Physical Plant Employees

The employees' 43 grievances.

Male employees protesting Chancellor Caldwell's decision regarding female maids.

The Physical Plant Division was responsible for the maintenance and cleanliness of buildings on NC State’s campus. A majority of the division’s employees were black and in late 1968 and early 1969, a black janitor named Eddie Davis attempted to unionize the division’s employees. Physical Plant management and university administration stopped him from unionizing, and then demoted him shortly after. However, Davis’s actions proved to be a catalyst for further militancy among Physical Plant employees. On March 18, the newly formed Grievance Committee for Non-Academic Workers presented a list of requests to Chancellor John T. Caldwell that called for improvements in many areas of the employees’ working conditions.[1] The requests included Davis’s reinstatement to his previous position, a minimum wage raise, and a guarantee of a 40-hour work week, among many others. One particular request, that no female maids were assigned to clean men's dormitories, later proved to be polarizing among some of the Physical Plant employees.[2] Chancellor John T. Caldwell responded to the requests in a published pamphlet, but the employees were generally displeased with his response and particularly upset with his “buck-passing.”[3]

Caldwell originally acceded that all female maids did not have to work in male dormitories, but changed his position on April 8 after receiving a petition from some of the female employees that stated their desire to remain in their currently assigned buildings. Instead of moving all female maids, Caldwell’s compromise was to “reassign women from dormitory work to other buildings as requested by individual women workers to the maximum extent that it is possible to do so.”[4] Additionally, if all female workers moved to other buildings, all of the employees' schedules would be altered. Many employees, particularly those who worked multiple jobs, objected to the potential schedule shift. In what might be considered a patriarchal response, some of the Physical Plant’s male employees wrote a letter to Caldwell insisting the maids not work in male dormitories: “For too long this racist society has degraded black women and placed them in conditions which would lead to insult and embarrassment. This must stop at NCSU NOW!”[5] Four black female maids refused to work in the men’s dormitories and were fired by a Physical Plant official for not working in their assigned buildings. Davis and 15 other employees met with Chancellor Caldwell and performed a sit-in in the Chancellor’s office to protest the maids’ firings. Caldwell talked with the employees and asked them to leave when the discussion was done. The employees refused to do so and were arrested for trespassing.[6] During the next three days, students and workers from NC State, Shaw University, and St. Augustine’s University marched on Caldwell’s home and to the State Capitol in support of the fired maids and demanded the university listen to and respect the workers’ concerns. As a result of the sit-in at Caldwell’s office, the two marches, and some workers’ refusal to work in their assigned buildings, the university suspended 16 employees while the city eventually convicted 12 for trespassing and fined them various amounts.[7] Ultimately, the university dismissed six Physical Plant employees.

Despite the will and militancy demonstrated by black Physical Plant employees, university administration did very little to immediately address the workers’ concerns. Employees blamed Physical Plant management for a majority of their problems, but the same managers remained in place after the incident. The Physical Plant Director, J. McCree Smith, did not resign until 1975.[8] Chancellor Caldwell acknowledged some of the problems and passed some of the requests onto state officials, but either was unwilling or unable to address all of the workers’ concerns. He did implement some procedural and communication changes between supervisors and employees that made it easier for workers to know their rights as employees, communicate their grievances through proper channels, and take advantage of a few programs designed to further education and training. Administration also introduced a training program for first-line supervisors through Sampson Technical Institute to instruct them on how to professionally lead and direct people as well as properly address problems.[9] While these changes did not greatly alter the working conditions of non-academic workers, the implementation of procedural and communication guidelines marked a change in the way university administration dealt with workers' problems and disputes. Individual worker grievances went beyond the first-line supervisor, and Physical Plant management could no longer arbitrarily punish, suspend, or dismiss employees.

While the workers were unsuccessful in bringing about immediate change, their protests and demands demonstrated to university administration and to others on NC State’s campus that black workers would and could work together to fight for equal workspace. Their protests were a significant event that helped to slowly reverse the marginalization of black employees in NC State’s workplaces.