00;00;00;22 - 00;00;38;11

Jonathan Hafetz

Hi, I'm Jonathan Heifetz, and welcome to Law on Film, a podcast that explores the rich connections between law and film. Law is critical to many films. Film, in turn, tells us a lot about the law. In each episode, we'll examine a film that's noteworthy from a legal perspective. What issues does the film explore? What does it get right about the law and what does it get wrong?

00;00;38;13 - 00;01;07;00

Jonathan Hafetz

How is law important to understanding the film? And what does the film teach us about the law, and about the larger social and cultural context in which it's situated? Our film today is Norma Rae, a 1979 film that describes the struggle of Norma Rae Webster, played by Sally field, a factory worker with limited education, to unionize a textile mill in North Carolina where workers are suffering from poor working conditions, low wages, and other mistreatment.

00;01;07;03 - 00;01;31;04

Jonathan Hafetz

The film was directed by Martin Ritt from a screenplay by Irving Ravitch and Harriet Frank, and is based on the true story which was told in the 1975 book Crystal Leigh A Woman of Inheritance by New York Times reporter Henry Lee Furman. In the film, Reuben Warshaw, played by Ron Liebman, a union organizer from New York City, persuades Norma to help him organize a union.

00;01;31;08 - 00;01;53;18

Jonathan Hafetz

However, Norma and Rubin must overcome a series of obstacles, including pressure and harassment from management, as well as internal divisions among the textile workers. Norma, moreover, must navigate issues in her personal life, including with her new husband, Sonny Webster, played by Beau Bridges, who resents Norma's growing commitment to the union. Ultimately, Norma succeeds as the workers vote to unionize.

00;01;53;20 - 00;02;23;27

Jonathan Hafetz

The film offers insights into the labor movement on the cusp of the Reagan era in America, and features a memorable Oscar winning performance by Sally field in the title role. My guest to talk about the film is Fred B Jacob. Brad is a labor lawyer and adjunct professor of law. He's currently the solicitor of the National Labor Relations Board, where he serves as a chief legal advisor to the five member board on its operations and the adjudication of National Labor Relations Board cases in the federal courts.

00;02;23;29 - 00;02;45;15

Jonathan Hafetz

Fred teaches labor law as a professorial lecturer in law at the George Washington University School of Law. His articles on labor and administrative law are forthcoming in the Boston College Law Review and the Saint John's University Law Review. Fred previously taught as an adjunct at the Georgetown University Law Center and the College of William and Mary School of Law.

00;02;45;17 - 00;03;07;17

Jonathan Hafetz

Fred received his B.A. from Brandeis University and this J.D. from the College of William and Mary. He's a fellow in the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers. Fred has asked me to let you know that the views he expresses today are his own and do not represent the National Labor Relations Board or the United States government. Welcome to law and film, Fred.

00;03;07;19 - 00;03;16;12

Fred B. Jacob

Thank you so much, Jonathan. I'm so excited to be here to talk about Normal Day with you. It's the Citizen Kane of labor movies, so couldn't be better.

00;03;16;17 - 00;03;29;09

Jonathan Hafetz

It is. It is a super iconic movie. And I'm thrilled that you're here to talk about it with me. So if you could just tell us a little bit about the setting and context for this film, which came out in 1979, so quite a number of years ago now.

00;03;29;11 - 00;03;50;22

Fred B. Jacob

It doesn't seem like that many years ago, but I guess it was many years ago. The movie comes out at a really interesting inflection point for labor law and the labor movement. So the American labor movement goes back well into the 19th century as the Industrial Revolution. This place is agrarian workers and craft workers into a whole new way of life.

00;03;50;22 - 00;04;32;06

Fred B. Jacob

And I won't bore you and all your listeners with the full treatise on the history of labor law. But needless to say, it was a very bumpy, hard road to 1935, when the National Labor Relations Act was finally passed and the National Labor Relations Act that Congress passed during the height of the Great Depression empowered American workers with the right to choose union representation and protected them from discrimination, from interference with the right to choose union representation, and protected their right to select a bargaining representative to negotiate on their behalf at the bargaining table with their employers.

00;04;32;09 - 00;05;12;07

Fred B. Jacob

And obviously, this coming during the height of the Great Depression, where unemployment rates were creeping up towards 25% and the country was at a huge nadir of economic desperation. The NLRB was viewed as an idealistic solution to this incredibly intractable problem that the country had been facing. And so while unions and employers had been battling for the prior century, the National Labor Relations Act, which basically told the country that in section one of the act itself that it was the policy of the government to support collective bargaining, empowered organizing.

00;05;12;10 - 00;05;38;09

Fred B. Jacob

And so beginning in 1935, leading through 1955, union density in this country grew dramatically. So by 1955, almost a third of the country were union members, a third of employers were represented, had a union bargaining partner, and employees throughout the country had someone to represent their interests at a bargaining table, and this was enabled and empowered by the National Labor Relations Act.

00;05;38;11 - 00;06;11;27

Fred B. Jacob

The density that we saw peaks in 1955, and it starts to decline during this time period, following from 1955 through 1979, when this movie is made, and for all the reasons that we still see as prominent, the beginning of globalization, the diversification of various manufacturing industries, and as we'll talk about a little bit more as industry start to move from northern cities that were more amenable to union organization to areas of the country that were less amenable, union density drops.

