Sociology 4395: Worksheet--"Where Do you Stand?" 2004

The story really begins during the Great Depression. In 1934, workers in the American textile industry joined an effort to bring union organization to many plants, including Cannon Mills, in Kannapolis, North Carolina. The strike was eventually defeated, with 72,000 Southern textile workers locked out afterwards and blacklisted from further work in the industry. The next year, Congress passed the Wagner National Labor Relations Act of 1935, guaranteeing employees the right to join unions and bargain collectively with their employers, and establishing the National Labor Relations Board as the agency to enforce the laws embodied in the NLRA. The Textile Workers Union of America (TWUA) was founded in 1939 and made some progress organizing unions in the textile industry during World War II. By the end of the war, 80% of the textile industry in the United States was in the south and 20% of its workers were under contract with the TWUA. But there would not be another attempt to organize in Kanapolis until 1974.

Cannon was a family owned business, which also owned the homes in which its workers lived; the founding brothers ran the plant until 1971, when Charlie Cannon died. Charlie had known many of the workers by name and was known to intervene when families were in trouble; at the same time, he and his family had enormous power in the town and they took a strong line against unions or any other form of independence by their workers. We pick up the story after Charlie Cannon's death.

1. What was the result of the union organizing campaign at Cannon in 1974 and why?

2. How did things change after David Murdock, a real estate tycoon, bought Cannon in 1982? In particular, what did Murdock do with the houses the company had owned, and why do you think ACTWU lost the organizing campaign in 1985 by such a large margin?

3. What did Murdock do shortly after the union lost the 1985 election?

4. How did the new owners, Fieldcrest, fight the union in its organizing campaign of 1991? In particular, what was the role of B&C Associates?
Why did the NLRB refuse to certify Fieldcrest's victory in that election, and what was the eventual decision of the courts about Fieldcrest's practices in that organizing campaign?

5. When did Fieldcrest eventually sell to Pillowtex, and how did Pillowtex's approach to the union differ?

Sociology 4395: Groups--"Where Do You Stand?"

1. Chief Judge Wilkinson of the U.S. 4th Circuit Court, in ruling against Fieldcrest's NLRB appeal in 1995, said: "Fieldcrest simply adopted a scorched earth, take-no-prisoners approach to stop unionization without regard to statutory limitations." Why do you suppose that kind if behavior by a corporation is not criminalized in the United States? Do you think it should be?

2. What's the incentive, then, for large corporations to obey the laws relating to unions and union organizing?

3. The video does not take the perspective that it was unionization that eventually drove Pillowtext to bankruptcy. What does it see as the culprit, and what do you think?

4. This video deals with labor laws, but Cannon Mills violated another law in the 1960s, trying to keep black employment down, perhaps based on the company's belief that blacks would be more sympathetic to union organizing. A class action lawsuit was brought against Cannon in 1970 and settled by a consent decree in 1982. Cannon agreed to pay $1.65 million to their black workers as compensation for the company's violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1965? Race relations violations by corporations are also not criminalized. Should they be?

5. What about the time framework for settling these cases--whether charges of violating labor laws or civil rights laws? In his "Letter from the Birmingham Jail," Martin Luther Kind wrote that "Justice too long delayed is justice denied." Do you think that applies here?