NOTE: This document is provided for historical purposes only.
Roosevelt Broadnax, Fieldcrest-Cannon
MS. HIRSHBERG: Our last speaker, Roosevelt Broadnax is a staff representative for UNITE in the union's southern region and a member of Local 1855B in Columbus, Georgia. He has worked at Fieldcrest-Cannon Company yarn manufacturing and weaving mill in Columbus from 1966 to 1991. He served as shop steward president and was a member of the safety committee for his local union.
His duties as a staff representative with UNITE include negotiation and enforcement of union contracts, education and development of local union officers and members, political action, and participating in UNITE's many union organization efforts in the Southeast.
His work on ergonomics include assisting the local union members and management at the Fieldcrest-Cannon Company in Columbus, Georgia, to establish an effective ergonomic program for workers in the textile, yarn and cloth weaving operations.
Roosevelt.
MR. BROADNAX: Good morning. I went to work at Fieldcrest-Cannon in '66. I was fortunate to have a friend that knew someone in management, and he called me in and gave me a job. There's a lot of history that's related to the textile mill, and I won't try to get into all of it. But one thing that comes to mind is last year I saw the movie, "The Uprising of 1934". In that film the ladies were talking about the lint and the dust. Surprisingly, when I went there in 1966, that lint and that dust was still a problem. Not only was the lint and dust still a problem, but there was another problem that was associated with that, too. And that problem was brown lung and byssinosis.
Sadly to say, during the years that it began to be a problem, our companies, not only Fieldcrest-Cannon but other textile industries, did not want to address that problem. I could personally tell each and every one of you today that I have lost 25 percent of my breathing as a result of them ignoring that problem.
Now I am not here bragging nor complaining, but I am here to state the fact that if we don't look at workers as human beings and address these problems and try to do something about it, more people are going to suffer as I have had to suffer. And others have had to suffer more greatly than I.
Management needs to put health and safety at the top of their corporate agenda. It is very important. It is very imperative that workers not be overlooked as simply a dollar sign or piece of machinery.
The contribution that workers can make is very vital because, as previous speakers have said, they are the ones who are on that shop floor day in and day out. They have the solutions. They are waiting anxiously for the opportunity to address you and say that this is what it takes to resolve this problem.
Fieldcrest-Cannon has a corporate headquarters in North Carolina. There are about 13,000 workers in 15 plants. The 3 plants that I am referring to are in Columbus, Georgia: a yarn mill, a weaving mill and a sewing plant. Thinking in those terms that Fieldcrest had that many employees, you would think that they would implement a program that involved the workers. But somehow they were unwilling to do that.
Fortunately in 1971 the union came to the yarn mill and the sewing factory, and they organized. And in 1979 my plant received the recognition. Workers need a voice. Workers make the difference. We are not trying to tear down the company. We are not trying to take over the board rooms. All we want is our fair share.
The company was very reluctant. They didn't want to give us that opportunity. So they left us with no choice but to step up the pressure. One of the things that we did was we had demonstrations right in front of the mill. We had grievances. We had leaflets. We called OSHA in. And we even went to Washington, D.C. Many times we boarded buses. We left one day and came back that same day. We took workers who had been affected. We went to The National Labor Relations Board. We went to Congress. We went to other places to let them know that we were human beings, and we need to be treated as such, and that those demonstrations were not to make the company look bad, but to bring our point to focus that we had a concern and a vested interest in our health and safety as well.
Our company finally began to formulate health and safety committees. Our union had direct involvement in that. Part or half of the committee was selected by the union. We began immediately on the very issue that I talked about that affected me, and that issue was brown lung.
We started telling the company that they are going to have to do something. They are going to clean up this mill, because the Act said that we no longer had to tolerate all the cotton dust. We no longer had to walk out of that plant with the lint, the dust, and also with it affecting our breathing.
So as a result of long meetings, difficult negotiations, the company finally realized that it was in their best interest to purchase new machinery. That resolved one problem, and lo and behold another began. For every action there is a reaction. The reaction was that after they started and addressed the byssinosis, the brown lung problem, up came ergonomic problems. Because of the new machinery, you had to speed up, you had the new risks. And the cycle began over again.
It was seeming like the company would have realized that we are here for the long haul. We are not going anywhere. We were working in these plants to support our families, to make a living, and we can't do it if we get hurt and if we can't breathe and we can't work. We wanted to work in those factories. We were proud. We were happy to come out of there.