00;06;11;29 - 00;06;35;06

Fred B. Jacob

And so by 1979, when this movie is released and it's based on a campaign, a real campaign against a company called J.P. Stevens that had mills all throughout the South that took place from 1963 to 1983. The unions are very powerful, but they're starting to fight for their survival. So Norma Rae is in this really interesting point in time for the labor movement.

00;06;35;08 - 00;07;01;28

Jonathan Hafetz

That background is so helpful to understand as we think about the film and just so formative, you know, as you know, the textile industries were notably difficult to unionize. And the film opens with Ruben Workshops, the play by wrongly been coming down from New York City in his effort to organize the JB Stephens Mill. And immediately we can see that there is strong local resistance.

00;07;02;04 - 00;07;13;15

Jonathan Hafetz

So this is the scene I'll just play a clip now of when Ruben knocks on the door of Norma's house, where she lives with her father, Vernon, played by Pat angle.

00;07;13;17 - 00;07;39;20

Norma Rae Dialogue

Tried. Mr.. Richard. That's right. Vernon. Richard. Who are you? My name is Ruben Lasky. All right. Yassky gonna name is the kind you have to spell for telephone operators and head waiters. What do you want? I'd like to get me a room with a little family on. We got a hotel room. Got a motel. That is excellent. I want to get to know some millions close up.

00;07;39;22 - 00;07;58;09

Norma Rae Dialogue

why is. I'll tell you, Mr. Widget, I just got into town about, an hour ago. I parked my rented car. I got out before I had a chance to adjust my crotch. The chief of police was on me saying, who are you? I don't know you. What the hell are you doing here? So I told him I was a labor organizer, come to put a union in the opium textile mill.

00;07;58;09 - 00;08;14;29

Norma Rae Dialogue

And he said, the hell you are, boy. And he gave me a ticket and told me to get my ass elsewhere right quick. He was dead right? Right. I'm guessing all of you people are communist agitators are crooks, and Jews are all for roll together. Every time you people come into a town, two folks get thrown out of the job.

00;08;15;02 - 00;08;33;10

Norma Rae Dialogue

Excuse me, sir, I didn't come off. Ask you a question. How much you making out? I'll make $1.33 a frame. And when did you have your last cost of living raise? I haven't had that. With all due respect, Mr. Widget, with today's inflation, that makes you a bit of a schlemiel. You calling me some kind of a name?

00;08;33;13 - 00;08;40;00

Norma Rae Dialogue

You're underpaid, you're overworked. This shift, and you're right up to your tonsils. You need me, sir.

00;08;40;02 - 00;08;47;24

Norma Rae Dialogue

I think maybe you run real fast. You want to get back to your car, perform a combat check? What are you telling that for? Cleaning. Got dog.

00;08;47;26 - 00;08;49;25

Norma Rae Dialogue

You don't need one.

00;08;49;27 - 00;08;56;26

Jonathan Hafetz

What made the textile industry so difficult to unionize? And what local factories were operating?

00;08;56;29 - 00;09;27;10

Fred B. Jacob

I think Vernon's quote about agitators, Jews, crooks and communists almost encapsulates it. All right. We have this southern society that has been a cohesive, insular society in our country, dating back to the antebellum era and particularly during the postwar war era. As unionization starts to grow and the unions are attempting to expand their presence throughout the country, they focus on trying to organize the South.

00;09;27;10 - 00;10;03;01

Fred B. Jacob

So the CIO, which at that point was separate from the AFL, the Congress of Industrial Organizations, they were focused on organizing industry wide and immediately following World War Two, they had a project they called operation Dixie, which was really focused on organizing the South. And they came across these same obstacles that we see depicted in the movie 30 years earlier obstacles from the church, obstacles from local government, obstacles from local business, and in many ways, there are societal obstructions to union organizing that are some are purely geographic.

00;10;03;04 - 00;10;21;11

Fred B. Jacob

A lot of these towns are small mill towns, small industry towns that have very few roads coming in and out, the employees who work there and the people who live in town and the people who govern the town are all geographically isolated. A lot of these mill towns, like the one that is depicted in Norma Rae, are true.

00;10;21;14 - 00;10;46;08

Fred B. Jacob

What we would consider company towns. I don't know if you picked up on it. The factory in Norma Rae is openly and the town is Henryville, and so the town is built around the mill. So in real life, Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, which is where Crystal Sutton lived and where she was trying to organize Roanoke Rapids, was founded in the late 19th century around the mill.

00;10;46;08 - 00;11;05;08

Fred B. Jacob

The mills were built around this town. They were created by the company that came in and built six mills around the river. They then built an infrastructure for the town. They then built the church for the town. They then built the schools for the town. They then put all their leadership of the company in office, in governing the town.

00;11;05;11 - 00;11;30;23

Fred B. Jacob

So these towns were completely and totally dominated by the companies, and they provided the sole economic sustenance for the people who live there. Everyone was economically dependent on the mills. And we see that in, I think, early in the movie, where Norma's mother is stricken, temporarily deaf from the incredibly loud noise in the mill, and the doctor at the mill says to Norma she can get another job elsewhere.

