
          Time and Time Again: The Women, the Union and the Vanity
Factory
          By Mclendon, PaulaPaula Mclendon
          Vol. 6, No. 5, 1984, pp. 8-17
          
          Sarah Boykin: Mr. Hundley was the plant manager when we first
started organizing. They told us that he had found a better job. But I
don't believe that because he had twenty years in with Vanity
Fair. And he went to that cabinet shop right up the road. I don't
believe he would have thrown away that many years.
          I think they got rid of Mr. Hundley because he didn't have t in his
heart to do the things that Vanity Fair likes done to their
employees. He was a Christian man. He was a good man too. When we
started organizing, everything changed. They had to get rid of him
because he was too easy, too soft. They had to get rid of him. They
gave us Larry Windham. That was the meanest man that ever walked in
Vanity Fair.
          Emily Woodyard: Mr. Hundley respected the women. He wanted to get
the work out, but he wouldn't ride you like you were a machine or
something. The rest of them did. It didn't matter to them as long as
they got their quota out and they looked good on that little piece of
paper that came out.
          
            In 1976, Sarah Boykin, Emily Woodyard, Wilda Blackmon and
Rebecca Blackmon led a successful union campaign in Jackson, Alabama,
at Clarke Mills, a division of Vanity Fair Mills, manufacturers of
women's apparel. Local 118 of the International Ladies Garment Workers
Union (ILGWU) came into being by the narrow margin of sixteen votes
out of over five hundred cast. The union was bitterly resisted by the
Clarke Mills' management and by the parent VF Corporation, a non-union
multi-plant operation that employed approximately eight thousand women
in south Alabama and the Florida panhandle.
          
          
            In 1979, these four women, textile workers each with over a
decade of experience, sat down to talk with me about how and why they
came to form a union. 
          
          
            In 1982, after a company counter-campaign in which Vanity
Fair employed a considerable array of intimidators against union
supporters, Local 118 was decertified. 
          
          
            In 1984, I asked Sarah, Emily, Wilda and Rebecca for another
interview together. They talked about the circumstances which led to
the loss of their union. They considered the various wiles and
coercions of Southern manufacturers like Vanity Fair. They also talked
about themselves and their co-workers--what they had learned, and what
they had gained from all they had given to the union
campaign. 
            
          
          
            The Setting
          
          
            Jackson, a town of six thousand people' sits along Alabama's
Tombighee River in Clarke County, about sixty miles north of
Mobile. Clarke was a cotton plantation county in the antebellum
South. Fifty percent of its 1850 population of 9,800 consisted of
slaves. Today, blacks comprise forty- tree percent of the county's
total population of 28,000. 
          
          
            Nearly half of Clarke County's black citizens live in
poverty. 
          
          
            During the twentieth century, Clarke County's agricultural
production has undergone a long and steady decline. In the decades
since World War 11, commercial pulpwood and timber interests, together
with Clarke Mills, have dominated the local economy. Ninety percent of
the county's land is forested; only eight percent is devoted to
farming. As in many coastal plains counties of the South, a few
individuals and companies have assembled large landholdings into pine
plantations ranging from ten-thousand to seventy-thousand acres
each. Clarke leads Alabama's counties in the yearly cutting of pine
lumber and is near the top in pulpwood production.
          
          
            Scotch Lumber, Allied Paper Company and Clarke Mills together
account for more than three-fourths of the county's three-thousand
manufacturing jobs. 
          
          
            Since its beginnning in 1939, Vanity Fair's Clarke Mills has
drawn its workforce from local women. Today it is the largest employer
of women in a county where only sixty-three percent of adult whites
and twenty-six percent of black adults have high school
diplomas. Residents are quick to acknowledge Vanity Fair's significant
role in the local economy, yet the low-wage, labor-intensive industry
has hardly brought prosperity. 
          
          
            The decision to try to organize a union at Clarke Mills arose
not out of any one disagreement with Vanity Fair but came as a result
of accumulated frustrations. Women found it increasingly difficult to
support families on wages of $2.65 an hour. Retirement and health
benefits were inadequate. "Used to be," recalls an elderly former
employee, "your retirement check would just about pay your light
bill."
          
          
            Workers expressed dissatisfaction with workplace policies
such as the longstanding practice of mandatory overtime and the
partiality shown by supervisors in determining work assignments and in
selecting those workers who went home during lay-offs. Workers could
not make complaints without fear of reprisal. The company, it was
said, maintained an "open door policy": the door was open and you went
out of the plant if you disagreed with management. 
          
