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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview E-0009, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Scott Hoyman was an organizer and bargainer for the Textile Workers Union of America (TWUA) beginning in the 1940s. In the 1950s, he began to organize textile mills in the South for TWUA before becoming the southern regional director in the late 1960s. In this interview, he focuses on the TWUA's role in the Oneita Knitting Mills strike in Andrews and Lane, South Carolina, in 1973. He begins by describing the situation for workers in these two plants, detailing racial dynamics in each plant: the Andrews plant consisted primarily of white women, whereas the Lane plant mainly employed African American women. After explaining how the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) became a less predominant force for these textile workers, Hoyman focuses on how the TWUA worked to help the striking workers. Throughout the interview, Hoyman describes various strategies and tactics for the organization of textile workers in the South. He stresses the conditions and activities leading up to a strike, the role of collective bargaining, and the impact of such factors as money and participation of workers. In addition, he stresses the importance of strong leadership and staff in successfully advocating for workers' rights. Finally, Hoyman briefly addresses the history of the TWUA, describing interactions and tensions with similar organizations, such as the Textile Workers Organizing Committee (TWOC) and the United Textile Workers (UTW). He concludes the interview by stressing the importance of having a strong unified force for organizing textile workers and by offering an assessment of the TWUA's work with major textile companies in the South at the time of the interview in the mid-1970s.
Textile Workers Union of America (TWUA) organizer and regional director Scott Hoyman discusses the Oneita Knitting Mill strike of 1973 in South Carolina. Throughout the interview, he focuses on strategies of the TWUA in organizing textile workers, bargaining and negotiating with textile companies, and tactics for successfully protecting workers' rights.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
… and got everybody singing. Loran Cook was quite a singer. She really put out some good music.
Well, she was probably, in terms of people that went from one place to another, she … we asked her to do a lot of that because she's very good a leading groups and very sincere and all that. She had a real feeling, you know, for what was involved. She's quite a person.
She did most of the travelling and most of the speaking in New York and Washington. She's very sincere.
Yeah. Now, the other young lady, I don't know if you've met her or not, Flossie …
Flossie Gibson?
Yeah.
The Gibsons are in Chicago.
Yeah, she is in Chicago, at Ed Collins office, our Mid-West director. And
she was a good song leader. Did you meet the young fellow
Evanson.
What?
We heard the name, but I don't …
Yeah. He was excellent.
My impression is that …
We were surprised that we didn't hear more about Flossie Gibson than we did. You know, when I talked talked to Mr. Collins, he mentioned her as being one of the persons that the union considered as one of its best organizers. Of course, the fact that she is in Chicago now …
I would say in any enterprise that springs up, there are people that have things that they are very good at and I think that Flossie wasn't active early … people turn up at different times, and she really became significant after the strike began. I'm sure that she voted for the union, I think that she was there during the campaign, but she wasn't on the negotiating committee, she became very important when we started singing union songs on the gate.
And during that period, Mrs.
Well, she was travelling around, but she was a picket captain. Which
meant that all during the strike, she would have been at the same place,
not necessarily at the same time. We had … I'm sure that Ted Benton told
you, he has a capacity to structure the activities of the strike quite
expertly and one of the keys to his structure is the picket captain.
They become very, very important people. You know, the Bible talks about
people who were leaders of ten and those who were leaders of a hundred
and then leaders of a thousand and so on. Well, our picket captains were
leaders, basically, of twenty and they had a book and they would take
attendance and it was very important routine activity, because it
enabled us to keep the picket lines adequately manned over a long
We did get a tour of the plant.
Well, the outside of the plant was more interesting to us during the strike than the inside and there are an awful lot of gates:
Eleven or so?
Yeah, something like that. It's not like a plant with one big driveway and two people can picket. We had to have physically a fairly large number of people, to have a presence so to speak, on various sides of the plant.
We did drive around the plant and I remember two things that came to my mind. Well, no, we didn't drive all the way around it, can you drive all the way around it?
It's hard to, because it's bunched up against the railroad track.
… those gates … I sat in front and an old song came to mind … a song called "Twelve Gates to the City."
Oh yeah.
Which …
I guess that the twelfth gate would have to be the one in Lane. I assume that you went down to the other plant.
Unfortunately, we didn't get down there. There were meetings going on all the time and we couldn't manage it and…
Well, that's one of the unusual aspects of the strike, that we had two
physical locations simultaneously in organizing a strike. And Lane,
since it was twenty miles away, really had to be handled in a parallel
There was …
Before the election?
Before the election. I guess that it would be before the election.
Well, we were, I didn't get involved until we got over that hump. During
the strike, we were concerned about whether the company would be able to
get significant black leadership in the community to take a stand
against the strike. Or encourage people to scab. The community, the
black leadership pretty well stayed, I think, on the union side,
although there were maybe a couple of deviations, but they were more
from people a long way away, you know, like twenty-five miles from there
there would be a little center and somebody would start coming in over
the picket lines and then he
It's interesting to compare the differences in the workers at the Lane
plant and the Andrews plant…
Well, of course, the reason for the difference was the age of the plants. The Andrews plant of Oneida, I think had been there since '54 or '55 possibly.
