Norma Rae

Colorado State University-Global

ABSTRACT

This film is based on the real life story of Crystal Lee Sutton and is set in the Southern mill-town of Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina in the summer of 1978. Sally Field plays the lead role of Norma Rae (Crystal Lee Sutton) fighting poor working conditions at the O. P. Henley Company in 1978 (Grevatt, 2009). Norma Rae and the mill workers were mistreated by the mill owners and were paid low, unfair wages, and had to deal with their own poor health which was a direct result of the poor conditions in the textile mill. During this time Norma was fearful for her family's health and becomes aware of a labor organizer trying to bring the union to the mill. Norma decides to join forces with the union organizer, Reuben Warshovsky. Management saw her as a threat and ordered her out of the mill, but not before she inspired the mill workers.  It is a great story of righting a wrong that finally brings the mill workers together.  The workers finally come together and vote in, and start, a branch of the Textile Workers Union of America.

INTRODUCTION

The story of Norma Rae is based on actual events and tells how a fast talking, middle class union organizer named Reuben Warshovsky comes to a small southern mill town to organize a branch of the textile workers union. The textile mill, O.J. Henley was run with low, unfair wages, and unhealthy working conditions. In the beginning Reuben wasn't having any luck, but finally landed the backing of a female mill worker. He inspired Norma Rae and she joined forces with Reuben in an attempt to right the poor working conditions at the mill. Norma was a tough, southern middle class working woman who felt stuck in her impoverished existence. She has a rough relationship with her father Vernon who came off as being overprotective and extremely critical of her life. She was trapped with a job going nowhere with two teenage children. She has very little time for anything else but with Reuben's pushing; she finally joins him in his efforts to bring a textile workers union to the mill. Norma is not just about union organizing she is very concerned with the class struggle and class solidarity of the mill workers.

WHAT MOTIVATES THE WORKERS TO FORM A UNION

The organizing campaign begins in the film with the arrival of Reuben Warshovsky from New York as a representative of the Textile Workers Union of America. He checked into a room at the local hotel, and setup a campaign headquarters where he printed pamphlets that he would pass out to the mill during their shift change. This began the drive to unionization development and to raise interest and cultivate that interest into new members.

To remedy the unsatisfactory conditions many of the mill workers wanted to form a union.  Norma Rae and Reuben were the leaders of this group.  They worked to spread the word to other workers about the possibility of creating a better environment. Together they stressed the fact that the workers did not have to continue working in these unpleasant conditions and that they had the power to initiate change in their favor.  Norma Rae and Reuben Warshovsky emphasized the power of “safety in numbers.” If they would all band together as one then they would have a better chance at creating more of a voice in the work place (Fiorito & Jarley, 2012).  “That’s what a union is, one,” said Norma Rae.