          
            Except for my narrative background and occasional bridging of
time and topics, the women's words and their perspectives fill the
following pages. Their voices are joined occasionally by that of
Richard Boykin (Sarah's husband) and Eileen Brown, the ILGWU organizer
who worked in the Clarke Mills effort. 
          
          Sarah Boykin: The company had been in Jackson thirtysomething
years. They had all the time they needed to prove themselves and they
didn't. There would never have been changes without our local . You
would either have done what they said or you would have been at
home.
          
          I never had any trouble with Vanity Fair. They had never done
anything to me that I didn't let them know how I felt about it. But
there were so many people there that I would see crying--just crying
to no end. They were so upset they'd just lose all control. That would
upset me. I don't know; I have a very tender heart for other people. I
don't like to see people mistreated. And there are those--somebody
could be standing over them with a gun and they're not going to try
and defend themselves.
          I would come home and tell my husband about it. I would just cry
and he would ask me, "Why are you crying?"
          I said, "Because if you had seen it then you would cry."
          He said, "Well don't cry. What you need to do is get a union." So
that's how we started.
          I was the one who first contacted the union. This was around March,
1976. I spoke with my husband's union representative, Herbert
Belt. [Sarah's husband, Richard, worked for the United Parcel Service,
represented by the Teamsters.] Mr. Belt told me his union did not
handle garment workers. He let the ILGWU know I wanted to talk with
them. I guess it must have been probably a couple of weeks after the
first mention of the union a Mr. Ashley was supposed to have met
us. He didn't show. A couple of us carried the meeting on.
          The first time we met it was just a few of us. We didn't sign
anything, but we wanted to have phone numbers so we could keep in
touch. At the fourth meeting we had thirty-five to show. Sometimes it
would be less members, sometimes more.
          Wilda Blackmon: But this too. The people wouldn't come out. They
were still afraid to say "union" in the plant.
          Sarah: If you said "union" to one lady she would say, "Oh don't
talk to me about that. " She said, "They don't even allow you to say
union in this plant."
          Emily Woodyard: They tried to have a working condition where you
were scared to talk to your neighbor.
          Rebecca Blackmon: That was supposed to have been mandatory at one
time--that you could not talk during work hours.
          You sit there for twenty years doing everthing the company says
without questioning, you're not going to change overnight. You have to
be shown that even though you are standing up and saying, "Hey, look,
you didn't treat me right," that the company can't eat you. You're
going to have to be shown time and time again.
          Emily: I had been working at Vanity Fair since I was eighteen. It
was 1974. I was running late as usual. I had my card, trying to clock
it. It was one minute till. We had a three minute whistle and a seven
o'clock whistle. And there was a man who said, "You're not clocking
that card." The man grabbed me and would not let me clock in.
          That never left me. I made the statement if I ever found a way to
do anything to make it better at Vanity Fair I'd do it.
          Wilda: I went to work there twenty-three years ago. The day I
really made up my mind to look into the union was when one of the
engineers came out--I was doing a most difficult job. I mean it was
almost impossible to do and I had found a better way to do it. He came
out and found out the way I was sewing it and asked me, "Who do you
think you are to change my method?" I had to go back to his way, a
harder way. That's the day I started looking at the union.
          Rebecca: What motivated me was the income. I didn't think I'd get
rich working under a union but I thought we could get a better
wage.
          
            The Company
          
          
            The VF Corporation designs, manufactures and markets apparel
through three wholly-owned subsidiari--in addition to Vanity Fair
Mills--H.D. Lee, Inc. and Kay Windsor, Inc. Vanity Fair Mills posted
profits of $15.5 million on sales of $184 million in 1982. H.D. Lee's
eight production sites in north Alabama, combined with Vanity Fair's
eleven plants in south Alabama, make the VF Corporation one of the
state's largest private employers--with some 8,500 workers.
          
          
            Vanity Fair Mills originated in Reading, Pennsylvania in 1899
as Reading Glove and Mitten Manufacturing Company. After several
changes of names and production lines, Vanity Fair began shifting its
manufacturing to the non-union South in 1937 by opening plant in
Monroeville, Alabama--thirty-five miles east of Jackson. By the late
1950s, the company had ceased all its Pennsylvania
production.
          
          
            The opening of a textile plant in 1939 in Jackson, then a
town of three thousand, offered many white women their first
opportunity to work for non-farm wages. Vanity Fair's Clarke Mills
began by producing silk stockings, but soon converted to rayon and
nylon lingerie. The plant is still known to older citizens of the area
as the "silk mill. " With the construction of a new sewing facility in
Jackson in 1975, the original factory became the site of knitting
operations, producing Vanity Fair fabric.
          
