[1] A vice-president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, she was the first woman elected to the executive board of the American Federation of Labor – Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO).
Unable to find a professional union job despite her education, she took a secretarial position with the Cooperative League of America.
She helped set up day care, legal assistance and college scholarship programs for union members and their children.
She was a founding member of the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW) in 1974, and later served as its president.
President Bill Clinton in 1993 appointed her the executive director of the Glass Ceiling Commission established by the Civil Rights Act of 1991 to study the barriers to the advancement of women and minorities in large corporations.