Like the heroine you remember from the movie, Peggy Glavas is a gutsy blue-collar mom who has challenged the establishment -- both labor and management -- and has won. By Marcia Cohen [Good Housekeeping, 7/90]

Peggy Glavas has always been proud of being a "factory worker's daughter." Her grandfather, father, and brother have all bee laborers and union members at Butler Manufacturing, a steel fabricating company in Galesburg, Illinois. . . .

Galesburg is a factory town. Like most rank-and-file factory workers, Peggy lives with her family -- husband George; daughter Marcy, 11; and son Alexander, 7 -- in a small house near the factory. The company's professionals and managers live in grander style near the golf course and lakes. Peggy has always been conscious of the distinctions between the two groups and intensely loyal to her "family" of co-workers.

After graduating from high school in 1974, she held several low-paying clerical jobs. Then in 1976, she heard that Butler, in compliance with a new EEOC ruling, was hiring women for some of the higher-paying factory jobs previously held by men only. Compared to what Peggy had been earing, they pay was substantial, so she applied for a job in the factory and was hired as a truckloader's "helper."

Just 5'2" and 110 pounds, Peggy is as strong as she is strong-willed. She loved the job. "Loading a truck carrying 40,000 pounds is like putting together the pieces of a big puzzle," hse says. "I felt like I was really accomplishing something."

In December of that year, Peggy also got married -- to George Glavas, a young artist she'd been dating. But happy as she was in her new marriage and in her work, she began to pick up signals that she and the few other female factory workers at Butler were not welcome. In a rush to finish a load one day, she caught her hands between heavy metal girders and crushed two fingers, leaving her in searing pain for several months. "Suddenly I seemed to go from valued employee to 'accident-prone,'" says Peggy, "and for the next year I felt the bosses were assigning me the heaviest lifting . . . any work that would hurt my fingers."

Then in 1978, when she informed management that she was 2-1/2 months pregnant, she was told she would have to take an immediate unpaid maternity leave. (Today such an action would be illegal.) Angry, she filed a complaint with the Illinois Fair Employement Practices Commission -- which ruled in her favor and awarded her a sum of money she agreed not to divulge.

The ruling, predictably, did not win her popularity with her employers. Two days after giving birth to daughter Marcy, Peggy, still recuperating, received a letter from Butler's personnel department saying she'd be considered a "voluntary quit" if she didn't return to work within the next three days.

"They were playing on my maternal instincts," Peggy asserts, "trying to get me to decide right then and there between my child and my work, even though I was entitled to maternity leave." She countered by getting a note from her doctory saying she could return only after 5 weeks. (When son Alex was born in December 1982, she was able to take a maternity leave without problems.)

Having arranged for a baby-sitter to care for her baby, Peggy returned to Butler's on an evening shift -- and started attending meetings of her union, Local 2629 of the United Steelworkers Union. The approximately 700-member local included only about 80 women at the time. At first Peggy was timid about airing complaints, but gradually she started speaking up on issues that concerned her and others: the wage freeze that had been imposed on workers but not on management, worker safety, medical benefits -- and, especially, the company's general treatment of women employees.

To better understand labor law and the technical language of union contracts, Petty took night classes at nearby Car Sandburg Community College. She soon noticed that some union officials seemed lax in pursuing workers' grievances and contract rights and began to suspect they were advancing their own, not members', interests by making secret "sweetheart deals" with management.

At union meetings Peggy closely questioned union officials, and in 1982 was elected secretary of Local 2629. In 1985 she became its first woman president.

Being a woman in the predominantly male world of management and labor unions has been anything but easy. One of her most frequent adversaries across the bargaining table was Butler's personnel manager, James Asplund. Peggy's stubborn dedication to workers' rights apparently baffled the man who admits that once, "just for fun," he dangled a live mouse in Peggy's face -- only to be shocked when she didn't flinch. "I've never known anyone like her," says Asplund. "I don't understand her motives," but he adds, "she's a good worker and she's smart."

Peggy also found herself going up against what she describes as the "old guard" of the union itself. "As I kept speaking up on issues," Peggy says, "some fo the 'old guard' of the union didn't like it. It would have been easy to do what some officials do -- just ACT like I was representing the people. But I couldn't live with myself if I did that.

Once, while she was still union secretary, she was asking questions during a meeting when an opponent called the police and had her ejected on a disorderly conduct charge. The charge didn't stick.

But her biggest test of will came after she became president, and a group of the "old guards" used legal maneuvers to call in the International Steelworkers Union and have her ousted from office. Peggy took the group to court and in 1987 was reinstated to office by the U.S. Department of labor. Later a federal court, stating that the international union had deprived her of her rights to free speech and denied her a fair hearing, awarded her $5,000 in damagers. In 1988 her fellow union members demonstrated their continuing faith in her when the reelected her to the presidency.

Peggy also found support along the way from other young labor leaders within the International Union who, like her, wanted to represent their members more honorably and upgrade the image of the unions. These self-proclaimed "dissidents" criticize what they see as inflated corporate salaries and frequent corporate claims that American companies need to cut labor costs and move factories to cheaper labor markets to stay competitive.

But like-minded supporters and a court ruling didn't entirely settle the dispute over Peggy's reinstatement. "I was threatened on a regular basis," she says. "One 'old guard' supporter or another was always going to beat me up. Someone would come up and say, 'If you were a man, I'd have knocked you down by now.' Then somebody else would say, 'Don't do it. That's what she wants you to do.'"

Peggy's family life suffered. Her husband, believing he had job security as a mechanical engineer at t cable TV company, had little sympathy for unions. After getting rooughed up by one of Peggy's union opponents -- and watching the frightened reaction of daughter Marcy to all the talk of threats -- he finally pressured his wife to quit the union.

Peggy was worried for her family, but in all conscience felt she couldn't give up. Instead she sat her daughter down and tried to explain why she felt she had to be involved. "I wanted my kids to see their mom as a fighter," she says. "I told Marcy that self-respect comes from standing up for what you believe in."

She and George separated for a brief time. Ironically, shortly after- ward, George was fired from the cable company. "It was purely political," he says, "and I finally realized that there really was a point to what Peggy was doing. I'd had absolutely no job protection after all." To Peggy's great job, the couple reconciled.

Not long after that, George opened his own antenaa service. Three weeks later, a 95-foot tower had was wroking on fell over. His skull was partially crushed, his eye gouged, one arm broken. Peggy rushed to his side at the hospital and from that moment on has been devoted to caring for her disabled husband. Today he is blind in one eye and although medicated, still suffers from extreme emotional stress. Peggy is now the sole support of her family.

"George has been tough as nails, the strongest man I've ever seen," she says proudly. After the accident she seriously considered giving up her union work, but her husband now didn't want her to. "I admire Peggy too much for what she'd doing," he says. "She has a real strong heart for justice."

She needs George's support -- as well as that of other dissidents -- now more than ever because she has become a controversial figure in Galesburg. A working-class heroine to many co-workers, she is criticized by others who claim she is too hard-headed and demanding in her efforts to uncover what she regards as unfair practices of both management and labor. "If working to make life better for yourself and others is 'hard-headed,' then so be it," counters Peggy.

Whether or not she and other leaders succeed in making the changes they want, she is committed to trying her best. "I'm not a quitter," she says. "My parents influenced me not to be a quitter. I had to take piano lessons for 10 years because I started them.

"The old assembly-line mentality is out of date -- it's demeaning for workers to be treated like numbers. People want an active role in their work. They're fighting for RESPECT. If I had a million dollars," says the woman whose idol is 1890s labor leader Mother Jones, "I'd still be proud to be part of the working class."

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