          
            One long-time resident recalled the subsistence farming that
was still familiar when Vanity Fair arrived. "Folks didn't have
nothing to do with. You couldn't make a penny. Just what little if you
hoed or picked cotton. That's all there was. The silk mill took a lot
of folks out of the field."
          
          
            The company played upon this historical sense of gratitude
and dependence among older white women workers when organizing efforts
began in 1976.
          
          
            Following the Monroeville and Jackson plants, Vanity Fair
built factories in several similar south Alabama towns: Atmore, Bayou
La Batre, Butler, Demopolis, Luverne and Robertsdale. So hospitable
was Alabama for Vanit Fair that the company now runs only two
out-of-state plants, both in the Florida panhandle. At every location,
their workforce is overwhelmingly female. 
            
          
          
            In the mid-1970s, Vanity Fair expanded operations in both
Monroeville and Jackson. A cutting plant opened in Monroeville in
1973. This meant that Vanity Fair could dye, finish and cut the fabric
manufactured in nearby Jackson. The finished and cut fabric could then
be distributed to the various sewing plants, which by l 975, included
Clarke Mills. It was at the sewing facility that organizing efforts
were initiated in 1976.
          
          
            Clarke Mills' sewing plant--a one-story, windowless,
slab--sits on what was once a farm just outside the Jackson city
limits. In 1976 the sewing plant employed over five hundred
workers. Nearly all were women. There were four hundred sewing machine
operators, fifty-three examiners who checked finished garments for
mistakes, thirty-six packers, and seven mechanics (all
male).
          
          
            The plant's work was divided among eleven operation or
production lines, each of which had its own supervisor and one
"service girl " who made sure that sewing machine operators always had
the materials they needed to work without interruption.
          
          
            To earn more than minimum wage, the women had to meet a
"production" quota, a quantity of work calculated by time-motion stud
ies and set to a torturous pace.
          
          Sarah: When you have to sit there and do so many garments in so
many minutes--and this is an eight hour job--it's not easy. It's not
easy. A lot of times I psyched myself out, you know, "I can do it."
But you don't always do the same job. Styles change, jobs change, you
change machines.
          I think that the people that pack are very skilled, more so than a
machine operator. But they can't run a machine. Then, on the other
hand, I can't pack either.
          You have to be skilled, in my sight, to be able to pack those
garments as fast as they do. When you have a job where "production" is
the main word, you are forever busy. And you would be surprised one
minute will cost you a dollar.
          
            The Women
          
          
            Sarah McDonald Boykin grew up in nearby McIntosh where her
mother worked for a local restaurant and the family farmed. Like her
thirteen brothers and sisters, she left home after high school
graduation, eventually living in California for several years. She
returned to Jackson in the 1 960s to be near her family. She met and
married Richard Boykin, a native of Clarke County and an active civil
rights worker.
          
          
            Sarah began work at Vanity Fair in 1966 at the age of
twenty-two. She was among the first black women trained as sewing
machine operators. Sarah was elected president of Local 118 in
1976.
          
          Sarah: I had heard Vanity Fair didn't hire black people. This was
in 1965. I went up and put in an application. The first thing they
told me was I didn't pass the test and that I needed to pass the test
in order to be hired. So I forgot about it. And one day they called
me. It was in April 1966, I believe.
          
            Wilda Blackmon has always lived in Jackson, Alabama. One of
eleven children, married since she was fifteen, Wilda first began at
Vanity Fair over twenty years ago as a sewing machine operator. She
continued to work there on and off through the birth of her three
children.
          
          "This last time," Wilda recalls, "I had been back working for ten
years. Up until we got the union, you couldn't take time off to have a
baby. You had to quit and come back in. Now you can have maternity
leave and your time continues with the company."
          
            As the shop steward, Wilda was responsible for handling
worker grievances. She also served as president of the local after the
departure of Sarah Boykin in 1980.
          
          
            Rebecca Blackmon was unique among the union supporters in
that she had held supervisory positions with Vanity Fair on several
occasions. In 1976she was employed as a machine operator.
          
          Rebecca: I went to work at sixteen. I worked on and off for about
thirteen years. I was skilled at sewing on nearly every machine. I
worked in the press and pack department.
          I very much surprised people by being for the union. I had several
of them tell me that they were shocked because I had been a supervisor
and to be a supervisor is the ultimate in the company.
          
            Emily Woodyard, like Rebecca Blackmon and Wilda Blackmon, is
white. She was one of fifty examiners who worked at Vanity Fair in
1976. Both Emily and Rebecca were members of the shop committee that
negotiated the local's first contract. Neither she nor Rebecca had
completed high school when they went to work at Vanity
Fair. 
          