…
Could be.
…
And we had some people supporting the union who … and a couple of other people
…
Yeah. But Lane was a satellite development and I don't think that it had started until three or four years ago, maybe four or five, I don't know. So, this accounted for a lot of difference. When the original plant started, I don't think that they were hiring too many blacks. It was all white, or basically white. And the second plant, I think, the labor shortage had started to have some impact and Civil Rights Title Seven was there and they were hiring a lot more blacks in both plants. In fact, the composition of the Andrews plant changed racially to quite an extent between the time the ILG had the election and bargaining rights and strikes, and the time when we came down. There were a lot more white workers percentage wise in Andrews than by 1971.
We have been wondering a lot about ILG and what was left after they left
and exactly how it happened that they left. We have talked to several
people that were working there at the time, but still haven't heard
exactly …
Well, the fact that they got knocked out of the box and the fact that we haven't been, shouldn't be interpreted as a reflection on the ILG. They had a series of experiences, I guess, which happened to us in other locations and it just became very difficult. As I understand the history, they had a series ofone year contracts about bargaining rights, I think they finally represented the company in Utica, New York.
…
Yeah. And the Devereaux family came South with the move. That bargaining
rights in Andrews and they signed a series of contracts and they went
bad, they had fairly good fringes for that period of time and they had
check-off and they had arbitration. They had from the company the same
benefits, the practical issues that became issues of our strike. And for
whatever reason, at some point, the company decided to take them on.
I've heard that the issue might have been the extension of a contract to
a new plant in Collman, Alabama that the company put up. I don't know.
There is a reference on the issue of subcontracting. And this kind of a
plant, which is basically sewing, subcontracting is a very big important
issue in that type of operation. They had a strike, it was sort of the
reverse of ourse, I believe, in terms of the season. I think that it
started in the summer and ended in the winter. The company tried to take
them into federal court as … over a so-called breach of contract. They
were unable to do that, they lost the case and the union filed some
In Don Smith's law firm up in Florida?
Yeah.
…
He represented the National Labor Relations Board.
Oh.
In action directed against the company and that kind of thing has
happened to us a few times in other locations. We had a circuit court
case back in '49 or '50 in regard to a plant in Union Point and the
Labor Board attorney that argued the case at this circuit court was
named and he later became a partner of the most famous company firm, law
firm in Florida…
So, they were out for several months …
That's my understanding, I'd hate for you to cite that, because I really don't know. E.C. Keherr is now their AFL-CIO civil rights committee representative in the area… and he has been very helpful to us, but I never had a chance to sit down with him and go over the thing blow by blow.
About this time that you are talking about, the company … did things that it said it would … one of the additional things … to give one year contracts… hadn't been there very long … just signed to them at one point … the dissipation of three year contracts …
…
…
Going back into the organizing?
…
Well, we had a series of very heartily contested campaigns in Wellman
Industries, which was 35 miles north north of Andrews and they were
directed by Harold McIver, who was the southern organizer and director
for the IUD and he is fairly active in the Stevens drive now, going full
blast in the Carolinas and he got involved in the Wellman campaign and
[Remainder of this side of the tape inaudible due to the poor
technical quality of the tape]
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
… one of the negatives was that the company was represented by this guy
Bill Smith. And Smith is an old adversary of mine. I spent off and on,
about four years dealing with him for another plant. It's
Could you talk about how a man like Smith can make a difference in negotiating?
Well, there's a formula in negotiations. For beating the union or wearing
the union out and it's very simple. It's a proposal which usually says
no to check-off or dues and no on arbitration of grievances. And then
when you push those companies, they'll concede the right to strike. We
refer to this as the "Blakeney Formula." Whiteford Blakeney is a lawyer
in Charlotte who is the Stevens counsel. He has been since 1963 and in
that period of time, the last ten years, I guess, I have bumped into
clients of his in negotiations for three or four companies. And the
formula is always the same. Well, Smith imitates that formula to a
greater or lesser extent, in both Garco and Oneida, he would not agree
to the check-off and in both cases, he did agree to arbitration. And he
offered us in both cases what I would call a highly restrictive
contract, in terms of workers rights in the plant. Such as, senority
rights and he likes
Once you won the election, you mean.
Yeah. The first big decision from our point of view is do we go after
them. The second is what do we do when we get them and we engage in
bargaining for about a year, less than a year. Before… about six or
eight months before we made a decision that if we could, we would ask
the people to strike. And we then staff the plant out real good. One or
two people and then another one or two staff people. And Washington,
Hope and Benton were the three people in there for some long period of
time. And
The committee of workers, you mean?
Yeah. The negotiating committee. And we had an excellent committee. They were tough. Dorothy Gleason, who comes from the ILG, and …
Chick Cook?
Yeah, the cutter, Richard Cook, they are tough. And black people on the committee, Loran Pope, I would rate her as a very important person. They hadn't had the same experience with the ILG, but they knew what they wanted. So, that was how we made that decision. The major decision for an international union to make is to embark on a strike of this kind in this part of the country.
What kind of a financial burden did you assume for that strike?
