Dinah, Snoopy and J, P. Stevens climb into the same seamy bed ... What do Dinah Shore, Snoopy, Suzanne Pleshette, Yves St. Laurent, Linus, and Charlie Brown have in common? Would you’believe they are all in cahoots with one of the most vicious, deceitful, and hard-to-catch outlaws in American history? Lovely Dinah? No! Li’l Snoopy and Wood- stock and all the other cuddiies from Peanuts? Impossible! Classy and fashionable Yves St. Laurent? Never! Well, yes they are, every one of them, and others. What these celebrities do is lend their “names” for marketing textile products for that famed criminal, J. P. Stevens. The Stevens textile company, or “JP," as they are not so affectionately known to their employees, is fast gaining in fame and reputation, but not for the quality of their products or the notoriety of their designs. No, "JP” is fast becoming a household word in union and labor circles because, in the words of National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Stevens has violated U.S. labor and civil rights laws “on a scale unmatched by any other corporation in American history.” The J. P, Stevens story of doing whatever it takes, “by any means necessary,” to keep their mills and factories clean of unionism, is a long and dirty one. For 16 years, workers and union organizers have been struggling to win union representation and a much-needed contract from the company. This effort has been repeatedly put down by nasty and illegal resistance and reprisals from the clothing and white goods giant. “JP" has been found guilty of discriminatory employment practices, firing and threatening pro-union employees, and the coercion of employees through physical and mental interrogation. “JP” has also been found guilty of tax evasion, price fixing, and violating numerous health and safety standards. Since 1963. ol' “JP” has been found guilty of violating the National Labor Relations Act 18 times, and most of these convictions involved multiple violations. A typical case of “JP’s" renowned disregard for laws and working standards was reported by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Labor Department's chief regulatory agency. In 1977 OSHA inspected seven Steven’s plants in North and South Carolina and issued 9b citations for health violations, an average of 12 per factory. Among the outstanding violations were the noise level, reported at 105 decibels (greatly exceeding federally permissible levels), and cotton and fiber dust in the air at a rate 300 per cent greater than national health standards allow. This dust in much lower rates has been proven to cause Brown Lung, as debilitating a disorder as miners' Black Lung. Efforts to organize Stevens’ workers to fight back against these archaic working conditions have been going on since 1963 when the forerunner of the American Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU) began organizing efforts in the Northeast. Since that lime, and despite the fact that the ACTWU has won numerous elections and authorization campaigns, no J. P. Stevens worker is yet protected by a union contract. This company is ada man! in their refusal to recognize the union, or union leadership, and they are prepared to do whatever it takes to “keep the company free.” To keep this pledge, the company has used the most base and contemptible scare tactics imaginable. They have pushed, beat up, and shot at many workers who have indicated their support for the union. One union supporter returned home from work one evening to find his home burned Io the ground. And if that didn’t get the message across, the burning of a relative’s home a week later convinced him that the company wasn’t too keen on union people. The company has employed public relations firms to depict the union as a fly-by-night alliance of “mafia gangsters” and “communists” who are only interested in collecting their dues. They warn the employees in radio and newspaper announcements, as well as a steady barrage of scary propaganda in the factories, that the union “will be gone as soon as the election is over, but you will still have to live here.” If that’s too subtle, the company isn’t shy about cutting right to the heart of the matter. As Jack McGill, Kissing Off the Workers by Kevin Mulligan plant manager of the Stevens' Walterboro, South Carolina, told workers before a union election, if you vote for the union “and lose the election, the union people will be gone tomorrow, but the company will always hold it against you.” Of late, “JP” seems to be improving in their tactics and manners. They have moved from blunt to subtle. As John McDonough, coordinator for ACTWU activities in New England, said, “They have gone from crude anti-union bastards to sophisticated anti-union bastards.” J. P. Stevens has also gone physically from the Mid-Atlantic and New England region, where union activity has traditionally been strong, to the Old South, where just the mentioning of the word “union” can be bad for your health. In the past 25 years, Stevens has closed 21 textile mills in the Northeast, eliminating 11,700 jobs. This trend has been happening throughout the clothing industry as these modern- day “robber barons" of blue jeans and tank tops flee toward cheap labor and passive workers. This has cost the Northeast region at least 350.000 jobs since the early 1950s, according