After her marriage, Wyatt applied for a job as a typist for
Armour and Company in 1941. On her first day of work, she discovered African American women were not hired as typists in the front office and instead was sent to the canning department to pack stew in cans for the army. In the early 1950s, Wyatt joined the
United Packinghouse Workers of America upon discovering the union did not discriminate against its members. As the forefront leader of black women within unions, she and others took advantage of their union's antiracist and antidiscrimination bylaws and fought race-based and gender-based inequities at work as well as in their communities. In 1955, Wyatt worked full-time on staff for the UPWA, representing workers across a five-state region. She recognized the importance and effectiveness of interracial organization. Among other achievements, Wyatt and her union of black, white, and Latino laborers were able to win "equal pay for equal work" provisions in many union contracts well before the passing of the
Equal Pay Act of 1963. In 1953, Wyatt was "elected vice president of her branch, Local 56, becoming the first black woman to hold senior office in an American labor union." Wyatt was the director of the Women's Affairs and Human Rights departments of the
Amalgamated Meat Cutters. By 1956, Wyatt was the Program Coordinator for District One of the UPWA. This was also the year the Wyatts began their work with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, with whom they helped raise funds for the
Montgomery Improvement Association. In the early 1960s,
Eleanor Roosevelt recognized her leadership abilities and appointed her to a position on the Labor Legislation Committee of the
United States Commission on the Status of Women. African American women, with Addie Wyatt at the helm, had the unparalleled experience of working on the floors of the meatpacking plants as well as being integral parts of building the unions. During the 1970s she became a powerful figure in the
United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. During this time, she worked harder to create unions that were more inclusive of minorities. In 1972, she became the founding member of the
Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, which was formed to ensure that black workers could "share in the power of the labor movement at every level." As chair of CBTU's National Women's Committee, Wyatt helped ensure that
AFL-CIO-affiliated unions opened leadership positions to women. This not only led African Americans to great confidence within the labor force, but also to women in general becoming financially independent and effective contributors of the economy. In 1974, Wyatt co-founded the
Coalition of Labor Union Women in order to create a stronger, more effective voice for women in the labor movement. When Wyatt became the international vice president of the United Food and Commercial Workers in 1976 she was the first African-American woman to take a high-level leadership position in an international union. She fought for human rights on three fronts; as a laborer, as a woman, and as an African American. ==Ministry and civil rights work==