Well, we have a strike fund. The strike fund provides in what are called organizing strikes, that's a little misnomer, because we had the plant, we had the bargaining rights, but "organizing strike" in this sense doesn't mean a recognition strike. We've got one of those going on right now, Crossville, Tennessee. Benton, I'm sure, mentioned that.
We've been invited to go over there and …
Yeah, that's quite a thing. But this is really a first contract strike,
that's what I call it. It's different than other kinds of strikes a
union supports, because those strikes are from people who pay union
dues. Now, we've had four or five of those kinds of strikes this year in
my region. But they would be people who had an investment in the union,
if we want to look at things book-keeping wise, and therefore are
getting some of that
Outlaw strike.
Yeah. Sure, and that was with the check-off. The contract was signed in July and we didn't want to ask anybody to pay dues after a six month strike until they had a few paychecks under their belt so that they knew what money was like.
Yeah.
So, we turned in the check-off cards in August and I guess that they have by now have had some deductions from their paychecks. The company takes a while to get those things started.
Were the election of union officers before or after the strike?
After. We don't usually set up a … we ran the strike in terms of union structure with a committee and it was, as I said, an exceedingly good committee. And picket captains. We had the negotiating committee, which was large. I guess that it went ten or twelve people, because we were representing two plants, and then we have picket captains in both locations. And it turned out to be a good structure. And then we had a commissary committee. Well, you've probably heard about these committees. At any rate, going back to the decisions… financial liability would be considerable.
How much did you have to assume for the whole …
I would think between $300,000 and $400,000. This is only in terms of direct financial assistance. I'm not talking about salaries, I'm not talking about staff salaries, I'm not talking about time. This was a major effort by the Textile Workers Union.
This three or four hundred thousand dollars, was that out of the strike fund that you had already, or does that include some of the contributions from other locals?
No, this is international union treasury.
So, there must have been considerable expense beyond that.
There was a lot of money given by different local unions. There was a lot of money given by other international unions and locals. Well, there were substantial amounts. And then we have money given by individuals. But the boycott activities, which accompanied the strike, at this point, you are getting beyond decisions that I would make. These would be decisions by the international union, basically by the general president, Sol Stetin. And it's a very interesting thing, as a new president of the union, he had only been in office since June of '72, he adopted a very aggressive policy in pursuing this target, once we had made the decision on a leader. That we were going to take them on. And it fortunately paid off, we won. The international union put in more energy in pursuing the boycott activity than in any previous strike that I have had any connection with… back to probably Henderson, North Carolina in 1958 to '60.
I remember that one well.
So …
Let me just ask you … this was pretty well a cheif priority for this 1972-73, it was '71 really, campaign, to spend around $600,000 for a strike at a plant of this size. Were there any other efforts of that strength, you know, that the international could not.
Not during that period, no. Particularly within a region. We go from
North Carolina … at that time we went from North Carolina to
That also must be a tough decision.
Yeah, it is, because you are dealing with people. You are asking one group, you know, to wait. And that's a hell of a thing to suggest to people. You don't know what the effect of delaying is. Delaying is almost always helpful to the company, not the union. So, it is important.
We were talking about other kinds of decisions that you would make.
Oh, scads. One of the interesting things of operating a union or taking part in a union is the fact that a union depends more, I would think that it depends more on the character of its representatives than almost any other organization that I can think of. And if you want to accomplish certain results, you think very hard about who is going to be what. Some people are good for some things and some are good for others. And one of the key decisions in this is staffing … and I don't want this to be interpreted as critical of other people involved in the situation, but there are two people who are very, very important during the strike itself. The first one is Benton and the second one was Bush. And Bush… Benton had run two previous strikes. One of then was in Magnet Mills in Clinton, Tennessee and that strike lasted for twenty-four months. And after six months or so, the company closed down the mill. It was a buy by the name of Burd from New York City.
B-U-R-R?
B-U-R-D. A very unusual person. And it was a small plant, well, it
…
No, it was …
Oh, I see …
They then had the traditional weapon and I must say that they use it. At any rate, Benton went through the Kayser-Roth strike in Dayton, Tennessee. That was a very difficult strike, it was entirely different from the Clinton strike, and one of the aftermaths of that strike was that the union was sued and there is now circuit court judgement against us on appeal to the Supreme Court for damages in excess of a million dollars. So, it was a fairly big decision to pick someone from that situation, he was in charge of that strike, and assign him to Oneida. And it's an interesting thing. In the Oneida situation, the things that we were sued for in Dayton did not happen. In fact, the company didn't even get an injunction against us. And in Dayton, we had injunctions coming out our ears and all kinds of arrests and everything else. And so, Benton deserves a lot of credit for reflecting the difference that we were trying, as he felt that we had to have in the conduct of that strike. That was another important decision. The style of strike. And I'm not saying that this was good or bad. It was just the only kind we could have.
Let me just say that as we talked to people down there, the style of
strike that you picked seemed particularly appropriate. It's very good
They talk about that in terms of the steel strike in Georgetown the week before that, as the sherrif and then that being one of the effects of it.
Yeah, when you see that film, I understand you can …
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
… so, staffing was important, and Benton and Bush. Benton aroused a lot of antagonism. That's probably a strong word. There was a lot of internal criticism.
