Blazing trails: One woman's history of becoming a labor arbitrator

Abstract

Two events in my childhood influenced my career decision to become a lawyer and labor arbitrator 30 years later. Both occurred in Brockton, Mass., an industrial city with immigrants from Italy, Ireland, Sweden, and elsewhere. They worked in the city’s many shoe factories, and families, including mine, lived in three-decker tenements in dense ethnocentric neighborhoods. I was seven years old, and my parents’ marriage was in conflict.