08/28/2026
As a kid, 9 to 5 was my first introduction to both a force of nature and an eternal conflict: Dolly Parton and workplace struggle.
The pluck and ingenuity of the three leading ladies (Parton, Tomlin, Fonda) captivated me. Beneath all the outrageous comedy was something even a kid could understand. Here were three honest women trying to earn a decent living but weren’t being treated fairly. Despite the structural power imbalances, once they started working together, they discovered they weren’t powerless after all. They were a power to be reckoned with.
I didn’t know it then, but there was a real labor story behind the movie.
In the early 1970s, women working as secretaries, typists, and other office workers began organizing in Boston. Karen Nussbaum and Ellen Cassedy helped found 9to5, an organization of women office workers fighting low wages, discrimination, sexual harassment, dead end jobs, and a workplace culture that often treated clerical workers as anything but professionals.
Their movement grew nationally and helped give rise to a women-led labor union. It also caught the attention of Jane Fonda, a friend of Nussbaum’s. Fonda met with 9to5 members and listened to their stories about life in the office. Those conversations and the real workplace experiences of women around the country helped inspire 9 to 5.
While developing the film, the filmmakers talked with working women about their frustrations with their bosses and the elaborate revenge fantasies they sometimes imagined.
Those conversations helped shape the movie’s darker comedic elements. Lily Tomlin’s Snow White sequence was my favorite. Underneath all the laughter was a serious point: workers who felt powerless individually could change their workplaces when they stood together.
9 to 5 was Dolly Parton’s first major movie role, but she had one condition before agreeing to make the film. She wanted to write the theme song. The rest is history.
In crafting that song, Dolly wasn’t just singing about the solidarity of working people in the abstract. She was a union member herself.
Dolly joined what is now SAG-AFTRA in 1969 and remained a union member for more than five decades. She was also a longtime member of the American Federation of Musicians Local 257 in Nashville.
Sadly, Dolly Parton passed away this week at the age of 80, leaving behind an extraordinary legacy as a singer, songwriter, actress, philanthropist, and one of America’s most beloved cultural figures. I have long called her a national treasure, and her genuine warmth, beauty, sweetness, and kindness will not be forgotten, as she is rooted in my little boy heart, beginning with all those repeated viewings of 9 to 5.
Among the many things she left all of us is a song about something millions of people experience every day: work.
More than four decades after 9 to 5 introduced audiences to three women who discovered what they could accomplish by standing together, Dolly’s theme song remains an anthem of solidarity for working people across the country.
That’s fitting to me. One of my earliest introductions to Dolly was also one of my earliest introductions to the idea that working people don’t have to simply accept the way things are.
Dolly may be gone, but when that familiar opening rhythm starts, her voice will continue reminding generations of working people of the power of standing together. ❤️