Within the union?
Within a group of the strikers, within the committee, among the folks.
And Bush had been in two other short strikes in the last two years. He's
originally from the steelworkers union out of Manchester, Tennessee and
he's a relatively young guy, he's only 37 or 38 and we wanted someone
who would develop into a good strike man and Bush got chosen. So, he
sort of served an apprenticeship in Andrews. He's in charge of the
strike at
We heard a number of things about him.
Yeah. Crying towel and a piece of cheese for the "rats", you know all the symbolism that it takes to keep things hopping. He's pretty good at that.
Could I just ask about that decision?
Sure.
I was very impressed with how Benton talked about when the strike was going on, but what other ways could he have run the strike? What other decisions could have been made?
Well, it's exactly like any kind of a contest. You are only going to have
so many dollars coming in. That's number one. Number two, really number
one, you've only got so many strikers. This is the scarcest resource
And we have people like that in any group. There are people like that on
the company side, there are people like that among the scabs. And so,
the question is what to do about it and what kind of policies you
advocate and what you don't and what you prohibit and what you don't
talk about or say anything about and so there are all kinds of levels.
And most things that happen, you don't know ahead of time. You hear a
vague report, and maybe something happened, you know. So, this is a big
problem and in long strikes, in 1973 in a state that has very little
labor organization and is unfriendly to organized labor, it is a very
difficult thing to allow violence to develop even without a policy of,
any policy of promoting it, but to allow it to develop and still avoid
being penalized possibly in many different ways. So, that was another
sequence, and Benton was responsible for carrying out that kind of
policy and Bush and any staff rep in there, Washington, Pope and then
the committee. You've got to depend on the committee people to agree.
You've got to convince them of what strategy you are going to follow and
you've got to make it believable and you hope that they will agree and
will wholeheartedly cooperate. If they
Does the tactics, the decision that you have gone through … they worked
at Oneida. I'm sure that it is a situation kind of thing. Do you think
that it would work as you look toward other big campaigns, the Stevens
campaign or whatever the … you take these things a little bit different.
That's one thing I'm wondering, if that is a lesson that you have
learned now, it works successfully and …
Well, I am frankly not enthusiastic about the tactical effect of violence. I don't personally believe in it and regardless of my personal beliefs, I don't see it as an appropriate union policy. I was telling the people over at Crossville, I guess it was, the other Saturday night it was. "If you get drunk on a Saturday night and you fight and you go up before the judge, if anything happens, it's like $25 you know. It's not expensive. But if that was a picket line and you were a union guy, you are not talking about $25, you are talking about how many years you are going to go up and how many thousands of dollars the union is going to be sued for. And so, there are double standards and it is ver difficult for us to beat them and to survive. So, I would suppose that we would explore that and I differe with some. There are a lot of other union people, I suppose that you might call me old school, possibly would agree with that. And possibly some of the new left people might not agree with that. So, I don't know.
Now that you have won the strike at Oneida, what do you see that strike doing for the rest of the region in terms of organizing?
Well, the significance of the Oneida strike, and this is-one of the
reasons why the international backed it, was that it is in the middle of
a cluster of companies. Wellman is one. Little Georgetown Textile with
only seventy people is another. We are in bargaining there. It is on
I have two questions: Why would grape dealer be making underwear, and
number two, how can a company like Devereaux make money, take the '71
year …
Well, I'm not an expert. But, they are making money now because everybody
is under a high level employment. There is quite a bit of available
buying power. The textile industries are a good example. The
unemployment levels in North and South Carolina are 1½, 2½ for example.
In Charlotte, in some of these textile towns, the unemployment level
gets down to 1.3. It gets down as low as it can go and there is a
terrific labor shortage. And this is why those companies are moving down
into the black coastal plain of North and South Carolina, because there
is still those counties. That county down there had very bad poverty.
But all those people are being sucked up by
…
Well, I'm speculating. Because nobody on our side of the table usually
knows what happens, just like they don't know exactly how we make
decisions. And the people who say that they have all the answers is
usually a committee guy, or somebody in the plant who will tell you
that, "we know exactly what happened." Well, that's what they think
happened. Sometimes, they are absolutely right, sometimes it's just in
their minds. So, I'm talking about what I would guess, based on little
scraps of information of one kind or another. I think that they company
was led to believe by the lawyer and by the production manager, the top
people in the company were led to believe that first, people wouldn't
come out. And secondly, when the people did come out, they were led to
believe wouldn't stay out. And if either of those things had been true,
the company's strategy would have been correct, but they were wrong. And
then, the company may have thought, I think that Smith probably thought
this, … in the Garco situation, the plant management was very
paternalistic and the wages and benefits were very high. They are
dealing in an entirely different market and product, including defense
contracts and stuff for the Navy in Charleston and asbestos is a high
price product, you know. And it has a sharp impact on people's life
expectancy and for a lot of different reasons, the wage scale there was
good, and those people never struck. There was a ten day strike that I
didn't have anything to do with. And that was the pattern that Smith was
used to in
…
Yes, we've got a tape account, half an hour.
Yeah. I heard that.
You heard that thing?
