Lunchtime Rewind

We’re excited to present Lunchtime Rewind—a Lunch & Learn Archival Screening!

Take a break and travel back in time with us on Thursday, July 16, from 12:00–12:45 PM for a special screening of archival footage from City Light and the Seattle Channel, featuring:

• Connections: The Changing Workforce (1984) – Margaret Norton Arnold introduces a segment for Seattle City Light’s employee video newsletter Connections on changing hiring practices and attitudes about gender in the workplace; highlighted for particularly charming outtakes.
• “Not for Men Only” (circa 1970) – Speaking over a montage of beautiful 16mm color footage of their daily work, women in Seattle city utilities and engineering roles comment on how they found their way into their respective lines of work and how they’ve been received by their male peers.
• Women in Water (1994) – Television profiles of women workers in Seattle’s Water Department in a variety of roles: pipe workers, truck drivers, and forest maintenance workers. Each describes how they feel about the work itself, and how they came into their job.
• 6 “Rosies” (2002) – In the Seattle Channel’s “Rosie the Riveter” program, women who supported the WWII war effort as engineers and mechanics recall a handful of horror stories about their on-the-job injuries.
• Switch: City Light News (1977) – In this edition of Seattle City Light’s endearing, internally produced employee newsreel “Switch,” Nancy Callary gives an account of her trip to Houston for the 1977 National Women’s Conference.
• Seattle City Light’s Clerical Upward Mobility Program (1980) – Seattle City Light’s Training Unit produced this selection of interviews with female employees who participated in SCL’s Clerical Upward Mobility Program, designed to give clerical workers opportunities to work in traditionally male-dominated positions.
• Bailiwick: Feminists in Hard Hats (1975) – In a 1975 Fairbanks, Alaska local cable TV program, women workers from the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System discuss the blatant workplace discrimination they experienced, and how they feel the challenges of that work shaped them. But on the other side of the job lay financial independence, and the less-imagined rewards of perspective, confidence, and a deeper experience of autonomy.

The screening will take place in the Bertha Knight Landes Room on the first floor of Seattle City Hall. Bring your lunch and join us for some history! To RSVP, please email archives@seattle.gov.