USA

Organizing at J.P. Stevens

The battle of the J.P. Stevens company, (the second largest textile company in the US) centered mostly in the southeastern USA, is one in which women play key roles, both as victims of Stevens' flagrant disregard for labor law, and as organizers and activists pushing to get that law enforced. The Stevens story is a long one and has been documented thoroughly in many other resources, some of which are mentioned at the end of this article. But it is worth pointing out here the significance this situation has for women workers.

First, it is important to understand the extent of Stevens' disregard for the law. "Between 1963 and 1976, Stevens was found guilty of more violations of the National Labor Relations Act than any other company in the nation's history. The violations were so numerous that many were combined in order to expedite legal processing, resulting in 15 guilty decisions by the Board". (WIN Magazine). And again, "The Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU) terms Stevens the nation's 'number 1 corporate enemy'. When a New York federal appeals court cited the company for contempt, Stevens earned the epithet 'most notorious recidivist' in labour law". (Liberation News Service).

Within this liberal ladling out of general lawlessness, Stevens has been especially 'generous' to its women workers: "Women and blacks suffer from discrimination in employment practices from the J.P. Stevens company ... only 3 per cent of the 'blue collar' white women at Stevens are in skilled craft jobs, while 31 percent of the white 'blue collar' men are ski lied craft workers. The company has been convicted twice for violating the law against employment discrimination, and is fighting the Equal Opportunity Employment (Commission) in the courts concerning additional complaints". (E/SA). Marcy Rein in Off Our Backs states that " ... Although 42 per cent of the workers are women, there are virtually no women managers, supervisors, or skilled crafts workers ... "

Discrimination in pay and hiring is not the only problem women at Stevens face, however. Safety and health conditions at Stevens' plants have been shown time and time again to be shockingly poor, and once again, women bear most of the brunt of this callousness: " Kathy Peace had been working at J.P. Stevens for an hour and 45 minutes when she lost two fingers on her left hand. Then she lost her job ... " (Peace had had no training to use the machine with which she had been working) (OOB) . The most well-known hazard of textile work is that known as 'brown lung': "Brown lung, the common name for byssinosis, is a disabling respiratory disease caused by breathing  fine cotton particles in textile mills over the course of years. Of 600,000 cotton mill workers, 35,000 are afflicted with the disease. In the mill's card room, where the fiber is combed, the cotton dust often hangs so thick in the air that a worker cannot see across the room. At first these working conditions cause breathing difficulties, but after several years, workers develop uncontrollable coughing, and hospital visits for oxygen become common. The effects of brown lung can be reversed in its early stages. But workers left to battle the heavy dust for years permanently lose a high portion of lung capacity, finally becoming, as one medical study put it, 'respiratory cripples' ... Most textile workers-and most of those who suffer from the disease--are Black and white women, many of whom flocked to the mills in the Carolinas and elsewhere during WWII. Because women have traditionally had fewer opportunities to find diverse industrial work, they were welcomed to the mills at low wages to tend the spinning and weaving machines-high risk brown lung jobs". ( LNS)

Workers' attempts at organization and the ACTWU's attempts to represent them have met not only with disregard by Stevens, but with massive resistance as well : "The hostility of the textile industry has played a considerable part in keeping the workers unorganized. That hostility extends beyond the walls of the mill. Last year Thelma Swann, a former Darlington mill worker, described what happened during an organizing attempt in a mill town at public hearings on the Labor Law Reform Bill before the House Subcommittee on Labor-Management Relations. She told the Subcommittee that if one person was pro-union, all the other family members were laid off. Children were pressured at school by their teachers to oppose the union, churches made their appeal for the sake of 'community peace' and neighbor was set against neighbor". (WIN Magazine). "Maurine Hedgepeth testified against Stevens at a National Labor Relations Board hearing in September 1964. Two weeks later, she went on pregnancy leave. When she was able to go back to work, she was denied her job; her husband was fired on Christmas eve, after 25 years as a loom fixer " . (OOB) "In 1969 after the NLRB ordered Stevens to bargain with workers at the Statesboro, Georgia textile plant, Stevens brusquely cut wages ... The average hourly wage at the company in 1974 was $3.20-a full $1.42 less than the national average for factory workers". (LNS)