00;11;30;23 - 00;12;16;16

Fred B. Jacob

Norma says there's no other job here. So people had an economic dependance on these mills and these employers that made them extremely scared and anxious to fight the overwhelming governmental and institutional structures that dominated their lives. I would say the textile industry had somewhat ironic that they eventually became such obstructions to unionization, because the union movement started in the textile industry in this country in the 19th century, in the Lowell mills in Massachusetts, which initially were viewed as these almost idealistic New England Enlightenment institutions that brought women from farms all around New England to make textiles and while they were there, educated them to expose them to music, expose them to literature, published a famous

00;12;16;16 - 00;12;38;17

Fred B. Jacob

literary and poetry journal that was written and produced by the Lowell women. And ultimately it all fell apart over wages. Wages were cut, and the Lowell women organized, went out on strike, and the system fell apart. So even 150 years before Norma Rae and before the textile workers were trying to organize J.P. Stevens, we saw trouble in the textile mills.

00;12;38;20 - 00;13;02;18

Fred B. Jacob

And by 1970s, what we also saw was that almost all the textile manufacturing in this country had moved to the south. So while it had been heavily organized in the north, when it went to the south, it was heavily unorganized. So 40% of textile mills in the north were organized and only 10% in the south. So it was this right target that was really quite impenetrable for lots of reasons.

00;13;02;20 - 00;13;22;24

Jonathan Hafetz

And the film, I think, does such a good job of showing those obstacles and things that you laid out at the company town, the dynamics, the pressure management. And then there's ultimately the challenge that Reuben and Norma, when she joins him face, is to just basically try to convince the workers that this is in their interest. As Reuben says, you're underpaid, overworked, you're getting shafted.

00;13;22;24 - 00;13;29;04

Jonathan Hafetz

But exactly. You get them to to see that. Or even if they see that at some level, how to get them to act on it.

00;13;29;07 - 00;13;55;10

Fred B. Jacob

Exactly. And I think that interchange between Reuben and Vernon is so instructive, because Vernon responds and says, again, that line about y'all are all communists and Jews and agitators and crooks. And Reuben responds, how much are you paid? You're underpaid. Right? And there's this clash between culture and economics that is really, really important for the union to try to get over that hump and turn the conversation from culture to economics.

00;13;55;13 - 00;14;03;10

Fred B. Jacob

And it's really, really hard. And the movie shows us how hard it is to move that conversation to a different place.

00;14;03;13 - 00;14;17;00

Jonathan Hafetz

And you talked about the NLRB, the National Labor Relations Act during the New Deal and how significant that was. Can you just give a little bit more of a background on the legal process by which a workplace or industry becomes unionized?

00;14;17;03 - 00;14;36;19

Fred B. Jacob

I like to think of the National Labor Relations Act as an off screen character in this movie, like Mavis and Friends or Mrs. Wallace and The Big Bang Theory, right? It's this really looming presence that motivates the characters and motivates their actions. But it's never really spoken of. But nothing in this movie could happen without the National Labor Relations Act.

00;14;36;19 - 00;14;59;29

Fred B. Jacob

And I just say that because in my official life, I'm an employee of the National Labor Relations Board and spent my career there. And I should mention that everything I say in this podcast is, in my personal opinion, it's not the views of the United States government. It's not the views of the National Labor Relations Board. I'm participating in my personal capacity, but I do adore my employer and the mission of my employer that I've helped carry out for most of my career.

00;15;00;05 - 00;15;28;07

Fred B. Jacob

But the LRA is this incredible character in this movie, and it sets forth a process for employees to select freely, whether to have a union represent them or not. And that was the core purpose of the National Labor Relations Act. The process. It's it's hard. It's not an easy process. And there are so many different variables that go into it that are political, economic, based on public support.

00;15;28;07 - 00;15;49;28

Fred B. Jacob

All these issues. I was thinking it's a holistic endeavor involving all these issues human connection, fundraising, politics, public relations. But at heart, it's been turned into a legal process that the NLRB provides. And so the snapshot is this if employees want to start a union, the NLRB creates a process that allows them to do it. Shop by shop.

00;15;50;04 - 00;16;12;02

Fred B. Jacob

It's not done on an industry wide basis in the United States. Other countries have an industry wide or sectoral model. We don't have that. So to organize an entire industry like the textile workers wanted to organize in the South, you have to do it one by one by one. It can be really hard. And each shop you have to get a core of members, a core of supporters.

00;16;12;09 - 00;16;33;02

Fred B. Jacob

Once you have 30% of employees in a particular bargaining unit who have decided, yes, I want to be a member of this union, I want to be recognized by this union to support an election. Then the NLRB will schedule an election. But typically what will happen is unions will get far more than 30%. They'll try to get up to at least 50, 60, 70%.

00;16;33;02 - 00;17;01;07

Fred B. Jacob

Knowing that what happens after an election is scheduled is that there's a campaign. And during the campaign, when the parties engage and the act provides the employers a right of free speech to express their opinion during organizing campaigns, as long as there are no threats or promises of benefits and essentially no coercion. And during that time, when the issues engage, the union typically suffers a loss of support from that high point that it had when the cards were first signed.

