No ordinary —
fundraiser for
Steven’s boycott

Qn April 13 the film barons put on their usual show of grandeur
known as the. Academy Awards. As expected Kramer vs Kramer

walked off with the majority of the covetted prizes. Best actress how-
ever went to Sally Field for her role as Norma Rae, a union organizerin
a textile-town in the Southern U.S. Field’s truly fine performance was

based on the life of Crystal Lee Sutton. Sutton was the one who did

help win the certification vote at the J.P. Steven’s Plant in North
Carolina, she was the one who stood up on the work table holding the
sign marked “‘union’’, who was arrested, jailed and is now blacklisted
in the textile industry. Recently Field and Sutton met for the first time
at a fundraiser for the J.P. Steven’s boycott hosted by representatives

of the film industries unions. We reprint the article covering the event

taken from the U.S. Daily World.

By JIM SMITH

HOLLYWOOD — The meet-
ing of Sally Field and Crystal Lee
Sutton in front of 1,000 perfor-
mers, screenwriters, stage tech-
nicians, as well as auto, steel and
garment workers was symbolic of
the new identification of enter-
tainment industry workers with
the labor movement. Even a
bomb threat, which forced clear-
ing the building for an hour, failed
to dampen the new-found unity.

**In the wake of our seven week
strike in 1979 against the large
corporate advertising agencies,
the Screen Actors Guild (SAG)
realized we had the same enemies
as the rest of the labor move-
ment,’’ said union information di-
rector Kim Fellner.

‘**The attitude of the employers
has become much more hardnose

than in the past,”’ said SAG Pres-
ident Bill Schallert. ‘“‘This has
changed the tendency for SAG
members to think of themselves
as ‘elite artists’ separated from
the labor movement.”

The guild, say its leaders, is
finding it important to draw on the
resources of the AFL-CIO in its
struggles with the monopoly
dominated industry, for a fairer
unemployment insurance law and
to win work for union members
with the huge government film
industry that is now contracted
out at minimum wage.

While organizing the unor-
ganized is not a problem for SAG,
‘‘people are dying to join,’’ the
union does share the problem of
underemployment and unem-
ployment with the rest of labor.

It is so bad in the entertainment

"

bd

Sally Field, the star of th the movie “Norma Rae”, holds up the hand- of Crystal Lee Sutton, whoas life te waste

basis for the movie. They met for the first time at J.P. Stevens boycott benefit sponsored by the Screen Ac!
Guild along with other unions in the Hollywood area. 7

industry, says Schallert, that
only 10% of the union earns
over $7,500 per year. In addition,
at least half of SAG members
make under $1,000 a year in their
trade.

Schallert believes his union can
also do a great.deal for the labor
movement. Besides seeing SAG
members turning up on picket-
lines, events like the J.P. Stevens
boycott fundraiser are likely to
continue.

As in the movie, the Textile
Workers Union (now merged into
the Amalgamated Clothing and

Textile Workers Union ACTWU)
won a representation election at
the mill on August 28, 1974. That
was the happy end of the movie,
but in real life the 3,400 workers
still do not have a contract be-
cause of Stevens’ refusal to
negotiate and defiance of the
courts.

ACTWU calls the movie
‘*powerful but flawed’’ in its por-
trayal of conditions in the south-
ern mills, For Crystal Lee Sutton,
the movie has been a mixed bless-
ing. Blacklisted in the’ textile
industry and without a penny to

Life under the shadow of the bomb

THE ARMS MENACE, Fred
Weir. Progress Books, Toronto,
1980. 26pp. 50 cents.

A whole generation of workers
were born under the cloud of
Hiroshima. From the atom bomb
to the neutron bomb, we have
lived our lives under the shadow
of the arms race. We have all
grown older with the knowledge
that at any moment somebody in
Colorado, ina fit of panic, or rage,
could push a button that would
start the most terrifying holocaust
in history.

It was not comforting when, as
children, we came to realize that
there were enough bombs in the
world to kill the entire global
population. It is even less com-
forting when, as adults, we realize
that there are enough bombs to
kill us all one hundred times.
You’d think that once would have
been plenty.

This enormity, though, is a
valuable asset to the militarists
who control the bombs, and the
industrialists who profit from
their manufacture. To the aver-
age person, the size of the arms
stockpile is too large to be prop-
erly comprehended. The scale of
destruction that these weapons
can cause is also beyond normal
comprehension. Try to imagine
the world after a nuclear war has
killed everybody and destroyed
everything. The concept is. un-
thinkable.

The very size of this problem
poses, at one and the same:time,
the largest threat to the people
* and the largest smokescreen for
the militarists. They bank ‘their
plans on what they see as a
natural inclination to avoid dan-
gers so large. They hope that we

will concentrate on winning the -
lottery and leave them to do their
dirty business unbothered.

