J.P. Wouldn't Do That

"We've been working all our lives in the cotton mills, and you can't take no more. I just wish they'd get somebody up there that's got some sense to run the mill without trying to push the help to death." --Lillian Harrell, J.P. Stevens worker

J.P. STEVENS, the country's second largest textile industry, is notorious for its unethical and illegal labor practices. It pays its workers less than any other industry in the country. It combats workers' attempts to organize with blatant force or threats of dismissal. It lays off workers incapacitated with the brown lung disease contracted in the mills, refusing to provide compensation. But J.P. Stevens is not solely responsible for its workers' inability to organize against these abuses. Rise Gonna Rise argues that Stevens' workers are also prevented from organizing by their own nostalgic feelings and deference.

Rise Gonna Rise describes the part that J.P. Stevens has played in the life of its workers through first hand accounts by the workers and through-documented evidence of corporate mismanagement and corruption. The personal narrative reveals the workers' wariness of unions which they believe would destroy the family like relationship they share with the corporation. Its shows as well the workers phenotypic deference fro a company that employed their forebearers and will continue to be the town's major source of employment in the future. The workers'; worker's words leave the reader with the impression that unionization of J.P. Stevens has been stymied as much by the workers as it has been by the company's unscrupulous efforts.

ONE RETIRED laborer, wheezing with cotton-induced brown lung disease like many retired J.P. Stevens workers, tells of her childhood visists to her parents in a Stevens plant. Since skipping through the cotton dust around the plant as a child, she had known she would work for Stevens, like everyone else in Roanoke Rapids, N.C. Although she sees Stevens as a paternal company, she condemns it for paying her less than minimum wage and then forcing her to retire because of the brown lung disease she contracted while working in their mills. Despite her bitterness, she is reluctant to fully support unionization and looks to government assistance instead. She is held back from outright rebellion by her life-long respect for J.P. Stevens and her own self-delusions:

Its funny but I never thought of myself as living in a mill village, though I suppose I did. The houses all around us were millhouses. My husband says that in some towns, mill people were called 'cotton-mill trash.' Well, I guess maybe they were here too, but as far as we were concerned, we didn't ever hear it.

SUCH DEFERENCE for J.P. Stevens humanizes the inhumane reputation the company has earned among unionized workers across the country. Company workers personify their employer. Seduced by corporation propaganda, Stevens' workers personify the company, calling it "Stevenson" or "J.P." When told of its efforts to increase production at the expense of its employees, Conway notes that one worker remarked, "Oh, J.P. wouldn't do that." It follows then that since 1963, Stevens workers have voted against unionization in 13 of 14 elections held in the company's plants.

But as soon as the reader is certain of the workers' distrust of unions and the success of Stevens' anti-union propaganda campaigns, Conway injects the National Labor Relations Board evidence. In 1972, the Board determined that in these elections, the workers voted under coersion and the threat of illegal firing. The Board also identified instances of price fixing, wiretapping, tax fraud, violation of health and safety standards, are racial discrimination by Stevens officials.

The worker's almost total indifference to this verified illegality is a fascinating phenomenon, one rarely analysed in terms of labor injustices and ripe Conway's analysis falls short, leaving the reader with simply a sense of frustration. Stevens employees are torn between contradicting impulses of self-interest and blind sentalmentalism, their vision of a happy past and a strong faith that the future will be better. Stevens workers are bewildered, complacent, and left to die slowly with brown lung disease and blank disillusionment, but Conway doesn't ask why.

Conway calls her narrative "the relentless witnessing of ravages lives," but the impact of the narrative is has far less impact than the description implies. Trite and ultimately tiresome, the structure of the book prevents Conway from articulating the problems within the unionization movement itself. By randomly panning workers' sentiments, Conway skirts a critical analysis of the factors in the workers' minds and society that obstruct their unionization attempts.

Stevens workers turn away from unionizatior because their vision of J.P. Stevens is one of the small town textile mill, organizing picnics, handing out holiday bonuses, paternally providing jobs, money and security. Ironically, their gasping and wheezing testimonies of Stevens unjustices are dominated by reflections of their mill town's golden past. The reader is frustrated by their reluctance to act, almost as much as by Conway's failure to articulate the feelings that have keep Stevens workers from shaping a better life.