00;17;01;10 - 00;17;28;14

Fred B. Jacob

During the whole campaign, parties can engage in pamphlets talking to employees at union meetings, talking to employees outside the gates, talking to employees at home visits. Now, we probably have lots of more sophisticated social media. Facebook do people still tweet? I don't know, there are lots of different, more modern tools that people use to organize now, like we are seeing in some of the bigger campaigns that are being reported on in the press.

00;17;28;20 - 00;17;55;24

Fred B. Jacob

And these all lead up to an election. And what we saw in the film is pretty accurate. And at the election, it is typically a secret ballot election where if it is held on the employer's premises, employees have the opportunity to go into a voting booth, cast a secret ballot, and then it is a public counting with representatives from the employer, representatives from the union, representatives from the National Labor Relations Board there to count and certify the ballots.

00;17;55;27 - 00;18;21;00

Fred B. Jacob

Now, that's the easy process, right? There's always another layer of legal process on top of it, where parties can fight over what's the appropriate bargaining unit. Was the election fair? Because ultimately what the board is trying to do with the elections is ensure that they are conducted under what the board called laboratory conditions in the 1940s to make them as clean and sterile and antiseptic as possible, and sometimes as laboratory conditions don't pan out.

00;18;21;02 - 00;18;53;14

Fred B. Jacob

And the board will then go back to the table and rerun the election again. I think what we see in the movie is pretty accurate. And again, it's a hard process. Ultimately, what unions I think are hoping for is what we see sometimes. And we saw a lot in the 30s and 40s. And, you know, we see in the press now where success in one facility steamrolls and then starts to pick up speed and just spread with excitement and verve to other institutions and build out to hopefully, from the unions perspective, organizing the entire industry.

00;18;53;16 - 00;18;56;02

Jonathan Hafetz

Do you get kind of moment like a practice? Exactly.

00;18;56;08 - 00;19;14;16

Fred B. Jacob

And it's through that momentum that they get bargaining power to. The bargaining power grows with every shop that you continue to organize, because the more shops you continue to organize, the more employees you represent and the more leverage you have. Vis-A-Vis the economic weapons that a union can exercise, whether it's a strike or corporate campaigns or public pressure.

00;19;14;18 - 00;19;21;17

Jonathan Hafetz

So some countries are not shot by shot. Those countries tend to have the unions had to have stronger power. Is that not an apt generalization?

00;19;21;17 - 00;19;36;21

Fred B. Jacob

I think that's right. I'm not going to tell you I'm an expert in international labor law. But, you know, my understanding is that in Europe, for example, where there's more sectoral bargaining, even if they're going to have more of a say at the table because they're representing more workers, right? I don't want to say it's a sheer numbers game, but there's a lot of power number.

00;19;36;21 - 00;19;58;02

Fred B. Jacob

That's the whole point of the Labor Act, right? Is that there is collective power and that a single worker can bring to bear a certain amount of sway with the employer. But ten workers can bring more power, 100 workers can bring more power. And if you have an entire sector who's sitting down at the bargaining table with an employer council, then unions bringing more power, the employers are bringing more power.

00;19;58;02 - 00;20;21;27

Fred B. Jacob

And it also eliminates a bit of a competitive edge. Or rather, I shouldn't say competitive edge. It eliminates downward pressure among the employers who are afraid that if they agree to a union contract, they're going to be at a competitive disadvantage, vis-a-vis their competitors, and you eliminate that when you're bargaining on an industry wide basis, which is why a lot of unions now are arguing for sectoral bargaining models in the United States.

00;20;21;29 - 00;20;27;26

Jonathan Hafetz

So, Norma Rae, this was an important battleground in the textile industry, but it was just effectively a shop.

00;20;27;26 - 00;20;59;03

Fred B. Jacob

And that we're seeing this snapshot of this one shop now in real life. What happened with J.P. Stevens was the textile workers were trying to organize dozens and dozens of plants across the South at the same time, and they had not a lot of success. The real life Roanoke Rapids plant that Norma Rae was based on is a bit of an outlier, given the sheer ferocity of opposition that J.P. Stevens showed now in the history of labor law, there have been few employers who have been as bold in violating labor law as J.P. Stevens was.

00;20;59;11 - 00;21;08;14

Fred B. Jacob

And that's the story that we're seeing in Norma Rae, a real, real anti-union employer that's refusing to respect the law.

00;21;08;16 - 00;21;21;16

Jonathan Hafetz

One of the things that Norma's thinking about before she decides to assist Rubin to unionize or help unionize the factory, is whether she'll lose her job. Here's more about talking about her fears.

00;21;21;19 - 00;21;37;23

Norma Rae Dialogue

If I joined up with you when I lose my job, no way. You can imagine going back in as big as a first day. When you go to work, you can talk to any male hands. I want to listen as long as it's during the break. You can take your little pamphlets to the mall and pass them along as I got them, so they can do to touch you.

00;21;37;25 - 00;21;49;28

Norma Rae Dialogue

I know my very good Girl Scout. I'll go along with. You know, I just wish I wanted to hook you. You got me.

