Correspondents' Correspondence
SPARKS, PHILIP
Correspondent's Correspondence BRIEF TAKEOUTS OF MORE THAN PERSONAL INTEREST FROM LETTERS RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS Southern Stalemate Andrews, S.C.—From the time of the American Revolution until...
...Middleton's annual income of $3,300 is well below the poverty line...
...1973, some 13 months after contract talks began...
...But the company can be counted on to hold out as long as possible, given that the nation's labor laws still allow employers to circumvent their workers' right to organize.—Philip Sparks...
...In fact, by 1840 it was harvesting fully half of the rice grown in the United States...
...The Mary Middletons of Oneita Knitting Mills originally voted for a union because they wanted to break the poverty cycle that has trapped their people since the days their forebears were brought here as slaves...
...The rice plantations were broken up after the Civil War, but the large number of blacks who stayed retained their taste for rice, still the staple item in the native diet...
...As of this writing, neither side has budged...
...Many of her friends at the plant receive food stamps, as she does, even while working full-time...
...They voted to walk off the job rather than be perpetually denied the American dream of a decent living...
...Last September, after nine months of negotiations, the government issued a formal complaint against Oneita Mills for "unfair labor practices," refusing to bargain in "good faith" with the TWUA, and making unilateral changes in working conditions at the plant...
...With a daughter also employed by Oneita, she can hardly make ends meet for the 11 members of her family...
...the union has sought, unsuccessfully, to draw up a contract with the company...
...The largest single source of income is provided by the Oneita Knitting Mills in Andrews, the only plant of any size in the town, with 900 workers, predominantly black and female...
...Census, the county's population was 85 per cent black...
...It will probably be a long strike...
...Correspondent's Correspondence BRIEF TAKEOUTS OF MORE THAN PERSONAL INTEREST FROM LETTERS RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS Southern Stalemate Andrews, S.C.—From the time of the American Revolution until the Civil War, Georgetown County, located on the seacoast north of Charlestown, was a great rice-producing region...
...When cotton and tobacco plantations began to fail elsewhere in the state as the soil gave out, the lowland rice fields continued to prosper, for they were renewed annually by controlled flooding...
...Today the county is poor, slowly switching from an agrarian to an industrial economy, and its people are hard hit by unemployment...
...According to the 1860 U.S...
...On January 15...
...The case of Mary Middleton, whose ancestors toiled in the rice fields for 80 years, is not unusual: She has worked four years at the mills and barely earns the minimum wage of $1.60 an hour...
...In a secret-ballot election conducted by Federal officials in November 1971, Oneita's employes voted to be represented by the Textile Workers Union of America (TWUA) for purposes of collective bargaining...
...Her children, all of whom were natural-born in her three-room house, have never been to a doctor...
...Thus, confronting a company that is determined not to sign a union contract, the employes felt they had no choice but to push the issue to a showdown...
...700 Oneita workers met in a hall about half a mile from their plant and voted to go on strike in protest of the company's continuing failure to negotiate seriously...
...To provide the large workforce necessary for raising this highly labor-intensive crop, thousands of slaves were imported...
...Since January of 1972...
...Though Federal law provides that antiunion employers can be censored by the National Labor Relations Board, effective remedies are nil...
...Many of the women who work at Oneita have come off surrounding farms, and wages for most of them range from $1.80-$2.00 an hour...
Vol. 56 • April 1973 • No. 8
