Posted on 09/14/2009 1:19:43 PM PDT by FourtySeven
RALEIGH, N.C. - Crystal Lee Sutton, whose fight to unionize Southern textile plants with low pay and poor conditions was dramatized in the film "Norma Rae," has died. She was 68.
Sutton died Friday in a hospice after a long battle with brain cancer, her son, Jay Jordan, said Monday.
"She fought it as long as she could and she crossed on over to her new life," he said.
Union organizers had targeted J.P. Stevens, then the country's second-largest textile manufacturer , because the industry was deeply entwined in Southern culture and spread across the region's small towns. However, North Carolina continues to have one of the lowest percentages of unionized workers in the country.
Bruce Raynor, president of Workers United and executive vice president of the Service Employees International Union , worked with Sutton to organize the Stevens plants. In 1974, the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union won the right to represent 3,000 employees at seven Roanoke Rapids plants in northeastern North Carolina .
"Crystal was an amazing symbol of workers standing up in the South against overwhelming odds — and standing up and winning," Raynor said Monday. "The fact that Crystal was a woman in the '70s, leading a struggle of thousands of other textile workers against very powerful, virulently anti-union mill companies, inspired a whole generation of people — of women workers, workers of color and white workers."
...
"She never would have been rich. She would have given it to anyone she called the working class poor, people that were deprived," Jordan said.
Sutton donated her letters and papers to Alamance Community College in 2007. She said: "I didn't want them to go to some fancy university; I wanted them to go to a college that served the ordinary folks."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
What...no “look for the union label”? Kinda liked the jingle they had back when.
BTW: Those mills used to all be in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, until the French Canadians started unionizing.
Almost none. My wife was a linthead for 15 years. All the plants were closed in the late 1980’s and early 90’s in NC. JP Stevens, Burlington, Cone all gone. The White Oak plant in Greensboro is about the only one left now.
Lot of lefties die of brain cancer - Sutton, Kennedy, Johnnie Cochran. Wonder if there is some sort of genetic component there.
I saw this woman being interviewed on TV one time. I believe she was then working as a motel maid. She came across as very unpleasant, and my memory tells me she was critical of Sally Fields portrayal of her as Sally just wasn’t as “tough” as she was.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi_Fibre_Arrangement
“During early 2005, textile and clothing exports from China to the West grew by 100% or more in many items, leading the US and EU to cite China’s WTO accession agreement allowing them to restrict the rate of growth to 7.5% per year until 2008. In June, China agreed with the EU to limit the rate to 10% for 3 years. No such agreement was reached with the US, which imposed its own import growth quotas of 7.5% instead.”
Yup. White Americans need not apply.
The Yankees are moving down and turning states like NC and SC into So. NJ.
Yep. 15 years ago those same morons were bragging about moving to Florida because it was “paradise.” Florida got fudged up so now they are going to “da Caro-LINE-ahs.”
Good post.
I’m trying to understand your point here? That China got a lot of textile industry? That’s true, but the ones in Georgia went to Mexico and Brazil.
But people love Sally. They really, really love her.
Foreign textiles were cheaper even with the trasportations costs. Well, I think you can make an argument that unions made wages artificially high, so that domestic textile plants could not compete with the foreign ones.
So what do you do? Let those cheaper textiles into your country or impose tariffs so that they are not cheaper? In the 18th century the conservatives said impose tariffs on cheaper foreign goods to protect your domestic manufacturers. The liberals said do away with tariffs and let the cheaper foreign goods in to compete with domestics markets.
Today in the 21st century the positions are reversed. The liberals say impose tariffs and conservatives say do away with tariffs and let the cheaper goods in.
Well, politics is always changing.
What...no “look for the union label”? Kinda liked the jingle they had back when.
Wasn't that Algore's lullaby song when he was a baby!
Just one of the fruits of “free trade.”
“Free trade”, the strip-mining of the American Middle Class lifestyle.
LOL...probably.
OK, thanks
OK, thanks
It’s globalization. Even non-union plants aren’t able to compete with the absolute advantage developing countries have in labor costs.
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