Plant 6 Women

CYNTHIA HAYNES: That's what I mean. That's what makes me so mad. Now I'm getting mad now. The people that don't even work for Cannon Mill and they don't want a union. Now why? Can you tell me why? That makes me so mad I can't stand it. It's what made me mad at them preachers and the businessmen. "Y'all don't need no union" and that's what burnt me up.

F1: (unintell.) treating you all right? (laughter)

HAYNES: Who said that?

F1: My rent man they said, "Why y'all want a union?"

HAYNES: And they don't work in the mill.

F: He used to be a postman.

HAYNES: And he had a union, and he wants to know why we want a union.

F2: Because y'all can do like him --

HYANES: And they want textile workers to --

F2: -- build houses, then have people live in demand they'll pay you money. Now long as y'all stay down here low, you going to pay all the money to him.

F1: Uh hum.

HAYNES: They want textile workers to be downtrodden from now to the end of time, don't they? They really do. I ain't lying, they do. That makes me madder than anything. When somebody in the mill says they don't want a union, I can't get as mad as I do at people that don't even -- some of 'em -- that old man, editor of the paper, ain't never even worked in the mill, I don't reckon. And he don't want a union.

F1: Well my mom worked in there 27 years

HAYNES: Well, he worked there and he said he didn't want one. I can understand that better than somebody that hadn't worked there and saying they don't want one. Can't you, Bud?

F3: Well, Bud's sister don't want one. How long was she in the mill?

M1: About 45-47 years.

F3: Now she really don't want one, but, ah, at least she knew what she was talking 'bout, why she didn't want one, I guess. But the other one worked there all her life and she wants one. So, you know, people are different. But we need one. We are going to have to be organized.

HAYNES: People just don't understand what the union can do for 'em. They won't understand it till they -- and I feel like if we ever do get it, that the people will understand then -- if we can ever once get enough votes to just get it in there and get started, I think --

M1: The only way you'll ever get a labor union is just to put it in, because that company is not going to let you.

HAYNES: They going to do everything in their power to keep us from having it.

F2: They really and truly can't. The only way y'all going to do it is to overturn this election with the statements and stuff that y'all give 'em, you know. Those challenge votes that everybody keeps talking about? They're not even going to be opened. The first thing they going to use is all these charges that y'all bring forward. As you noticed, when they put them challenge votes in the box, they were put in a brown envelope and they were sealed. And they'll stay 00:03:00sealed until the determining factor come out of all the charges. If they prove that the company didn't use correct conduct with y'all.

F1: Was the people's names on the envelope?

F4: Uh hum.

F2: See, a lot of those votes the board challenged, and the board challenged 'em for the simple fact their wasn't on the list. They left a lot of the LOAs off the list, the people that were on leave of absence? They just left 'em off the list, so that when they came in there to vote they were challenged votes. But, see, the challenge votes aren't the things that y'all need to worry about now, 'cause if you get your mind set on those challenge votes, like I was telling you, you're gonna forget why they intimidated, that they intimidated you with strikes, that they you intimidated y'all with plant closings, that they 00:04:00intimidated y'all with you're going to have to bargain from scratch.

HAYNES: Uh hum. Uh hum. So we'll lose our vacation bonus and our holiday pay and everything else.

F2: They tell you you're going to lose all your benefits.

F3: One girl told me yesterday that the mill would have closed if we had got the union in.

HAYNES: She still believes that?

F3: She still believes that. You can't convince 'em otherwise.

F2: That the mill would close if y'all got the union in?

F3: That's right.

F2: Well, who closed Plant 10 here?

F1: Murdoch. Murdoch.

M1: Fieldcrest.

F2: So did y'all had a union over there?

F3: No. They just closed it.

F2: Well, wait a minute. The union is the only thing that closes plants! (laughter) Isn't that what the company says?

M1: You want me to tell you what it was?

F2: What was it?

M1: Well, business was so good and they was having to run seven days a week and paying overtime, you know, time-and-a-half for Saturdays, double time for 00:05:00Sundays. Well, what they did, they closed that plant and transferred us to Salisbury and Kannapolis and put on 12-hour shifts, so that way, they didn't have to pay any overtime.

F1: That's right. (laughter)

F2: That's right.

F3: We're told that the reason we don't get nothing here is because that's the way it is at the union plant and we getting everything they're getting. Now isn't that what we're told? Everything we ask about, we're told --

HAYNES: Ever time they open their mouth, it's the same thing, the union is.

F1: And we know better then that.

F3: When I asked somebody why that one job was cut from 688 to 652, they said because that's what it paid at the union plant. Anything you ask, they'll say that's what is paid at the union plant.