00;21;50;00 - 00;22;01;22

Jonathan Hafetz

Did this capture the legal protections of unions? What Rubin tells her in response, in terms of how she'll be protected and what she can do, and the overall way in which unions are protected, and then the organizing and bargaining process.

00;22;01;25 - 00;22;20;24

Fred B. Jacob

I think it does. I think it does a really nice job at it. So, as I said, the National Labor Relations Act, it's a law that's designed to prevent worker rights or to protect worker rights. We at the board like to say we're not pro union, we're not pro employer, we're pro worker, and we're pro NLRB. And the NLRB protects worker rights.

00;22;20;27 - 00;22;43;02

Fred B. Jacob

And one of the ways it does that is it has a bill of rights that gives employees in this country the right to join form, assist labor organization, select representative of their own choosing, and to engage in concerted activity for mutual aid and protection. And it prevents interference with that right. It makes an unlawful for employers to interfere with that right and unions to interfere with that right.

00;22;43;05 - 00;23;13;13

Fred B. Jacob

It also makes it unlawful for employers to fire employees for engaging in union activity. What the Act is trying to do is trying to provide a protective buffer for employees to speak to each other about issues of concern in the workplace, to organize unions, and indeed just to act conservatively because the act applies when two employees want to get together and present a joint complaint about their wages to their employer, even if they're not trying to form a union, because we again, the act embraces the idea that there's power in numbers.

00;23;13;16 - 00;23;35;17

Fred B. Jacob

So what Rubin says to Norma is absolutely right. You can't lose your job. It's illegal to fire someone for trying to start a union. You are allowed to wear a button as big as a Frisbee that says you support the union. You're allowed to talk to your coworkers on non-working time about union stuff, particularly in a break room or a parking lot or a non-work area.

00;23;35;17 - 00;23;55;14

Fred B. Jacob

It makes it even more clear you're allowed to pass out pamphlets in cafeteria, and as Rubin did outside the plant. And, you know, as Rubin says, there's not a goddamn thing they can do to touch you for an employer who doesn't want to violate the law. And most employers don't. Most employers want to respect the law, I would think, but sometimes they don't.

00;23;55;14 - 00;24;24;10

Fred B. Jacob

And that's what we see depicted in this movie. We see the employers that are really an employer who's really, really dead set and willing to violate the law to remain free of having to bargain with the union. And that's what the NLRB is there to protect. The honor is there, and the NLRB is there to protect that. And we have a legal process where our general counsel will prosecute those sorts of violations in JP Stephens, there were dozens of plants that the union was trying to organize at the same time throughout the 1960s.

00;24;24;10 - 00;24;54;01

Fred B. Jacob

And what's interesting is that this movie is a bit of a snapshot of the middle of the JP Stephens campaign. So in real life, JP Stephens had been going on since 1963, continued to the early 1980s and before. What's going on at Opis Henley here, or our fictional version of JP Stephens? There had been a ton of labor litigation with the board and JP Stephens, where JP Stephens had had dozens and dozens and dozens of violations found against it.

00;24;54;06 - 00;25;15;26

Fred B. Jacob

There is a case out of the Second Circuit in the late 60s finding 71 different violations just for discharging employees. JP Stephens discharged an employee who had worked there for 50 years, since he was 13 years old, had never been written up. And then when he announced his support for the union, surprisingly, there was a time or attendance violation that got him fired.

00;25;15;29 - 00;25;41;15

Fred B. Jacob

They fired his son for similar reasons, and it was this kind of scorched earth campaign that ultimately led the board to find, as I said, hundreds of labor law violations and for those to be enforced by a court of appeals, and once they're enforced by a court of appeals, then any violation is subject to contempt sanctions. And there's a great scene in the movie where Reuben demands access to the plant to inspect the bulletin boards.

00;25;41;18 - 00;26;13;16

Fred B. Jacob

In real life, the reason that Reuben was able to do that is because there was a contempt finding against JP Stephens, e.g. Henley, Opie, Henley, that gave them the power to go inspect the bulletin boards. Because the board decided and the courts agreed, that union access to the plant was crucial to showing employees that they had rights under the National Labor Relations Act to talk to the unions, to join a union, and to fight the inference of anti-union interference.

00;26;13;16 - 00;26;40;06

Fred B. Jacob

That the incredible record of unfair labor practices showed them. And I think you see in the movie, like it's this great moment where, from a dramatic standpoint, right, the idea when he's going back and forth with the managers and the managers are standing around him and physically threatening him. And it's great, you know, from a dramatic narrative. But what I really love about it is that he goes into the plant and he's able to connect with workers and show them like we are a presence here.

00;26;40;10 - 00;27;02;03

Fred B. Jacob

We can fight this corporation despite the fact that they may be treating you so poorly and treating us so poorly. And ultimately, that's what inspires Norma to join up with him. It's seeing him walk the floor of the plant, and that wouldn't have happened without the NLRB and the NLRB and the courts agreeing that there were significant labor law violations that needed to be remedied.

00;27;02;06 - 00;27;04;08

Jonathan Hafetz

It gives them the credibility to do.

00;27;04;08 - 00;27;05;02

Fred B. Jacob

Exactly.

