. The list included cancers, frequent miscarriages, excessive menstrual bleeding and hysterectomies, bizarre skin disorders, and odd neurological problems. Fox describes the dramatic events leading up to and the settlement of the case and shows how an ill wind can blow through the clean corridors of the high-tech workplace. Steve Fox teaches in the American Studies and Sociology departments at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.