HAYNES: Well, one of them workers that come down here to help us organize from -- he was from Eden or Field Dale or somewhere, and he asked a woman at the gate how much she made. And she made, I believe, $7 an hour and they told her that he 00:06:00or her, one, said she made $9.

F4: The ones at the union plant?

F3: All we've heard since this started is "union dues" and "strikes".

F1: Underlined, ever letter.

F3: Ever letter. Ever day we'll get a paper and it says if the union wins, we will go on strike.

F1: And we'll pay dues.

F3: And we'll pay dues and we'll go hungry. (laughter)

F2: (inaudible)

F3: They even paid a paycheck that said, "You'll notice that no union dues have been taken out of the check." Now such as that is what we've had to listen to. For 10 weeks we've listened to this continuously.

F2: Union dues.

F3: Unions dues and strike.

F2: Well, people, it's not going to be easy, but you going to have to try and make it easy in there. You going to have to let these people know that hadn't a thing changed, hadn't a thing changed. The only way it's going to change is you going to have to make that change. And when y'all decide to make a change, you got it made. And a lot of you here are deciding to make that change. As, as I told y'all before, they're going to be good to you. They going to be nice to y'all. They going to try to turn a lot of people's heads between now and you get your decision overturned.

F3: Wonder how long this'll take? You don't know?

F2: Can't tell. But we're trying to work on that as quick and as fast as we can. That's why we want all those statements in by Thursday.

M1: It'll have to be overturned by the Labor Board, because Fitzgibbons is not going to agree to another election.

HAYNES: Well, when we get all them charges charged --

M1: 'Cause he didn't quite stay with it this time. Now you know he's not going to take another chance.

F1: Yeah.

F3: What else did they tell us besides Wal-Mart wouldn't buy from us if we's union?

M1: Well, see, they changed. They changed it in the last week or two. What was that last one come out? Oh, that y'all was talking about you'd picket Wal-Mart.

F3: Yeah. Boycott, yeah.

F1: Yeah, boycott Wal-Mart and places like that.

F3: Uh huh. That's why they didn't want the union go to in. We'd lose the orders, uh huh. They said we'd lose all of our benefits. I don't know what else, they said so much. And they don't really like anybody that stands up for 00:09:00theirself. But seemed to me like the people'd give up or something. Did they act like they'd give up to you?

F1: Yes, I think they just kinda waiting to see what'll happen.

F1: They don't know what to do, do they? They think somethings going to happen. They don't everything, don't they? (laughs)

M1: It'd tickle the hell outta me if the business got so damned rough they'd have to close ever plant.

F1: Watch that language! (laughs)

HAYNES: I told ye you'd like his comments. (laughter)

F2: But if they close the plant, Bud, the union done it.

F3: That's right. They'll say it's 'cause y'all was down here trying to organize. And it don't matter what happens at work, they have an answer for it. You know, like I's doing two jobs and getting paid for one. Two women on the first got paid for -- you know, two women got paid the same amount of money on the first as I did on second. But they said they just -- that's just the way it 00:10:00was. It's always just the way it is. So, you know, whatever. They are actually working the people to death.

HAYNES: Used to, though, 'fore the union come here, they'll say it's company policy.

F3: Company policy, uh huh.

HAYNES: Anything you asked 'em about, it was company policy.

F3: Well, we're going to change some of them company policies! (laugh)

F1: Well, when I asked 'em about it, they just asked me if I could keep it up (inaudible).

HAYNES: Tell 'em what Buck Reed said when you asked him(inaudible).

F1: (inaudible) and I don't get no more money. He says, "Can you keep it up?" (laughter)

F2: See, that shows you the kind of people and mentality that they think they dealing with. When you had sense enough to ask him about him doubling your job and everything and didn't give you no more money, he asked you could you keep it up.

F1: Uh hum.

F2: Now what sense did that make at all?

M1: Hell, he's going to give everybody else in there another job. That's what it was.

F3: If she can keep hers up, we all going to get one! (laughter)

F4: They don't show no favoritism!

HAYNES: (inaudible) the people and we spend so much time negotiating, we don't have time to run the plant. That's what he said. And then he got to talking about strikes and I said, "How long has the union been in down there at Eden? I said, "Ain't it been" -- and he said, "I don't know." And I said, "Ain't it been 53 years?" He said, "I think so." And I said, "Well, how many times have they been on strike?" "Well, I don't know." I say, "Well, I ain't never heard tell of it."