The greatest danger in the arms
race comes from the American
military and the American owned
arms industry. Of this, there
should be no doubt. The world
must never be allowed to forget
one of the central facts in the his-
tory of modern warfare. Who
dropped the atom bomb on Hiro-
shima? Who did it to Nagasaki?
The United States of America is
the only government in the world
that has ever used nuclear
weapons in war against another
country. Now that same country,
the same military establishment
that dropped the filthiest bombs in
history, has developed the neut-
ron bomb, a “‘clean’’ nuclear
weapon. They have developed
the Cruise missile, the MX missile
program, the Pershing II missile.
And nobody, neither their critics
nor their apoligists, doubt that
they are ready and willing to use
them.

For what purpose are they in-
stalling these weapons in Western
Europe? Is there really a danger
that the Soviet Union wants to
start a world war?

Just over thirty years ago, alife-
time for many of us, well within
living memory for many more, the
Soviet people ended a war that
claimed over twenty million lives.
It is said that there was not one
Soviet family that was not directly
touched by that war. The horrors
of war have not been distorted
and glorified in John Wayne type
movies over there, as they have
been for us. Everywhere in the
Soviet Union there have been
monuments erected to remind

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—APRIL 25, 1980—Page 10

people of the war, to com-
memorate those who died de-
fending their country against the
Nazi invaders, and to guarantee
that nobody forgets the terrible
cost of a global conflict. The
Soviet people know that war is a

BOOKS

brutal, ugly piece of work, and
they don’t want another one.

Their desire for peace also re-
flects a very practical need in the
USSR. Our experience in Canada
is of constant unemployment and
recurring recessions. The more
people there are in the military,
the less there are out looking for
jobs that don’t exist. In the
USSR, they have an exactly op-
posite problem. They have a
shortage of labor. A mutual re-
duction in troop levels would put
more of us ‘on pogey, while it
would free more Soviet people for
productive labor.

All of these thoughts came to
me after reading a pamphlet on
the arms menace by Fred Weir.
The pamphlet is an immensely
readable and succinct argument
for sanity in the face of increasing
hysteria in North America. Weir
calmly and concisely explodes
many of the anti-Soviet myths
that are used to escalate the arms
race. Carefully ; through the use of
hard facts, many of them supplied
by the cold warriors, he shows
that the cold war and the stock-
piling ‘of armaments serves not to
increase our security, but to main-
tain global insecurity: In a
wonderful turn of phrases, he

-points out that the greatest danger
to the interests of the top multi-
national corporations would be an
“outbreak of peace.’ :

Especially today, with Ameri-
can military build-ups in the Mid-
dle East and Europe, with the
NORAD agreement coming up
for renewal, with the Canadian
government haggling over which
American fighter plane to spend
billions of dollars on, this pam-
phlet is an important and easily
accessible tool for all Canadians.
Weir’s arguments can be used to
strengthen the peace, trade union
and other.democratic movements

in Canada.
— Alan Pickersgill

%

show for the box office successof
Norma Rae, Sutton has had

take odd-jobs while on the verge
of poverty. co

All that changed two montis
ago when she was hired as a umllt
organizer by ACTWU. Sine ,
then, she has been on a nation”
wide tour promoting the boy:
of J.P. Stevens sheets, towels
other products.

“This is my whole 4
exclaimed. Sutton, of the
paign to unionize “America’s NO

1 Labor Law Violator.’’ She’
the audience, ‘‘I only hope I liv
long enough to see a contract
J.P. Stevens.

=
=.
z

wae

The crowd, which representet
44 labor organizations as diverse
as the American Federation 0
Comedians and the United Stee
workers of America, respondeé
by raising $6,000 over expenses:

Besides featuring Sutton al
Field united for the first time, the .
program spotlighted union”
folk songs from the Will Gree!
Family Singers and Peter Yar
row.

The entertainment industty
newspaper, Daily Variety, latel
commented about the event

‘“*Former SAG President Ronald

Reagan would turn over in his
grave if he knew of the Guild’
emergence as a ‘working class
union.’

‘
—

110th anniversary
exhibit of works

V.1. LENIN
@

All of Lenin’s works
represented in this
anniversary display

and sale
to May 17, 1980

@
People’s Co-op
Books

353 West Pender
Vancouver 685-5836

Open Fri. night till 9

Bargain
~ Open
House

Slides of
10th annual
Political Song

Festival,
Berlin, GDR |

Showings
Oy. fo? atts

Refreshments, German
snacks. Adm. $2.
15088-72nd Ave.,

- Surrey
For directions,
_ ph. 596-9738