…
Yeah, a captive audience so to speak. What we call a captive audience, the climax of a company's anti-union election campaign.
His perception of what was possible there seemed as screwed as it
possibly could be and as talked …
So, at any rate I think …
[END OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE B]
The reason that I asked that question is that we often run up against the
name "Parsons", a banker there in town that was on the board of
directors, so it seems to be at least the Jamestown plant and the
Andrews plant and I'm not sure what other plants and the way that his
bank took to
Well, I heard about him. We tried to talk to him. I think that some of
the staff people did maybe, without any … or at least they sent
Yeah, I've got it …
… R. Fusco.
Is the family around in South Carolina?
There may be, I don't know. My impression was that he came from New York
and I think that his wife is a South Carolinian. He ran for the
What about Erntz (
Urtz. U-R-T-Z. Frank Urtz. He's a very unusual person and I don't like to make a lot of derogatory statements about people. He would… he didn't like negotiations. It was very uncomfortable for him to be in that position and he was supposed to be in all the meetings. I think that he kept bringing the excuses up to the company as to why he shouldn't have to be there, particularly after the strike begin and he became the subject, sort of the main target of the union. And he would sit over, maybe he would face away from the committee and maybe everybody else on the company side would be up here and he would be maybe back. Or after a while, when the strike got to be two months old or more, it was very difficult to get him to say anything. It was obvious that he was uncomfortable and maybe he then figured that his original strategy was not working the way he hoped it would in terms of people not striking.
How important was the animosity against him personally in bringing people
out on the strike? And another question about Mr. Urntz, several people
mentioned that they thought that the company had kept Urtz in that
Well, I don't underestimate Mr. Urtz. I think that he is an highly intelligent man. He was very brusque. You know, there is a style of bosses in industries related to the garment industry which is very tough. And quick and hard and unpolished. And Urtz could be all of those things if he wanted to. On the other hand, you know, he was a smart man and some of his tactis in the campaign were not stupid tactics, you know. He was not an easy person to beat. He used these things that we may think are silly, like the analogy of the family, "this was all family." Well, that happens to be a pretty doggone effective tactic. And the strikers wouldn't admit and the union people wouldn't admit to being members of the family, but it worked for an awful lot of people for quite a long while, because you know, particularly, southern whites transfer family concepts to owners and managers and you can talk about the "code of the hills." Well, there's a code of personal relationships and responsibilities between, in the old style textile communities, between a worker and a man that lives in the white house on the hill and runs the plant. And so, the family analogy is sort of an attempt to project that kind of an image. The father may spank you, but he will also feed you and direct you in what to do, but he will also look after you. I guess the reaction to Urtz in retrospect, I'm sure, must be very big and the people are talking.
Oh, it certainly is.
But it wasn't all that clear at the beginning. There were a lot of people who disliked him.
He's been made an object of ridicule and …
Yeah.
And people say that he is sort of hiding himself at the mill now and afraid to be seen, partly because he has been demoted and partly because he is too proud. But they apparently sort of enjoy looking at him and making him feel uncomfortable.
That's too bad. Well, there was a report at the end of the strike that … the company was going to … after a period of time, you know, companies don't like to yield obvious changes. They like to do it by stages. And there was a report that he was sort of going to become a trouble shooter, or go on the road as a technical consultant to sales or whatever, be phased out of the Andrews scene. I don't know whether that will come true or not.
Talking about tactics and results, two things. One is that they did move over to Georgetown. Seemingly a stupid thing to do about six years ago when they moved, out of the Andrews community, because that community is so small. If he had stayed there, at one point he would have been much greater than he is now. But you talked about tactics that he was able to use successfully, or that companies are able to use successfully. What were some of those that had some effect?
Well, the company absorbed, I think, most of the ILGWU leadership.
Tisdale, a little British woman who is the personnel officer for the
company now, was an ILG member. The former president of the local, the
woman … I don't know whether you bumped into her or not … she was the
number one person on the ILGWU organizing campaign. The ILG organizers
gave her the cards and she said, "When we need you, we'll send for you."
And she signed up the whole plant. That woman was on the company side in
our campaign. Now, the interesting thing is that a lot of companies
would have fired or gotten rid of every strong ILG leader
What exactly did ILG's existence there prove?
I'm not entirely clear about that, I don't know. It was current enough so
that when we did make a decision to go in, there wasn't any formal
cut-off of their bargaining. Now, one way to stop bargaining is to let
it die, you know, inactivity and if you don't exercise your bargaining
rights, you don't keep them. So, one thing we did, when the people said
that they wanted to organize, we sent word to the ILG and they sent up a
staff rep and we had a staff rep. Roper. This was when Roper was still
in organizing and we met, they met with the people and they let the
staff people know which union they would like to come back in and help
them. The ILG said that "if they would like you folks to help them,
fine. More power to you." …
…
One of the things that we are not very clear on is when this all began.
You talked about the staff people coming down and …
Right.
But now when it came to a decision of this magnitude, who was going
Anybody who would come. Anybody that had enough guts to show up.
Who all showed up at first?