          Emily: One thing they used against us, Becky and myself, was that
we had not finished high school. They'd say, "Look at the people
that's your leaders." So we went back and took our GED tests. Now
we've got a high school diploma.
          
            In 1976 the ILGWU sent organizer Eileen Brown to Clarke
Mills. An organizer for the past ten years, Eileen travels throughout
the Southeast for the ILG but still lives in her hometown of
Talladega, Alabama. For over fifteen years, Eileen, a mother of three
children, worked as a sewing machine operator. 
          
          Emily: Eileen was a key factor. I do not think just any organizer
could have carried it off. She had what it took to go out and meet the
people. She could go in their homes.

          Rebecca: She was just basically a decent person.
          Emily: And that came across with people who would not let an
organizer in their home. Even they had to admit she was a good
person.
          
            The Union
          
          
            Soon after the union drive began, rumors began to circulate
that Clarke Mills would close if the campaign were
successful. 
          
          Eileen Brown: If you can just imagine you're working in the
plant. You feel a lot of these people accusing you of taking their
jobs away, causing work to be short, causing the plant to close. It's
not easy at all.
          Emily: Say two supervisors would get behind one operator while she
was sewing and talk about--well, say our work turning up in another
plant, machines being moved.
          Rebecca: Things that were not supposed to have been happening. Yet
they were making sure that the people that would be the most scared of
it knew what was happening.
          Sarah: I reported rumors to the union. The main one was about a
supervisor who said Vanity Fair was the first one that hired black
women out of the cotton patch and that if the union were voted in we
would be back in the cotton patch.
          
            This rumor contradicted the actual experience of black
women. Excluded from jobs in Clarke Mills until the mid-1960s, these
women did not come to Vanity Fair from the fields. The fields, by
then, had been planted in pines. The rumor revealed more about the
attitudes and perceptions of whites than about black women
workers. But it did touch on the crucial issue of available wage
work. 
          
          
            Vanity Fair held a virtual monopoly on jobs for black women
in the town of Jackson where today ninety percept of all managerial,
administrative, sales, clerical, technical and professional work (with
the exception of teaching) continues to be held by whites. 
          
          Eileen: Work slow-down times were different when the campaign was
going on. I'm sure what they did was step up the change of
styles. You'd go in and this girl was laid off for so many days and
that girl was laid off for so many days.
          And you'd go visit them in the evening and she'd say, "Lord, no, I
can't sign a card because if I do and they get word of it, they'll
fire me."
          Nobody had ever told her point blank, "I'll fire you if you sign a
union card." But the implications were there. The little strategic
lay-offs. If they felt we were beginning to get a little deeper in,
there would be lay-offs in that section.
          Rebecca: Even though the supervisors or management could not come
out directly and say, "You will be fired if you go through with this,"
they could tell you the same thing in so many ways. And you'd know
what they were saying.
          Emily: The supervisors would come out of meetings every
morning--they'd spread rumors. They would harass the people on their
line and when we'd take it to the company, "We didn't know they were
doing it." "They're not doing it because we told them to." And of
course the supervisors would keep their mouths shut.
          But the company was putting them up to it. The company was
schooling them on what to do. They'd pick out people that they knew
they could...
          Rebecca:...buffalo. That they knew they could scare to death and
just ride them. Stand over their shoulder and pick on everything they
did. Or stand there and just talk.
          
            Prejudices, not only of race but of sex and class, were
exploited in an attempt to divide workers at Clarke Mills: white
workers against black workers; sewing machine mechanics (all male)
against sewing machine operators (all female); and sewing line
supervisors against operators. 
          
          
            The male sewing machine mechanics actively opposed
unionization even though--because wage increases were based on current
pay and they were the highest paid workers--they would receive the
greatest gain from the 19771LG contract. According to March, 1979,
payroll records, sewing machine mechanic Paul Pan en, who would lead
the later decertification effort, averaged $6.37 per hour during a
two-week pay period. During the same time period a sewing machine
operator with thirty years experience averaged $3.38 per
hour.
          
          
            While organizers drew little or no support from men in the
workplace, one man who did offer moral and practical support during
the organizing campaign was Sarah Boykins's husband, Richard. He made
after-hour visits to workers' homes, attended meetings, and enlisted
support among members of the black community. 
            