00;27;05;09 - 00;27;21;22

Jonathan Hafetz

And he repeatedly, at various points in the movie reference is taking legal action, going to court. There's a lot of that that had happened, as you said, kind of off screen. So it's the important background for the film. There's often the indirect reference, as you said, to the large off screen character of the NLRB.

00;27;21;22 - 00;27;37;25

Fred B. Jacob

Yeah, I want to make like a reservation and Guild and Grant version of this. It's just all takes place at board headquarters. Maybe it's just because I want to be in the sequel, so I don't know. But, you could make a whole movie that's basically like a legal drama, a courtroom drama that is just based on this.

00;27;37;25 - 00;27;46;25

Fred B. Jacob

And it might not be as exciting or melodramatic as Norma Rae is, but the courtroom drama is just as important as what's going on on the screen.

00;27;46;27 - 00;28;05;14

Jonathan Hafetz

Yeah, the part two. But I mean, exactly what you're saying is that, you know, even a film like most people wouldn't really view it as a legal film. It's not a courtroom drama, not a procedural, but the law is operating, as you're saying, in multiple ways, kind of in the background. There's some references in the movie. You know, it's a huge presence for understanding and kind of deconstructing the film.

00;28;05;17 - 00;28;25;24

Fred B. Jacob

I think that's exactly right. And, you know, you could have a movie about cops and robbers. You can watch Ocean's 11, right? And Ocean's 11 is this huge heist. We know that there are legal parameters that are governing, that are adding to the stakes of the movie, because we know if they get caught, I mean, yes, there's going to be mobsters and stuff who comes after them, but there are also major legal consequences to getting caught and like that.

00;28;25;24 - 00;28;38;11

Fred B. Jacob

You have this movie where the labor laws are just this huge off screen presence that animate the characters and sort of, again, provide their motivations and drive the plot in ways that only we kind of nerdy labor lawyers are picking up on.

00;28;38;14 - 00;29;09;25

Jonathan Hafetz

Another interesting thing is some of the other pressures that management places on Norma and the union when management suspects that Norma is thinking about assisting Rubin and trying to unionize the plant, they try to co-opt her. They give her a supervisory role and to make her something of a low level manager, I guess. And this backfires ultimately, because, you know, Norma does not like having to kind of walk the factory floor, scrutinize her coworkers and order them around.

00;29;10;02 - 00;29;16;24

Jonathan Hafetz

Was this a common tactic that management employed, and was Norma's response typical or atypical?

00;29;16;27 - 00;29;45;21

Fred B. Jacob

It's certainly not an unheard of tactic, I'll put it that way. If you want to hop on to Westlaw and search in NLRB cases for unlawful promotions, they are there and they're there because interference with employees rights can take all different sorts of forms more common than promoting someone out of the unit, which could be unlawful interference if done for the purpose of preventing people from learning about unions and preventing people from exercising their section seven rights under the act.

00;29;45;21 - 00;30;08;24

Fred B. Jacob

Section seven is the Bill of rights, and when someone is promoted out of the unit, I should say they're no longer employees under the act because supervisors are not covered by the NLRB. So promoting them out of the unit has this two fold of purpose. One, it basically takes them out of the bargaining unit so they're no longer an effective voice, and it aligns them with management in ways that they may not have been aligned with management before.

00;30;08;27 - 00;30;39;11

Fred B. Jacob

So that can interfere when done for the purpose of undermining someone's right to self organize. There are lots of different ways. More common is employers giving benefits. So all of a sudden people start to organize and there's now a wage increase. There's now a new Christmas holiday. Now you're getting your birthday off for a holiday. You're getting better benefits and a promise of benefits can be as destructive to organizing and labor rights as a threat of termination.

00;30;39;11 - 00;31;01;17

Fred B. Jacob

So there's a famous Supreme Court case called Exchange Parts, where the court says we have to be very careful about the iron fist in the velvet glove, that employees know that the hand that is giving them these benefits are just as likely to take it away. So giving someone a booth like they gave Norma this booth, this promotion can be a form of unlawful interference.

00;31;01;17 - 00;31;23;11

Fred B. Jacob

And I think there's something from a narrative dramatic standpoint and from an organizing standpoint. I've never been a union organizer, but my understanding is Rubin. When he says to her, you're the fish, I want you to hook. When she finally says, I want to join you, it's really important for organizing anything, whether it's a union or a political movement or probably even an office holiday party.

00;31;23;14 - 00;31;45;15

Fred B. Jacob

Not to diminish it, but like any time you're trying to organize people, it's really important to have a Norma Rae or Christa Lee Sutton, somebody who don't. They say to her when they promoted, you got a big mouth, and we're going to put that to use somebody who's not afraid to speak out, somebody who knows everybody, somebody who is kind of viewed as a maven, who knows what's going on.

00;31;45;18 - 00;31;53;18

Fred B. Jacob

And having somebody like that central to your organizing campaign is really, really important. Did you read The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell?

00;31;53;20 - 00;31;54;17

Jonathan Hafetz

Yeah, I have read that.

00;31;54;21 - 00;32;07;01

Fred B. Jacob

So, you know, like he talks about mavens, connectors and salespeople and that they're really important for building movement. That's what you want your organizing campaign. And that's what Norma Rae is. She's that person.