I don't know. As I said, I think that R.L. was the man who was present at that meeting and I believe Roper and I think that he at that point was working for Harold McIver as an organizer and he didn't stay there through the election. It was Washington … you didn't get a chance to talk with him?
Well, we're going to.
Are you going over there?
We hope so.
Well, o.k., there was him and …
…
Oh, you're going to Crossville, well, that's great.
…
Well, Washington was a black guy out of Mills and he's sort of an old
style cotton mill type when he started, but he is pretty sophisticated.
He's become more polished and he's developing, and Pope I think, were
the two guys and really interested in the organizing. They would be
worth talking to because they have stayed, Washington stayed in that
area for three years before the strike started. I'm not counting that
time. He went through a couple of Wellman campaigns and this campaign
and I think that he was also on Santee, So, these two guys were part of
four winning elections in a row. For the Textile Workers Union. That was
a string of wins down there largely based on blacks, black but yes votes
and that is a pretty fantastic string. Now, unfortunately, none of these
outfits
In talking about those places where they had voted for the union but you still had difficulty in negotiating with the company. You said that there are some types of things that you can do to keep the union there and once you are there you're not going to go away. What sort of things can you do when you don't have the financial support to strike but you want to keep your presence?
Well, one thing you do, well, obviously, where you are in this kind of
situation, you've got to set up good communications with the people.
Now, that's a very hard thing for a union. You never have enough staff
to go around, so you are always wanting to take someone from one place
and start something else. It depends on what your value system is. Now,
usually you measure production by election wins and that conflicts with
what we are talking about. Because these are really finishing up things,
really the best definition of organizing is the number of new dues
payers under contract in the plant. The whole process that Andrews has
now gone through. O.K., but you have got to establish credibility with
people and you've got to keep it. You never cut corners, status quo situations and when you get into
a real long pull, it's a little different. You've got to be able to last
with all kinds of disappointments or delays. So, that's one thing and
you've got to gear people to that.
[END OF TAPE 2, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 3, SIDE A]
… so, if you tell them what's going to happen and you say, "Well, this isn't good," or "Here's what we would like to do, but we didn't get that much." Well, then they'll start standing up. People can face a lot of adversity if you treat them as adults. Now, there are tactics that you use to prevent the company from having an election, for example. You've got the presumption of bargaining rights for a year. That's what you get with certification. Now, when the year is up, the company has a shot at you, if they want it. If you've got them involved in unfair labor practices, you can't have an election (even) if you want one where you have charges pending against the company. The Board won't hold an election without "laboratory conditions." Well, if you are …
That means that you are pretty sure that you will win, if you withold an election.
Well, once you win the election, there's no advantage to you, usually, in
having another one. It's just like having won a hundred dollars, why put
it back on the line where you might lose it. Winning a second time
doesn't help you any. It just gives you what you had when you won the
first time. So, you want to preserve your bargaining rights. You use
unfair labor practices. That's a way of doing that. You get into a
strike, one of the key events of the Oneida strike, we had just filed
charges against them. The first charges we filed in July about
bargaining, not about the election. The frist charges, negotiations
began in January and February of '72. The first charge was filed in
July. We got a decision on those charges and a hearing in October and
they were still pending when the strike began. We ultimately won those,
but this did not make the strike, which began on January 15, 1973, a
"unfair labor practice strike." An unfair labor practice strike has to
be a strike that began or was converted into a ULP strike because the
bad things the company did made the workers want to shut it down as a
protest and so, we filed some more charges. And these related to the
bargaining and everything else that we thought were violations and the
Board issued a complaint. But the complaint recognized there was a
strike but didn't say that it was a ULP strike. And we got the Board in
June to issue an amendment to the complaint. The amendment was that
certain activity, matter of fact, it was some of Urtz's letters. He put
out two letters at the very beginning of the strike. One was on the 16th
of January, I think, and one on the 24th. And those letters the Board
held to be an attempt at presenting the company's
But in this case they tell me that there are a third to a fourth of scabs who are still in the plant.
Oh yeah. That's true. We were running very close at the end of the strike. The company had hired a lot of people.
One of the things that really made it for you is the fact that they were getting a lot of their material back for defects and so forth.
Yeah, that's right. But … so, use of Unfair Labor Practices is
significant as a survival tactic and then you've got to be ingenious in
negotiations. Negotiating this kind of a contract is entirely different
from any other kind of a negotiation. You take positions not in regard
to economics necessarily, but in regard to other matters. Its effect on
people, its effect on the Labor Board cases, you know, it's like signals
in bridge. I don't play bridge, but you know, it's a language, it's a
form of symbols and so on. And then, there are a lot of
How long were you prepared to stay out at Oneida?
I don't know the answer to that question.
It's a tough issue to deal with.
A lot of people said that they weren't going back until there was a contract.