          
          Eileen: Sarah's husband, Richard, would do his job and then if
there were people way back in the hills--see he knew everybody because
he's the UPS (United Parcel Service) man--he would go with us. He
would go wherever he was needed.
          Richard: I think the company didn't fight the union as hard as they
would have if it had been men. They didn't think that the women were
going to be successful. It surprised the devil out of them when they
won.
          Wilda: It was nerve wracking. But in the end the tears were worth
it all. One person asked me, they said, "Well, if you do go union who
will go to negotiate the contract? You know nothing about it."
          I said, "Well, we've learned this far. Why can't we continue to
learn?"
          They said, "You mean you're going to get on the road?" And there
wasn't a trip we took that I wasn't there.
          Richard: A lot of times I would come home in the evenings and get
in my car and drive around through the county--Barlow Bend, Whatley,
Grove Hill--to get cards signed.
          Eileen: Home contacts are the mainstay. That's what you do from day
one until day zero because you have to have a contact with the
people. Where the company can have a command audience, we can't. We
have to do ours while they're off, while they're home.
          Richard: Some of the people, especially the older people, they
would say, "Vanity Fair has been putting bread on my table for twenty
years. Why should I turn against them?"
          I would tell them, "If Vanity Fair is putting bread on your table
they'd send you a check at the end of the week. You wouldn't have to
get up and go out there each morning at seven o'clock."
          Wilda: And so many of them came back with, "If you start this union
Vanity Fair will close their doors."
          Emily: They did move our work out of the Jackson plant. We had
shevelva [trade name for brushed nylon fabric used in manufacture of
women's lounge wear]. I was on shevelva. And the shevelva line turned
up in Butler. We would go to meetings in Butler and the girls would
say, "Well, we're doing shevelva. It's your work. They will shut the
plant down."
          And they would take my card--your cards have four different places
you could cut it and put your clock number on it and put it with
different work if you split your bundle. And my work was being split
up back then. If they found bad work on other people what they were
doing was taking their numbers out of the pockets of shevelva robes
and putting my number in it. I got to where I marked my numbers with a
certain kind of mark, a different one every day or cut the corner
off. I fixed the card where they could not use it but one time.
          I had a big mouth. And I wasn't afraid to stand up and tell Larry
Windham in the meeting what I thought of him. I even put George Heard
[director of industrial relations] on the spot. I came right out and
asked him if we were going to be fired for our union activities
whether or not it went in. "Say for instance it wasn't voted in," I
said. "Are we going to be fired?"
          He didn't answer.
          So I spoke up even louder and asked him again. He didn't have any
choice but to answer, "No, the company cannot fire you for your union
activities." I feel like putting him on the spot had a lot to do with
me being put on the spot.
          Sarah: I think I'd be right in saying they laid off the majority
that were very outspoken and that supported the union.
          Richard: But they made it a point not to mess with the committee
members. They didn't push them around because they were scared they'd
get kickback from the Labor Relations Board.
          Wilda: But even during the campaign we did not get easy jobs. We
were in the plant. We took the worst. When we would leave at 3:30 in
the afternoon our machines would be sewing fine. Go back at seven in
the morning with trouble.
          
            Sex, Race and Class
          
          
            Wives and/or mothers first, the women who organized Local 118
felt strong obligations to their families. They experienced varying
degrees of conflict as the result of their activities depending on the
amount
            
            of support they received at home. The decision to organize
Clarke Mills, in the face of traditional demands of work and family,
was a major act of assertion. 
          
          Emily: Women are at a disadvantage. They put in their eight hours a
day--or ten--whatever is required of them. They go home; they cook
supper; they tend to the kids. And they get ready for another day at
the plant.
          Rebecca: There are unions in this town--granted, they are the men's
jobs. And that's one thing l cannot understand because a lot of the
women working at Vanity Fair had husbands who worked on union
jobs. And yet they didn't want Vanity Fair organized. I really do not
understand it. The men worked at union jobs and made good money. They
paid union dues. The women had grown up with it.
          Emily: It's got something to do with the men saying, "Hey, I want
her home to cook cornbread."
          Wilda: I don't think any of them liked to see us away from home but
it was something that we believed so strongly nobody would say, "Don't
do it."
          Sarah: We had to go out. Leave home at six o'clock in the
morning--I'd have to make a few stops on the way to work--and get back
at midnight.
          You would just work your heart out trying to see some sign of
improvement and people would just be so ugly to you. You'd let all
your work get behind at home. You'd go home and work real hard and go
to bed. You couldn't sleep. You lay there thinking, "What have I said
or what have I done to cause these people to feel like this?"
          
            Potentially divisive racial issues were a constant concern
during the months before the election and afterwards during contract
negotiations. The biracial shop committee tried to overcome workers'
racial prejudice and build unity. On the overnight trips to
out-of-town negotiation meetings, black and white committee members
shared hotel rooms. 
          
