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Union elections have long history in textile mills of North Carolina

BY SARA PITZER
SALISBURY POST

The Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE) has been trying to set up shop at the Fieldcrest Cannon Plants for the past 25 years and has lost elections four times. But UNITE is not the first union to take a crack at organizing these plants, and compared to some earlier efforts, current activity is gentlemanly.

Norris Dearmon is curator of the Cannon history library. He worked for Cannon for 43 years as systems analyst, project manager and supervisor. Dearmon knows the history of union activity here from Cannon’s early days to the present as Fieldcrest Cannon. And now that Pillowtex owns Fieldcrest Cannon, Dearmon says he’s watching the same disagreements play out again.

Dearmon says that for a while in the 1920s Cannon had a union, the United Textile Workers of America, with union stores to support workers during a strike. But J.W. Cannon, owner at the time, closed the mill down for several months, the union pulled out, their stores folded and left, and eventually workers went back to their jobs at less pay, the company’s punishment for striking.

In the early ’30s, Dearmon says, when unions tried to organize all textiles in North Carolina, a group marched into Kannapolis with almost enough people to surround the mill, threatening violence.

In response, National Guardsmen from Concord, armed with machine guns, manned stations on the mill roofs.

“They were able to keep the mill going,” Dearmon says, “and there was not even the threat of a vote that I know of.”

The National Textile Workers Union was part of a more violent organizing attempt in Gaston County. Robert Williams, author of “The 13th Juror,” a book about the 1929 riots in Gaston County, says, “There was almost all out war. It spread from Gaston to other counties and several states before it was over.”

Williams says the Manville Jenckes Co. in Gastonia, which became Loray Mill, was the largest mill of any sort under one roof in the world. It was an important union target. In early June, organizers from Scotland, England, Chicago and Boston were living in a tent city in Gastonia when a disturbance arose. The chief of police was shot in the back and died. Although it probably was not an organizer who shot him, they fled in all directions, only to be rounded up later. In the fracas, a young poet seven months pregnant was murdered in the street, and arson, kidnappings and dynamite bombings followed.

In comparison, Williams says organizing these days shows “a great deal more judgment. But the inflammatory rhetoric is still there.

“There are always two different answers to the issues, but they won’t be reconciled.”

The old Loray Mill is now Firestone. Williams says they are finally unionized and “getting along beautifully.”

Dr. Gerald Calvasina, associate professor of management at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, says the historical problems of unionizing the South stem from the region’s agricultural nature. Because of earlier industrialization in the North, many people there have long taken unions for granted.

The South, however, lacked an industrial base. “Cotton was king,” Calvasina said. “The management style of textile mills was paternalistic. Politicians were tied in with business leaders, and religious leaders also spoke against unions, painted them as an evil concept.”

Norris Dearmon also remembers when textile mill owners “took care of people.” “Mr. Cannon gave increases in pay according to inflation. He was looking out for his employees. He did that pretty much all of his life. He was the father of his town, and what the town needed, he pretty much gave them.”

All that has changed, Calvasina says. Family ownership is gone. “A number of religious leaders have come out in support of the union.”

And, in his view, whether or not workers at Fieldcrest Cannon decide they need a union will depend on how they are treated at work day to day, not on concerns about the company closing or leaving the country.

“Day to day on the shop floor, if supervisors treat employees fair and they get a fair day’s wage, they are not going to change the status quo and have another deduction from their checks for union dues.”

UNITE spokesman Michael Zucker agrees the issues are about working conditions not about company security. But he says that still argues in favor of unionizing.

“The home textile industry generally has been a key industry where imports have not had an effect. These mills are undergoing a $120 million modernization program right now. There is no question these mills are going to stay open and be state-of-the-art production.”

But the old paternalistic management is gone, Zucker says, and even if the current situation seems satisfactory, “one thing that has clearly changed in these plants over the years is that it is not a family-run plant any longer. People have seen different owners come and go very quickly here at these mills. It’s hard to know who will be the next owner and what their plan will be.”

Workers are entitled to have their working conditions, wages and benefits written out in contract, he says.

Zucker says it’s easier than it used to be to bring a union to the South. In a written statement he says, “In 1998, the southern regions of the United States became the leading region for union organizing growth.” The statement also says:

• UNITE’s southern region is its most successful organizing region. Over half of the union’s organizing victories since 1997 have been in this region.
• Six of the top 12 states with the largest increase of unionized workers were in the South.
• Eight of 12 southern states increased their rate of union membership.

UNITE represents Pillowtex workers at eleven plants:

• Fieldcrest Cannon facilities in Eden, N.C., Fieldale, Va., Phenix City, Ala, and Columbus, Ga.
• Leshner Corp. facilities in Macon and Hawkinsville, Ga., and Phenix City, Ala.
• Torfeaco Industries pillow and comforter facilities in Ontario, Canada.

Zucker is optimistic about UNITE’s fifth attempt at Fieldcrest Cannon plants in Kannapolis, Salisbury and Rockwell. “The last two times the company violated the law massively and deprived workers of the right to a free and fair election. As of today that is not happening. We believe that is because of UNITE’s good working relationship with Mr. Hansen and Pillowtex.”

Professor Calvasina agrees unfair practices affected some earlier votes, but he doesn’t know what to think about this one. “Nothing surprises me up there any more. I thought before they (UNITE) were a shoo-in. It’s really hard to predict you just don’t know what they are thinking.”