Well, that's what people on a strike should say. But that isn't what
determines the length of a strike. Those are the good people whom you
were talking to. You know, you've got all kinds of things going on, as
you can imagine. One rule of thumb in strikes, general strikes, not
special kinds, is when they get to be 50%, take a hard look at it. In
other words, when 50%, the employment in plant, no matter where it comes
from, whether it comes from the original group of people or whether it
comes from replacements, strikebreakers, when it gets up to half of the
pre-strike employment, you are getting into very deep water. One
advantage that we had in this strike, it takes thirteen weeks to train a
sewer. Now we had a lot of textile operations that are very skilled and
we have some that aren't skilled. Sewing is technically a garment, you
know, an operation associated with a garment plant rather than in
textiles, but we've got other textile operations where you can be
trained in a short period of time. We've got some that take a year to
learn, loom fixing, how to mechanically adjust a weaving machine. But it
was very helpful to us going in there in that it took thirteen weeks and
you figure out the
They had a limited number of training machines.
No, that's a sewing machine, so they had a lot of sewing machines.
I think that it is in knitting where they have smaller machines that they train on.
Knitting, yeah, machines are scarce and one worker runs several. Circular or flat knit and they probably use instructors and they probably train them on the first shift, or they may even have a training room, I don't know.
…
Well, it's a different kind of work, because she would be instructing.
She has been wanting for years to …
Yeah, well, they could do that. These companies are, you know, their whole piece rate system shows up in that sewing. It is a tough system. They keep track of piece rate. Before the strike, the minimum was $1.60 and they gave us a list of people and how many people on the piece rate were not making $1.60. Now, they can't pay them less, so, they get involved in something called "make-up pay." And they don't like that. They are paying for work not produced. And you take a company like Allied Chemical or U.S. Steele or something, they begin people at $2.50 you know, and train them for however long it takes, but this is part of this very tight, penny-pinching deal. The hosiery industry and the apparel industry are characterized by these …
Low profit margin?
Yeah. Very tight. And they can go broke and it is their money, and you know. They bid on things at a tenth of a cent a dozen, the piece rates are set at four decimal places. It's a very stingy kind of …
I think it's time to stop, don't you.
… the Board holds the elections and they also run the unfair labor
practices, so they get involved in that. Now, the only way that the
Board gets into this is through 885 type charges and hell, there are a
lot of unions that don't even know what an 885 is. Well, they know what
it is, but there isn't any systematic record kept, that I know about,
where a union has been certified and is unable to get a significant
contract to stay alive. And I'm telling you that the smart anti-union
lawyers and the die-hard companies using this device more successfully
than any other part of the whole process …
I guess it depends on what kinds of methods you are interested in using,
but you can get a list from a regional office. We've got a regional
office and a board in Winston-Salem, we've got one in Atlanta.
Winston-Salem covers the Carolinas and that's a good one to pick. You
can can get a list from them, I assume, of all certifications. That
would be the boards, successful completion and certified bargaining
agents or units. And then I suppose that it would be possible, either by
writing the internationals, which could be a chore, or maybe in some
other way, maybe by some government report form. We have the report
forms from local unions are required. Financial report forms. The
intitial labor-management report forms go into the constitution of the
local and the by-laws and etc. You only put that in when you are in
business, usually. You are
…
Ed Todd, yeah. I don't know to what extent … I'm sure that he has some cases, I think, but they are very scarce up North. They happen here. That would make a really fascinating project, if you really went into it, it would take a lot more than one person.
Oh sure.
It would be significant.
One thing that …
And it happens to big names, it doesn't just happen to us. We are a
relatively small union. It happens to the Teamsters, it happens to the
Steel Workers and it happens to the United Automobile Workers … they
will run across companies that will do this and it's peculiar. We are a
little bit better at it, because it happens often enough so that we try
to
Yeah.
Well, do you know the UTW vs. TWUA …
No, I just knew that it was there.
O.K. In the beginning, there was a UTW. When John L. came along and set
up, TWOC was set up by
What would that mean? I'll tell you why I'm talking to them, aside from
having spoken to
I think that there were some contests up there at the time of the
Southern organizing drive, which would be '46 to '49. I don't know how
far back was organized. I really never had too much to do with them. But
the international is not strong. It furnishes weak leadership. The style
of a union depends on what these important locals want
He does?
And I guess that he would be out of the, maybe the …
…
It's wasteful to have two unions. We have done one thing, we've never repeated the bad experience that we had in '52 when there was a split and our executive vice-president tried to take a lot of our members into the UTW from TWUA. That produced a very wasteful period of time.
Has this been written about, because I looked to try and find a decent history, or a history at all of the TWUA and couldn't find one.
There are a few doctoral things like that. There has been nothing in book
form. There is one book called, Nine Lives for Labor,
or something like that, which was written by some people in our
union.
Who wrote that?
I don't know. They have copies in New York.
Isn't there a doctoral dissertation or something like that?
Yeah, that's at Chapel Hill and it's a history of the Textile Workers
Union or something like that and it was written by a guy named John
Kennedy and he was an economics student and he taught at the University
At St. Olaf's?
It might be St. Olaf's.
…
The second one was in economics too. It's one of these more modern
models, you know, that kind of business. [Remainder of this side of the tape inaudible due to the poor
technical quality of the tape. About a three minute period.]
[END OF TAPE 3, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 3, SIDE B]
… would be Eden, North Carolina.
…
Fieldcrest Mills are headquartered there. And TWUA had bargaining rights in those plants probably since 1939. We have a number of locals in the two states whose bargaining would go back to either '37, '39, in that period.