F1: The union (inaudible) --

HAYNES: And I looked at my buddies and I said, "Y'all come on and help me." And I was doing like this, and he hated my guts, didn't he?

F1: I know it. He knew who we was when we walked in the door. I was sitting 00:12:00behind him (inaudible) he calls her name and he calls my name and he looked around 'fore he even called my name. But me and her was the only ones that had it bad (inaudible).

F3: Everybody in there was for the union but a couple people, and one guy said, "If ye' get the union in, how do you get it out?" And what'd he say? Get up petitions?

F2: (inaudible) company said.

F3: We not allowed to get up petitions! (laughs)

F2: Y'all know the company said that if y'all get the union in here, the industry, new industry and stuff won't come to this town? Well, you had a union vote back in 1985, right, and you lost, right?

F4: Uh hum.

F2: So how many new industries have come to this town in that six years?

M1: One, that Japanese company that's called(inaudible)'s America right here in Industrial Park on pop off Poplar Tent Road. I think they pay minimum wage, whatever it is, four-something an hour.

F2: And how many people it employ?

M1: I think less than 50. (laughter) Seemed like it'as about 35 on start-up.

F3: Matter of fact, that place up there in Shiny Grove? What is that place? That ain't Kannapolis, is it? What is that new Japanese place?

M1: Oh --

F3: Mark got him a job up there.

F1: Hitachi? I don't know what it was.

M1: Dominion Yarn or something like that, isn't it?

HAYNES: No. (inaudible). It's a new one. Hitachi, I reckon.

F4: I don't know what it was.

F1: They had to go take a test before they could hire, didn't they? Worked swing shifts and he didn't want to do that.

M1: Well, Fieldcrest-Cannon, when they holler, you jump. And they don't want it no other way.

F1: That's right.

F3: Well, I can't jump much more. (laughs) I'm tired.

F2: You can't jump much more?

F3: Naw. It's been rough.

F1: You'll jump if Willie hollers, won't she? (laughter)

M1: Well, you know, I's supposed to have been a fixer and I asked a supervisor one night, I said, "Just what is supposed to be my job?" He said, "Whatever it takes to get the job done. You don't have a job."

F4: Really?

M1: Now that particular night I's running a fixer job, a yarn job, and a winder hand's job. I done it two nights and the third night I didn't make it.

F3: That's when you had --

M1: Three o'clock in the morning they hauled me outta there.

F3: I've seen wrecks and I saw his (inaudible).

F2: You know, (inaudible) years and years and years and textile mills were trying to organize, this, that and the other, you still got them slave mentality names in their for the big people. They have overseers.

F3: And they keep telling us the union can't do anything for us, but why do they fight it so bad? I mean it's just -- they just stay on us and stay on us that it can't do anything. It can't help us. We don't need anybody to talk for us, we're a family. Ah, you don't have a family with 7,000 people. I mean, you know, you need help. We need somebody to talk for us, somebody that somebody'll listen to.

HAYNES: Oh, I forgot to tell y'all I told Buck Reed he needed a union. He said, "Well, I had to take the" -- what was it? He had to take a cut in pay last year? I said, "Well, you need you a union, too." (laughter) He said, "No, thank, 'ye. 00:16:00I've worked with unions before."

F1: (inaudible) made all that money?

F3: Huh?

F2: Remember he was talking about all them men making all that money?

F2: Uh hum.

F1: He said he didn't like it, he got a cut in pay, too.

HAYNES: I said, "Well, you need you a union."

F3: Uh hum.

HAYNES: He said, "No, thank ye'. I've worked with unions before. He meant in management. He hadn't ever worked belonging to one. They wouldn't let him join, would they, Brenda?

F2: Yeah. Those people, you think that a man making $539 an hour to sit down and tell y'all what to do can live on $7.47 or $6.47 a week -- I mean a hour?

F1: Uh hum.

M1: And that's $17,000 a month retirement.

F2: Think he can live on $39 or $19 a month?

HAYNES: Uh uhm. My mama got $13.75 a month and she'd still be living and they cut it 30%, it would have been $9.65. And I would have been --

M1: My neighbor, his as --

F1: She didn't git enough to pay her insurance.

M1: -- $11.90 a month.

F1: They don't give you enough to pay your insurance.

HAYNES: That's the way they do. When we get a raise, they take it out in the insurance. They give you a raise in this and and go up on insurance and grab it with the other one.

F2: When Murdoch came back here and made the statement that he was gonna pay the people back the 30% that they lost in their checks up until September, he didn't say what was going to happen after September, right?

HAYNES: Uh uh.