One time at my church, they said, "Every time I see you, you're full of lint and you're full of dust." I said, "Well, that's true but the time to worry is when that lint and that dust disappears, because that means that I no longer have a job. And I can no longer support my family."
So I was proud. I was not ashamed of the fact that I worked in the textile mill, and I'm still not ashamed, because that is the bridge to help me to get where I am now. And the union has been a very important factor in that, because had we not had a union, there still might be a lot of problems. I am certainly proud because my union helped to play a major role in addressing the brown lung, the byssinosis and certainly the ergonomics problems.
We again had to start dealing with grievances, filing OSHA complaints. One of the major OSHA complaints that came out of this whole thing came up at the sewing factory. The ladies and the workers there were complaining about all the repetitive motion, all the different problems that were associated with ergonomics. They wouldn't listen. They said, "Oh, you all are just making a whole lot of unnecessary noise."
As a result, the company was inspected, cited, and fined by OSHA. And out of that fine, they also were made to give us a yearly audit on ergonomics, year after year even after the completion. We are proud of that citation because out of that citation the company then began to formulate joint committees. We now felt like the company was on the right track, that they was doing the things that were going to help to achieve the health and safety aspects that need to be achieved.
There was direct involvement from the workers. We began to recognize and realize and discuss with them and tell them that certain things need to be done, not only to the machinery, but to the equipment; such things as: getting better chairs that were ergonomically safe; adjusting the height of the boxes; and putting springs in the boxes, so when they got yarn, the yarn would come up to you and you wouldn't have to bend way down and hurt your back or hurt your shoulders.
They deal with getting gloves, back braces. They also got a new bagging system. And one thing that some of the workers did at the sewing factory was help to design a box. And they did it -- management took them into the office, and they did it on computers. They knew what they wanted. And once they designed that on the computer, management implemented that program. All these programs helped, because the workers were out there day in and day out, and they knew what it took.
We also had labor-management meetings that we used to enlighten the ones that were not at the meeting and helped to resolve those problems that we were not able to resolve at the health and safety meetings.
I will further tell you about the education program on safety and health, and on ergonomics. Management has a typical program, sadly to say. During my 25 years at the plant, they showed the same film over and over and over again once a year. We signed a piece of paper that said "I've seen this here film."
But health and safety is a 365-day event. The real involvement came when the workers had a hands-on approach. They began to recognize that they had a stake and that they could do something to help management realize that it was much better for them to involve us than to try to ignore us.
And by that, we began to go out on the shop floor and educate the workers and tell them and ask for suggestions: "What can we do?"
During this whole process, during our regular union meetings, we talked to the workers. We told them about what achievements we had made, what needed to be done. We had classes. Through UNITE's Health and Safety Department, we trained the Trainers, which the company will say quickly, helped their organization tremendously with the knowledge that we provided into health and safety meetings. We also go to locals in other companies and help them to understand the importance of health and safety.
This was a win-win situation for all of us. Management looked at it, I guess, and thought that it was going to be a very costly, very ineffective way of doing things. But as a result, when we had direct involvement, there were fewer injuries. They began to upgrade the job training. There was higher morale in there. People felt good about coming in there. We were in there to make money, but we also knew that we had invested a lot of our lives in that plant.
Productivity came up in the plant. There were fewer injures. I am going to share a few figures with you in just a few more minutes. And we talk about being competitive. There is no better way of being competitive than to have safe, healthy workers there in the plant, because a safe and healthy worker is going to be there day in and day out when the doors open. They don't have any problems with coming in there to work and feeling good about when they leave. They're going to be able to come back the next day and the next years.
To share some of these figures with you -- I won't give them to you all, but if you would just look at them. In 1993 there were 121 cases of worker injury. After we became involved, that number moved all the way down to 21. Workers do make a difference.
When it came to all back injuries, 1993 was 19; but in 1996, there was only one. We can make a difference if given the opportunity. Lastly, on all other "strains/sprain injuries", in 1993 there were 26. In 1996, there are only 6.
So our involvement has made a difference. Being in the union has made a difference in my life. I'm proud. I'm happy. And I certainly can say to each and every one of you, whether you have a union there or not, recognize your workers. They can be a very valuable asset to you.
Thank you.
MS. HIRSCHBERG: Thank you, Roosevelt.