00;32;07;03 - 00;32;24;18

Jonathan Hafetz

The film really does a great job of showing that the way that Norma, in contrast or Rubin is able, as you said, to speak to the workers in their own terms. I mean, you can see why it's in their interest that they should do this. They're underpaid, they're overworked. But it's Norma who can relate to them in a more direct and effective way a wide variety.

00;32;24;21 - 00;32;33;07

Jonathan Hafetz

Older, younger, black, white. Yeah. And that's so you can see why she's sort of the prize person, both for Rubin and then for also management to get on their side.

00;32;33;08 - 00;32;46;15

Fred B. Jacob

Exactly. Yeah. There's just that great scene where they go out into the country and she introduces them. She's the on trade so he can sit down and whittle or try to change the tractor tire and get out there. And he could not penetrate that by himself.

00;32;46;17 - 00;33;08;26

Jonathan Hafetz

In one instance, the company takes down notices from about the union from the bulletin board, and then Norma's later arrested and dragged off the factory floor for her advocacy. And this culminates with the iconic image of Norma Sally field, right, standing on a table on the factory floor, holding up a cardboard sign saying Union, which prompts everyone on the floor to shut off their machine.

00;33;08;26 - 00;33;10;19

Jonathan Hafetz

And then you can hear the silence.

00;33;10;21 - 00;33;28;10

Fred B. Jacob

I had forgotten how powerful a scene it was until I watched it again. Recently, I showed the film to my class and we did it in, bigger room. So it was projected on a projector. It wasn't just on my TV, I wasn't watching it through headphones. And you just realize how loud the movie is any time they're in that factory.

00;33;28;13 - 00;34;01;10

Fred B. Jacob

I mean, it opens up, right? With her mother being struck temporarily deaf because of just the noise in the factory. And that scene where ultimately she's about to be fired. She knows she's about to be fired unlawfully based on false pretense for her union activity, because she's trying to write down the notice, a racist piece of paper that the company puts on a bulletin board to try to divide the workers, and she stands on that table and one by one, as each worker shuts off their machine.

00;34;01;10 - 00;34;40;22

Fred B. Jacob

I mean, it is a brilliant piece of filmmaking. And then all of a sudden you have that quiet and the quiet is deafening just in its silence. How bold that silence is. And it just strikes me it's the thematic heart of the film, and it's the thematic heart of the film because it's an encapsulation of worker power. It is a strike, it is a work stoppage, and that is the quintessential tool that the NRA and federal labor law gives to employees to show their strength by stopping their work and stopping their toil for the employer and in a real full strike, they would walk off.

00;34;40;22 - 00;35;03;24

Fred B. Jacob

But this is a strike. They are showing their respect for Norma. They're showing their solidarity with Norma. When they turn off these machines, when she holds that sign that says Union, and they are telling her that they are with her. And to me, there's no more powerful vision of solidarity in the movie. Even at the end when they vote for the union, then that scene.

00;35;03;24 - 00;35;19;26

Fred B. Jacob

And I think that's why that image, any time we talk about labor, anytime you see labor on social media and someone needs a picture or an image, it's that picture of Norma Rae with the union sign on the table. And I think it's just it's a wonderful piece of filmmaking.

00;35;19;28 - 00;35;43;08

Jonathan Hafetz

I couldn't agree more. I mean, it's so powerful. It's like the moment when the notion of the union becomes really concrete and among the workers, there's a sense that this could happen in such a powerful moment. Norma, then, is just taken to jail. Rubin Belcher out or gets her out, I think, and she starts expressing how upset she is, and Rubin tells her he's seen management do much worse to break unions.

00;35;43;12 - 00;35;48;27

Jonathan Hafetz

So here's a describing some of the management tactics.

00;35;48;29 - 00;36;05;08

Norma Rae Dialogue

Urging women on the picket lines. They live in the stomach with the club so basic 16 gets shot in the back. I saw guys get blown up and back when he tried to stop his car in the morning, and you just got your finger on this one.

00;36;05;11 - 00;36;19;00

Jonathan Hafetz

How common were these kind of tactics and the use of violence? Well, historically. And then at the time of Norma Rae, the films in the late 70s. But struggle was going on in the 60s and 70s in the textile mills.

00;36;19;03 - 00;36;44;07

Fred B. Jacob

I mean, it's sad to say, but violence has been linked to labor organizing since the dawn of labor organizing. I think my personal opinion, any time you're challenging the status quo, anytime you're challenging the institutions that govern a society and trying to topple their old, there's going to be a blowback and the blowback and the temperature rises and rises and rises.

00;36;44;10 - 00;37;16;06

Fred B. Jacob

You know, the NLRB, the National Labor Relations Act in some ways was born of violence because it was a reaction to not just strike activity that had been occurring from the 1850s to the 1930s and really picking up during the Great Depression. But the strike activity that led to severe and extreme violence, we know we can go back to the Haymarket riots of 1886, where a protest for the eight hour day was a strike for the eight hour workday erupts into violence.