F2: But he say pay some people from April to August. That's four months back pay at 30%, and this little lady that was sitting on the stage with him got a check 00:18:00for $51.50. Now that's disgraceful.

HAYNES: Four months. That's pathetic! (laughs)

F2: Four months of back pay for pension.

F3: And that won't even pay anybody's medicine fora month when they retire. The medicine's terrible when you're tire.

HAYNES: I know it. My aunt belonged to CWU at -- [break in video]

HAYNES: She got in and she started telling her her benefits and she said, "Lord!" (laughs) She said, "That's what union can do for you."

F3: My brother worked at the Ford plant and he's out on disability and, ah, he gets $1,300 a month. Now that's what -- I know this union won't get us this much. We don't make that much down here, but I know it can help.

M1: Well, he was only making $24 an hour.

HAYNES: I don't expect to make what Philip Morris makes, but I know they can do better for us.

F3: I do, too. We can have better benefits.

HAYNES: That's right.

F3: And they tell us they don't have any money, but I'd hate to even try to guess at the money that's been spent on this campaign to keep us from getting in.

M1: Don't mind that. Hell, you know who's going to pay it, don't you?

F3: We are! Yeah. We are. We're going to work and pay it and it's not right. They have spent a fortune. But I believe we still going to get it.

HAYNES: We going to come out on top. I don't have no doubt about that.

F3: But we have showed 'em they didn't scare --they didn't scare as many as they thought they did.

HAYNES: That's right.

F3: That was almost even.

HAYNES: Diane Neely said all them people she let go to the meeting was for the union and (inaudible). You just keep on believing that. (laughter) They had everybody to put on "No" shirts so it would scare everybody, but it didn't. It didn't.

[break in video]

GEORGE STONEY: -- the folks who lived here. Let's start off with that.

HAYNES: You want me to tell about him working at plant 4?

GEORGE STONEY: Oh yeah, sure.

JAMIE STONEY: Roll tape.

HAYNES: This is the house my grandparents lived in for 37 years. My grandpa raised six kids in this house and worked out here at Plant 4 behind the house.

GEORGE STONEY: Do you remember when -- tell about the plumbing and so forth.

HAYNES: Oh, I can remember when they put bathrooms in these houses. When I was a little girl, they put 'em in and I can remember it.

GEORGE STONEY: What'd you do for a bathroom before that?

HAYNES: We had a outside toilet.

GEORGE STONEY: And the tub?

HAYNES: The tub? We had to get a bath in a tin tub once a week whether we needed it or not! (laughs)

GEORGE STONEY: Could you say all that at once?

HAYNES: Ok.

JAMIE STONEY: And say -- [break in video]

HAYNES: This is the house my grandparents lived in for 37 years. Grandpa worked at Plant 4 right behind the house and he raised six kids in this house. And I can remember when they didn't have indoor plumbing. They had to go to an outhouse and we took our bath in a tin tub -- whether we needed it or not -- once a week! (laughs)

JAMIE STONEY: How many rooms are in the house?

HAYNES: Five, I think. Five rooms.

GEORGE STONEY: You were going to tell us something more about your grandfather.

HAYNES: Well, my grandpa, he was here when they tried to get the union in here in the '30s -- the early'30s. And he crossed the picket line and his brother was a union organizer and his brother would try to talk him into being for the union, but he was afraid his kids'd starve to death, so he crossed the picket line. And they call him a scab and I heard that shots were fired, but he wasn't hurt or anything.

GEORGE STONEY: Good.

JUDITH HELFAND: Now you were telling me before that -- you pointed down the road and said down there is the union hall and explained how you went down a hill—

[tone]

JAMIE STONEY: Move the car on through-- [break in video]

HAYNES: -- went to the bathroom, it would get stuck in his hair? And, ah, he'd take a roll of toilet paper with him and take the dog and she had let him in. She was so good to him. A lot of people don't want to drink around him, but she was really good to him. She was good to everybody. She was a sweet, sweet lady.

GEORGE STONEY: Say that about like a family that everybody knew everyone on the street.

HAYNES: Everybody on the street was like a family, but Grandpa was afraid that he would get thrown out. You want me to say that? He was afraid that if he broke wind, he'd get reported and get thrown out. That's an exaggeration, but it was almost that bad. I mean the company had a lot of rules they had to go by, and my daddy would come up here drunk and Grandpa was afraid that he would get reported and have to move out.

GEORGE STONEY: Good, that's good.

JUDITH HELFAND: What was it like here, knowing everybody on one street like that?