          Sarah: The first time I shared a room with Wilda Blackmon. After
that we decided everybody would share rooms, with one white and one
black to the room. Wilda wore the name of "rigger lover" and they call
me a "honky." You had to not hear that and keep on pushing.
          
            As the sir-month campaign drew to a close, the pressure at
the workplace increased but so did the determination of the
women. 
          
          Sarah: I never thought about what it would be like if we lost until
after the election. It never crossed my mind until the evening before
the election. This girl was riding home with me. We were coming along
Forest Avenue and I stopped at the IGA. I said, "Well, tomorrow is the
big day."
          She said, "You know we're going to lose."
          And I stopped in the middle of the street and said, "Don't say
that. Don't say that." I said, "If that's the way you talk get out of
my car." And I was going to put her right out in the street.
          And she said, "Well, we ought to think about that. It's going to be
hard if you lose." But I never really thought about it. It never even
crossed my mind.
          
            Of the approximately 530 workers eligible to vote on October
29, 1976, 509 cast their votes: 260 in favor of union representation
and 244 against the union. (Five votes were challenged and not
included in the final tally.)
          
          Eileen: The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) conducts the
election. You go into booths. You mark your ballot. You put nothing
else on it--"yes" or "no." And you bring it out and drop it into the
box.
          There are usually two observers from the company and two from the
union and they stay with those ballots from the beginning until the
count. When the ballots are counted, they are read "yes" and "no" and
"yes" and "no." And you die a little bit every time you hear a
"no."
          
            During meetings held in Atlanta in 1977 plant committee
members Wilda Blackmon, Sarah Boykin, Rebecca Blackmon, Vevelyn
Gilchrist and Eleanor Shaw, together with James Goldberg, legal
counsel for the ILG, pursued contract negotiations with
representatives of Vanity Fair. In their first contract, negotiated in
October of 1977, plant committee members won wage increases, an
additional holiday, improved health and welfare benefits and job
seniority. The contract also provided for a grievance procedure with
arbitration, the first step in providing a more equitable balance of
power between employer and employee.
          
          Sarah: Used to be if you didn't come in on Saturday when they'd
want you to work overtime, Monday morning you were in the office. And
you possibly wouldn't have a job. After the contract, it was
different. Overtime wasn't mandatory. You could say no.
          
            As the first and only union in the Vanity Fair chain, Clarke
Mills' Local 118 continued to face opposition from a management who
sought to stop union activity from spreading to the remaining Vanity
Fair sites. Company representatives filed objections with the National
Labor Relations Board following the October, 1976, election. These
objections were resolved in favor of the local.
          
          
            When contract negotiations were completed in 1977, Vanity
Fair granted gains won by the union to its nonunion
employees. 
            
          
          Wilda: In negotiations they'd say, "We can't do this because we've
got so many workers. If we do it for you we're going to have to do it
for them." So we knew from the beginning that we were really
negotiating for every plant Vanity Fair owned.
          
            In 1979 workers indicated that the local brought immediate,
if modest, improvement to Clarke Mills. But at the same time they
expressed the belief that Local 118's presence brought no fundamental
change of attitude on the part of Vanity Fair and, in fact,
exacerbated management attitudes and working conditions. 
          
          Sarah: At first, when we went in, you could just feel the
resentment.
          Emily: They're still punishing the people for voting the union
in. In the past you could run a high unit hour over there. You'd work
yourself to death but you'd have a fair paycheck. But they messed our
work up.
          They don't bring in good styles. They bring in the short running
styles where in the past the Jackson plant had a slip style that ran
for years. Now they're putting in the six weeks runners. It takes six
weeks to work the bugs out of it.
          In Vanity Fair's case if they would quit spending all that money
trying to fight it and put a little bit of it back into people's
pockets they would have much happier employees. You have a lot of
women there that's supporting their families.
          Rebecca: The women are what made Vanity Fair the company it is. Not
only the women doing the work--the actual work--but the women buying
the products. And the company still will not recognize the fact that
to keep the women working like they are they need to treat them
better. They just have not accepted that.
          
            By the end of 1980, as Local 118's first contract neared
expiration, several of the union's most experienced members no longer
worked at Clarke Mills. Some had leg because of personal and family
demands, a few had located better jobs in the Jackson area. The loss
of these women made the local more vulnerable when a petition for
decertification was filed. 
          
          Wilda: Every time a good strong union member would leave you would
get a little bit of hack. "She couldn't take it no more. She had to
go."
          
