Since the opening of the St. Thomas Ford Assembly Plant, women were allowed to hold administrative, secretarial, nursing, and food service positions. However, it was not until almost ten years later that St. Thomas Ford began to see a change in the roles of women at the plant.
In April 1977, St. Thomas Ford hired eighteen women to work on the assembly lines; nine women were hired per shift. These women were the first to ever be hired by Ford of Canada to work on their automobile assembly lines (Wilkinson 21).
On March 14, 1978, the St. Thomas Ford workers showed their backing of female autoworkers by traveling out to Fleck to support the women on strike at that plant (22).
In January 1984, Jean Simpson, one of the original eighteen women hired to work on the St. Thomas Ford assembly lines, also became “the first woman to be elected to [Local 1520’s] Leadership” (41).
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