HAYNES: It was just like I said, just like a family. I mean you'd just come out the door and say, "Hey, hey, Mrs. MacNeil." That was her name. And Mr. Fink over here, and, like my brother said, she always had her housecoat on. He said he don't remember ever seeing her with clothes on, which is true. It was just -- it was just great. We knew everybody, the Carpenters -- I mean Canuttes lived there, MacNeils here, Partons lived here. Ah, Huds Pass(?), I think, right there, and Haskins on down. And we just knew everybody. And Grandma would walk down to, ah, go down the hill and then turn -- make a right and go down to this one lady's house and she'd give her shots 'cause she was in the menopause then and this lady would give her shots and I'd go with her. I didn't know what the shots was for, but(laughs) -- and my grandma, she loved tomatoes so much that 00:25:00she'd take her medicine money and buy tomatoes. And the doctor told her not to eat tomatoes, but she'ad take her medicine money and buy tomatoes and eat 'em. (laughs) (inaudible) That's about it.

GEORGE STONEY: Ok, that's good.

HELFAND: That guy down the street said he knew your whole family.

HAYNES: Pauline, Jerry, Ted, Buck, Raymond. Raymond's my daddy. Did you say Raymond?

[break in video]

HAYNES: You gotta tell me when and all and I'll start talking.

JAMIE STONEY: (inaudible)

HAYNES: How are you doing Hazel?

JAMIE STONEY: Can you start that again.

HAYNES: How are you doing Hazel?

GEORGE STONEY: (inaudible) wait.

HAYNES: Oh.

GEORGE STONEY: I'll tell you.

HAYNES: Ok.

JAMIE STONEY: (inaudible)

GEORGE STONEY: Ready Jamie? Ok.

HAYNES: How you doing, Hazel?

HAZEL: Pretty good.

HAYNES: I know you got oxygen.

HAZEL: Yeah.

HAYNES: You know, Mama had brown lung. She had to have oxygen before she died. What did -- what did they say's wrong with you?

HAZEL: Well, he said I had asthma and emphysema.

HAYNES: That's what they tell me I had and I had to get a transfer from the spinning room, and they didn't want to give me one. And I had four asthma attacks in four months and had to go to the hospital? So they finally agreed to let me go to the medical department. And I went over there and the doctor said anybody that had four asthma attacks in four months should be transferred. And they gave me my transfer and I had to sign a paper that said I didn't have -- it 00:27:00wasn't work related and not to never smoke again, which I hadn't smoked in 10 years when I got my transfer. And since I've been over there, I haven't even had an asthma attack.

HAZEL: really? That's good.

HAYNES: And they won't tell you, you got brown lung, but in ye' heart you know it.

GEORGE STONEY: Ask her how many years she worked and did she ever smoke.

HAYNES: How long did you work for Cannon?

HAZEL: I probably worked about 25 year really.

HAYNES: Did you ever smoke?

HAZEL: I have smoked a couple, just a few cigarettes, but not as much as --

HAYNES: You never did have to have it.

HAZEL: No habit of it. That was way back when I's about 20. (laughs)

HAYNES: Yeah. I did smoke. When I smoked, I smoked a pack a day, but when I quit, it was 10 years before I ever started having asthma attacks.

GEORGE STONEY: Let's go back, let's just now -- you just talk to her and we'll hold on her. Ask her what she- what the doctor said and then did the 00:28:00doctor ask her about smoking.

HAYNES: What did the doctor tell you when you first got to where you couldn't breathe?

HAZEL: Well, he said it was asthma attacks, that I had asthma. And, ah, they did ask me if I'd ever smoked and I -- I told him not really 'cause I didn't ever smoke enough to say I did.

HAYNES: Yeah, and, ah, well, when did you quit? When did you quit the mill? When did you have to retire?

HAZEL: I retired -- I've been quit about -- I think I's about 58 when I quit work.

HAYNES: Yeah. Do you mind telling how old you are now?

HAZEL: (laughs) Not really. I'm 73.

JAMIE STONEY: (inaudible)

HAYNES: What did you do in the mill?

HAZEL: I filled batteries in the weave room.

GEORGE STONEY: Ask her what it is like in the weave room.

HAYNES: What's it like working in the weave room?

HAZEL: Well, it's just like a lotta noise and, ah, and we had a lot of lint, too, then, you know. But now it's all different from what it used to be.

HAYNES: Which plant did you work in?

HAZEL: Four, uh hum.

HAYNES: Four? That's where my grandpa worked 37 -- well, he might have worked longer, but he lived over here across from your mama 37 years.

HAZEL: Yeah, uh huh.

HAYNES: And when I came over here today, I didn't realize y'all still lived here. It was a pleasant surprise.