to union officials. Today, 79 of "JP’s” 83 plants are in the South, mostly in North and South Carolina. There, Stevens can pay workers at a rate 31 per cent lower than the national average (this means about $55 a week), and provide virtually no health or retirement benefits. A typical Stevens “factory town" is Walterboro, S. C., where 48 per cent of the population has incomes of $5,000 or less, and 91 per cent of the population receives some type of welfare assistance. Most Stevens workers earn about $125 per week, with no extra pay incentives or bonus for overtime. After two years, a worker is entitled to one week of paid vacation, but it must be taken between June 30 and July 10, when the factory closes for re-tooling. Air-conditioning is unheard of, and work breaks last ten minutes, while lunch must be consumed in 20 minutes, usually at your machine. To overcome these conditions and anti-union tactics, the ACTWU, an AFL-CIO member union, has pledged $1.5 million a year for the next seven years to pressure Stevens to accept unionization. They have aimed their boycott at shoppers and retail shops which handle J. P. Stevens products (see list of products in box). How successful this boycott has been is difficult to determine. True, the union still does not have a contract for one of the 44,000 “JP” employees. And Stevens’ Public Information Officer Jim Franklin flatly states that, “the boycott has been a failure.” However, after three years there are positive signs at the cash register that “JP" is slipping. Union organizers say that Stevens’ sales statistics are misleading and that the company is actually in pretty bad shape. Sales are up, they point out, because Stevens has cut prices to beat the boycott. Profits, say the union, are way down, as are the returns on investments and the value of Stevens' stock. “The boycott is hurting Stevens where it counts: in their profit statement and stockholders’ pockets," concludes one union official. Stevens’ financial troubles arc backed up by evidence in a Business Weei article of March 19, 1979. BW reports that Stevens’ three biggest competitors. Cannon Mills, Fieldcrest, and Spring Mills enjoyed profit increases of 36, 31 and 47 per cent, respectively, in 1978. For that matter, industry profits on the whole were up 23 per cent for this period. However, Stevens’ profits were up only 3 per cent during this time, despite a record sales of $1.65 billion. How is this possible? Stevens’ board chairman James D. Finley answered this question at the annual stockholders' meeting in New York when he told "JP’s” owners that Stevens has been selling “certain products” below cost in order to increase sales. This alone is evidence that this boycott, and consumer strikes in general, can work. In New England, where the most intense organizing efforts have taken place, retail shops are feeling the effects of the boycott. The Jordan Marsh chain recently received a petition signed by 5,000 Jordan credit card holders asking that the store's 14 retail outlets stop selling Stevens products. The store’s management admitted that the sale of Stevens’ products is down significantly and that the store is considering reducing Stevens’ stock accordingly. AtFilenes stores, another New England retailer, Stevens' products are now down to 1 per cent of the total merchandise. In Portland the boycott has been slow to gel going because of the lack of a full-time organizer, but this should be remedied with the assigning of ACTWU boycott coordinator Artha Adair to the Portland area. Ms. Adair told the Quarterly that she had been working in Seattle and had “some very positive responses and we hope to repeat that in Portland.” Targets for boycotting in Portland will be all of the Meier & Frank, Lipmans, and Frederick and Nelson stores. Ms. Adair also said that, although they wouldn’t be targets soon, Sears and Penney’s were on the list because they have Stevens products, although they are labeled under the store name. Others carrying “JP” products are Fred Meyer and Pay Less Drug, under the Tastemaker brand. Many fabric stores such as Discount Fabrics also carry Stevens products. How long the boycott will last, or how long “JP” will hold out, is anyone’s guess. In the last decade Stevens has been forced to pay $1.3 million in court fines and back pay. Recently the federal courts ordered Stevens to reimburse the union for organizing activities because they created such an atmosphere of fear that a fair election couldn’t be held. As Ernest Robinson, a 64-year-old black worker at Stevens’ Walterboro plant, said, "JP done pay enough money for lawsuits and violations now' to pay everyone in the South a decent wage.” However, there appears to be much more behind it than just the money. As John McDonough, a union organizer in New England, put it, “ Stevens is really in the vanguard of the new attitude of a lot of corporations, the attitude that they don’t have to pay attention to labor laws anymore.” For example, in 1967 there were 1,100 American workers who were illegally fired for taking part in union activities; in 1977 there were 7,800. “Corporations are getting the sense that if J. P. Stevens can get away with antilaborcrimes, they can, too. The whole Stevens thing is forcing the labor movement to wake up." 22
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