But workers have organized, and are doing so more and more and, again, women form the backbone of this drive: " 'We couldn't find a space to rent for a union hall at first', Lucy Thomas, a 'Heaver on the midnight shift, said in an interview. 'When we started signing up cards, the company held a big dinner for all the merchants and businessmen and told them they would close the plant if the union came in. So they were all scared to death. But we finally got a place .. .' Thomas has been at Stevens 27 years. In a union shop, this would be called having 27 years seniority. But there 's no seniority system at the Stevens plants. Only favoritism and discrimination ... 'They know I'm not scared of them', Ordie Underwood said ... 'there's more and more people in our plant who know that they're not going to get fired for saying what they think. That's why we've got a big majority in the four plants to sign cards. There's some still fearful. But most of us are not afraid any more' ".(LNS)

Perhaps the most well publicized aspect of the Stevens battle has been the national boycott of Steven's goods (see insert). In this effort too, women outside the plant have organized to support the Stevens workers: "March 17 marked a high point in boycott organization to date; the founding meeting of the National Women's Committee to support the J.P. Stevens workers. The gathering was convened by S. Jeannine Maynard, recently hired by the union to coordinate women's groups in support of the boycott. It brought together national officers of some 30 women's groups, ranging from NOW and CLUW (Coalition of Labor Union Women) to the Council of Jewish Women and the National Assembly of Women Religious. Vivian Shoreman, an ACTWU lawyer, gave a legal update ... Most moving were the experiences shared by three women who have been at the cutting edge of the struggle. Marra Watkins was a worker at Stevens' West Boylston plant in Montgomery, Ala. until she was fired for talking union. Hattie Jones and Susan Sachen are union organizers from the Carolinas. Jones is also a former Stevens employee ... " (OOB) And of course, any woman can support the boycott in other ways: " ... As major purchasers of fabrics and housewares, women can play a vital role in all facets of the boycott". (OOB)

Finally, we must see the Stevens issue as indicative of larger struggles, among them those of women for their rights as women and as workers. If and when their efforts mark up successes, it will represent as much a success by and for women as anything else. As Marcy Rein writes, "The struggle at J.P. Stevens is often pictured as a weather vane for organizing in the South. It is more than that. We are not used to seeing connections, but the implications are broader, and the way connections are de-emphasized by capitalism must be noted. If the company succeeds in flouting the laws, years of struggle to establish workers' rights will only seem wasted. If the union wins, we will have come a small step closer to controlling our work". (OOB)

For a complete list of local coordinators of the National

Women's Support Committee, write:

Jeannine Maynard

15 Union Square

New York, NY, 10003, USA

J.P. STEVENS RESOURCES

The following articles were used in composing this piece:

Textile Workers Win Tepid But Useful Brown Lung Regulations Liberation News Service Packet n. 918, June 30, 1978 17 West 17th St., 8th floor
New York, New York 10011, USA tel : (212) 989-3555

On The J.P. Stevens Organizing Front in Stuart, Va. LNS, Packet n. 887,  November 11, 1977

NLRB Drops Injunction; J . P. Stevens Off The Hook LNS, Packet n. 910, May 5, 1978

Support Stevens Workers Marcy Rein Off our backs; vol. V 111, n. 4, April 1978 1724 20th st., N.W. Washington, DC 20009, USA

The Stevens Boycott: Turning the Tables on the Textile Giant Joe Pilati and David Dyson WIN Magazine, September 21, 1978 503 Atlantic Avenue, 5th floor Brooklyn, NY 11217, USA tel: (212) 624-8337

The Stevens-Union Struggle Engage/Social Action (E/SA), vol. 5, n. 6, June 1977 Board of Church and Society; United Methodist Church 100 Maryland Ave., N.E. Washington, DC 20002, USA