            Emily Woodyard left because of the birth of her third child
in 1978. 
          
          Emily: I certainly had not planned on leaving. I had planned to
stay there. It's a daily struggle with myself because I'm not over
there actively involved.
          Rebecca: My husband's health was not good. He became totally
disabled. And there's no way one person working at this plant could
support a family. So I knew I had to do something.
          I left Vanity Fair voluntarily in 1979.1 really hated to leave the
plant because of the people, leaving the people. I went to work at a
chemical plant making two-and-a-half times the salary that I had made,
with a union, better working conditions, retirement, the whole
works. I was there until 1983 when the plant cut production, leaving a
lot of people out of work.
          Sarah: I had an allergy problem. I was allergic to the fabric and
dust at work. I was spending more than I made on medicine. I went back
on two separate occasions. The last time I told them I would not be
back.
          
            Sarah Boykin subsequently took a position as a paralegal. She
resigned as president of the local in the fall of 1980 and was
succeeded by Wilda Blackmon. 
          
          Sarah: A lot of times I've thought about it. I really hated I
resigned. It was a hard thing to do. I felt sad. It came down to my
health or the job and I chose my health.
          On September 17, 1980, Local 118 and Vanity Fair entered came into
a memorandum of agreement extending their contract, with
modifications, through 1983. On that same date Paul Parden, sewing
machine mechanic and an employee for over twelve years, petitioned the
NLRB seeking a decertification election.
          Parden obtained legal representation from The Center on National
Labor Policy,; an organization that describes itself as "a non-profit,
non-partisan charitable legal foundation that works through the courts
to restore individual rights lost through abuse of union power."
Headquartered in northern Virginia, the Center's list of clients has
included the Stevens People and Friends for Freedom, a group of
J.P. Stevens employees supportive of the company in its battle against
the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers.
          Parden, who is white, continued to act as the leader of those
workers who opposed the union. He argued that the union was not strong
enough to do its members any good, although he and other mechanics
benefited the most as the result of the local's first contract. There
was no apparent advantage for Parden if the local was
decertified. Rumors persist that mechanics and supervisors were
promised 

raises and/or bonuses in return for their opposition to the
union.
          Rebecca: The mechanics are a small group but at some time or
another they talked to almost every sewing machine operator in that
plant. They have access to every examiner. There's no person in that
plant that a mechanic cannot go talk to.
          Wilda: I went to the first open meeting they had. Paul Parden and
Benny Harrison were there. The lawyer said he was free. It didn't cost
Paul Parden anything to bring him down here. The lawyer said he was
interested in getting the company out from under the union. He
explained how to get the union out. To the best of my knowledge the
only black women that went in were with me.
          Emily: Benny Harrison was a preacher. A lot of women would just
flock in behind him because he was.
          
            A decertification election was held in July of 1981. While
initially impounded, the ballots were later counted and revealed that
a majority were cast against the UH ion by a vote of 199 to 11 7. This
election was set aside in April, 1982,followingan NLRB administrative
hearing. 
          
          
            Testimony at the hearing called into question Vanity Fair's
neutral position in the election campaign. The company first posted
its "no solicitation, no distribution" notice in 1978. According to
the new policy, employees were forbidden to solicit or distribute
material on company time or company property. 
          
          
            Numerous breaches of the policy took place when collections
were made for retirement, baby and birthday gifts. Moreover,
Tupperware and Avon products were sold during work time with the
knowledge of supervisors. In contrast, a sewing machine operator who
passed out union buttons in the workplace in 1981 received an
immediate reprimand from Joe Nichols, personnel supervisor. 
          
          
            Administrative Law Judge Huffon S. Brandon found that Vanity
Fair applied its no solicitation policy to prohibit all union activity
while taking no action to prohibit non-union solicitation. He ordered
a new election for September 1982. 
          
          
            Time and Time Again
          
          
            Although the union prevailed in the 1982administrative
hearing it was not to be taken as encouraging sign. The local's
ability to counter fears and to generate support had declined between
1976and 1982. Union membership dropped to forty-five by the time of
the NLRB-ordered election. 
          
          
            On September 24, 1982, the vote went against the union 188 to
134. 
          
          Wilda: I don't know what the members expected. I think they wanted
a miracle--for the union to go in, all their jobs to get easier and
their pay to get better. We never promised anything like that.
          We had gained a contract that the company had to go by. We had
several grievances that we went through satisfactorily. In fact we got
back pay for some of the girls. We got standards lowered on some of
them. But three-fourths of them would not even file a grievance on
their standard when they couldn't reach it. And I couldn't go in the
office and file a grievance for them.
          