What would be the most important?
Fieldcrest at Eden would be one, Cone plants in Greensboro. It's a total
of five thousand people in little towns and in Greensboro. That's not a
success story. The family was a Jewish family and their reaction was
different from the more southern … they were more progressive at
We went through there.
Where people are very stable and it took us two elections, three now,
because we have never gotten a check-off. Nor arbitration out of the
company. And that's big, it's twenty-five hundred people and it's a
family, the Chatham family. Their father was a Congressman, you know.
It's good stuff. And the people are different. The people are very good
people. They stuck with the union with very little success. We just won
another election. The company tried to doubt our bargaining majority.
Currently we've got a contract. That was the alternative location to
Andrews. We settled it without that, but we didn't get much. There are a
lot of other places. If you wanted to Burlington Industries locale, you
know. One place that I belong to as a union member … Erwin, North
Carolina. It was started by the Dukes when the Dukes owned the tobacco
trust or whatever it was. And the story is that he rode in a
We could take fifteen more suggestions and …
Well, you ought to get an area … Durham is an important historical
textile center and in Durham, the other Erwin Mills. And we've got this
local called "Golden Belt", which they closed down the cotton mill. We
had three local unions in the same company, different products. The bag
mill and the paper printing is still there and it's an American Tobacco
subsidiary. You ought to find some places where blacks are important,
you know. Historically they weren't, but there was a company called
Durham Hosiery in Durham, which is no longer there. They have moved and
they knocked us out of the box when they moved over
Wake Forest, North Carolina?
Yeah, it's just north of there on U.S. 1, I think. It's where Wake Forest University used to be before they moved.
I travelled the state for the North Carolina Fund for two years.
Oh did you?
So, I'm trying to get some North Carolina towns besides Eden that …
Well, did you know George Esser?
Yeah.
He's now head of the Southern Regional Council. I didn't know him up here
on the Fund, but I knew him … I met him a little bit since he became
part of the Council. Way down east, well, we've got a good local in
Wilmington. It's a northern runaway which we successively organized and
we've got a good job for those people. It's called Timme Corporation. It
only goes back … it's almost exactly like the Oneida in its time. It
came down in '56 from Rhode Island. It was organized by an independent
French union up there. I bargained out the first contract with the old
man who is now retired. A real old character. He was good enough to
reverse his feelings after we won the election. And that is a success
story, I think you could say. Probably there are hosiery, you know, the
different products start having some significance because of the
different kinds of work. And like High Point is a hosiery town as far as
textiles are concerned. Burlington has a hell of a lot of hosiery
workers in it. And that's sort of a … it's a little like Gastonia only
one notch higher maybe. Gaston has thirty thousand yar workers and there
are weaving plants. They've got a few, but that wasn't it. Yarn, you
know,
How about the mountains? Other than …
Yeah. Marion, let's see … American in Asheville, we've got a finishing plant up there called Cranston Prints, at Fletcher up there. There are a few. There are some hosiery plants and things like that, Robbins, North Carolina … I think that there is a Glen Raven Hosiery Mill and there is a Glen Raven plant in Burnsville. We've got the Blakeney formula going on there. Roper is tearing his hair out. He's the negotiator there. There are not really big hosiery centers in the mountains. They spot them around. That's about it.
Let me ask this other question then, you talked about labor lawyers that
were …
You are talking about textile companies, management?
Yeah.
All right. Burlington, number one. And then you have got Cannon and
you've got some Stevens plants here, enough that they should be
involved. Roanoke Rapids has three thousand Stevens workers. Then you
have got Cone, Fieldcrest, Lowenstein. M. Lowenstein. That's more
You mentioned the workers at the Garco plants, abestos and rubber.
Yeah.-
That's considered somewhat related to the textile industry?
It is textiles.
It's textiles?
The rubber isn't, but the abestos is carded, spun, woven.
That's another way of encouraging this kind of work to be done. It would
be to take, as we visit the various plants, to look for example, at the
different contractual provisions, the history of how these contracts are
put together …
It's an interesting idea. It would be very hard for you to gage that from
contract provisions. Because a big employer can afford to do things and
a little employer can't. What you have to remember is that only 8% of
the work force is organized in North Carolina. It may be a
Has a decent study been done of the textile industry in North Carolina?
Not that I am aware of. Now, bysinoisis, you know, talking about that …
the State Department of Health in North Carolina has done the best work
on that subject of, well, it would be as good as anybody in Yale
I was going to ask why a state university would …
They are the State Department of Health.
Health.
Now, that's different.
It sure is.
And wouldn't you think that in this state they would be the creature of
the industry? But by golly, they've got enough guts, I don't know who it
was, to do a numerically significant studies in at least two plants. I
think that one of them was Fieldcrest. It's really a compliment to
Fieldcrest that they let them in, because you know, when this one guy
came over, the only place that he could get in was the federal cotton
mill in the penitentiary in Atlanta. A guy from England, I can't
remember his name. The impact of the industry and its style and some of
the job characteristics. It has some unusual characteristics, like
golfing (
What it is going to be, is closer to some kind of workers history, …
END OF INTERVIEW