            Workers' fears were reflected in the fact that in all three
elections there were many more union votes than union members. The
company's campaign of intimidation never lost its effectiveness. A
union dues checkoff provision in the local's contract meant that the
identity of union supporters was readily known.
          
          
            The fears that Vanity Fair would close its doors rather than
accept a union were intensified by the decline (from five-hundred to
350) in the number of jobs at the plant. That many of these lost jobs
had been held by black women, the local 's strongest supporters, also
hurt the union. Compounding the situation was the loss of experienced
and committed leaders like Rebecca, Emily and Sarah who had devoted so
much time and energy to the campaign. Their influence extended beyond
the work place and into the community. Their absence was felt deeply
by the union women who remained at Clarke Mills. 
          
          
            In addition, the ILG's attempts to broaden their base of
support by organizing Vanity Fair plants in surrounding counties were
unsuccessful. 
          
          Emily: If we could have gotten the cutting plant in Monroeville we
would have been on a roll. But when we lost the cutting plant it was
downhill. We hung on but all those plants were watching us to see if
we were going to survive.
          
            Wilda Blackmon was the last to leave Clarke Mills. She
continued to work for a year following the 1982 decertification
election. 
          
          Wilda: I left last year the week before Easter, 1983. I came home
that afternoon--I can't remember if it was Monday or Tuesday--with
chest pains that lasted through the night. I got up the next morning
and went to the doctor. They sent me to Mobile and the hospital that
day. I stayed in the hospital the rest of the week under heart
monitor.
          When I went back to work Joe Nichols put me in a training room on a
mirror hemmer. That is the most difficult, nerve-wracking job there is
to learn. It's finish hemming a garment. You have to hold the same
width of fabric in the machine all the way around. That was the most
difficult job in the plant for an old operator to learn. Now for a new
operator coming in off the street who has never worked on the machines
before, it's easy to pick up. I worked on it one day. I went back to
talk to Joe. I told him that no way could I take it right then. I got
another doctor's leave and stayed off a couple of weeks.
          When my leave was up I went in and said, "Joe, if you have
something in this plant that I'm capable of doing that I've already
been trained on I'll be glad to come back to work." He said there was
nothing else in that plant to be done except mirror hemming and I
could "take it or leave it."
          
            Sarah Boykin, still employed as a paralegal, adopted a
daughter in 1981 and is in the process of adopting a son. Emily
Woodyard, now the mother of four, works for a grocery store
chain. Rebecca Blackmon recently began a job as an office
worker. Neither woman plans to return to Vanity Fair. 
          
          Rebecca: I don't think I could sit there all day again-

hour after hour--just sit there.
          Emily: After being on the job I'm on now, I can say the same
thing. I don't see any future at Vanity Fair.
          Wilda: To me the job wasn't the most important part of my life. But
to a lot of them it was. It was their life. They will admit that real
quick. I can't see them enjoying the work, but some say they
do. Needing the money is more.
          Sarah: I get angry. All the days and nights I left my family and
this is where it ended. What did I really gain? I think about
that. Did I help or hurt others? I don't know.
          Rebecca: I have mixed feelings. Sometimes I have trouble dealing
with some aspects of it. I really do. Because we really gave a lot of
ourselves. From leaving the kids at home and all of that.
          We really believed a union would help Vanity Fair. I never thought
much about what the consequences would be. I never thought I was
wrong. I still don't think I was wrong.
          If you don't take care of yourself nobody else will do it for
you. And that's a hard lesson to learn the way we did.
          Emily: I believed once we got a union in it would stay.
          Rebecca: I did too,
          Emily: I did not know the committee was going to go in different
directions.
          Rebecca: I don't think anybody did.
          Wilda: I don't regret any of the things I've done. I'm happy with
my life as it is now. That's all behind me. It was an experience for
me to go through--a learning experience. It taught me self
confidence. That I was capable of being an equal to any of the people
in the plant. The supervisors were not above me--not even the plant
manager or personnel manager. I'm not saying our education was the
same, but education doesn't always make a smart person.
          Emily: You can get a union voted in. Just because you get the
contract signed, it does not stop there. You've got to educate
people. Whether it's to get them to a union meeting, which is
practically impossible, or whether it's waiting 'til their feathers
lay down and you can talk to them. It won't happen overnight. It won't
happen in six months. It won't happen in a year. All the company had
to do was wait long enough.
          Sarah: It happened once. Even though it's no longer there, it
happened after all. That's why I know it can happen again.
          
            Paula Mclendon is a native of Jackson, Alabama who now
lives in Birmingham.
          
        