00;37;16;06 - 00;37;50;28

Fred B. Jacob

When somebody throws a bomb into the crowd, we can look at the Battle of Blair Mountain, which was in the 1920s, ultimately turned into a movie by John Sayles called Matewan, where miners in West Virginia were attempting to organize. And ultimately 10,000 miners marched together on the company, and at some point during this erupts into violence. The state of West Virginia dropped bombs on the miners, who are marching little steel strikes of 1937, where the steel workers are trying to organize smaller steel companies, massacres dozens of people in these strikes.

00;37;50;28 - 00;38;09;21

Fred B. Jacob

And so violence is not unheard of. I mean, there are still cases where there's violence in the course of union activity. I had a case arising out of Las Vegas where employees were striking union with striking an industrial employer. The small company and the company owner attempted to run them down with her car. So these things still happen.

00;38;09;27 - 00;38;40;25

Fred B. Jacob

And again, they happen far less so than they used to happen. And that's, I think, a real win and a real achievement of the National Labor Relations Act, that it did successfully substitute a regime of law and process and order and rights for what used to be left to pure economic violence and economic strife. And so, you know, again, I think we're really lucky to live in an age where the law has provided a different avenue for people to resolve these disputes.

00;38;40;28 - 00;38;41;01

Fred B. Jacob

Yeah.

00;38;41;05 - 00;39;02;03

Jonathan Hafetz

I think the history that you talked about, Haymarket Square, for example, I mean, I wonder how familiar many people you are, how much violence there was surrounding the unionization efforts, particularly, I guess, from the post-Civil War era up through the great Depression and the New Deal and the NRA. I mean, it was such a significant issue that could really explode in the film.

00;39;02;03 - 00;39;08;04

Jonathan Hafetz

Rubin when there is violence, he says, well, we can do something about that. This is an opportunity. We can go to court over this.

00;39;08;06 - 00;39;36;00

Fred B. Jacob

Yeah, because we have a law that allows us to do that now and again, viewing this as a snapshot in the course of a broader campaign where the groundwork has already been laid for showing this employer to be a really big recidivist and violator of the National Labor Relations Act and courts primed to have seen that Ruben's probably right that they could move more quickly, they could go directly to court and try to get contempt citations.

00;39;36;02 - 00;40;01;03

Fred B. Jacob

I mean, ultimately, though, you have to have an employer that's willing to abide by the law. And sometimes even once you had a board order and a court order and a contempt finding, employers still don't comply with the law. Just very recently, the NLRB had two owners of a small company called into court. They were arrested for violating the National Labor Relations Act for refusing to comply with the board order that was enforced by the court after they were found in contempt.

00;40;01;10 - 00;40;17;13

Fred B. Jacob

So these extreme circumstances still happen and they're rare. You know, usually most people try to comply or at least pretend to comply when there's a court order against you. And, but it still happens. And Ruben's right that there could be a way to, to enforce these rights.

00;40;17;16 - 00;40;42;02

Jonathan Hafetz

Another obstacle that Ruben and Norma face is the racial divisions that exist, and the way that management tries to exploit them. One si Norma asks for Reverend whether she can use the church for a union meeting, and she notes that this is, you know, she asks, just ask is black and white workers would sit together. So here's this revealing conversation between Norma and the Reverend.

00;40;42;05 - 00;41;06;12

Norma Rae Dialogue

Hey, Reverend. Wow. No, no, you caught me in a shirt sleeve. Well, that's okay. So how I can help, you know how long I've been coming to this church? Rather, since you were a little girl. That's right. I accepted Christ when I was six years old, didn't I? When you call me good Christian with a lapse or two, I'd say so for the lapse of two, if you call yourself a good Christian.

00;41;06;14 - 00;41;23;16

Norma Rae Dialogue

As for the Lord to say, I want this church for you, we meet next Saturday afternoon as blacks and whites together. This is a house of God. Here's what I wait to see what it is and what it is. You'll come a lot of close to blasphemy, Norma. I'll come here and say it. I stand a all done wrong, and I'm sorry.

00;41;23;16 - 00;41;42;23

Norma Rae Dialogue

And I ask for God to forgive me. Now I want to see what this church stands for. I want to see you stand up in that pulpit. And so that would be just to say how to be a union. And if you spent in two hours up in a row to be on your side, and if you don't and I say, ain't nothing good for me in that church, and I'm going to leave it flat, we're going to miss your voice on the choir.

00;41;42;23 - 00;41;46;13

Norma Rae Dialogue

Normal people who raised absolutely serious.

00;41;46;15 - 00;42;01;27

Jonathan Hafetz

And then a little later, we see a group of white workers beating up a black worker for supporting the union. And when Ruben asks what's going on, Norma explains how managers trying to inflame racial tensions and beat back the attempt to unionize.

00;42;01;29 - 00;42;15;05

Norma Rae Dialogue

What started this? They couldn't believe them. The whites of the blacks are going to take over the union. They're going to push them around. And every time you tell a white man in black man's going to say, this is what you get. I love it when he's pissed at me. We can take legal action and you get me the letter.

00;42;15;08 - 00;42;29;04

Norma Rae Dialogue

I just keep watching and we'll be watching this. How good is your memory? I still don't know. The pledge. Allegiance to the flag? Yes. Somebody to help you write it down. A lot of the time, she says, man, by the time I finished lipstick. How did you get caught? I went back next week for curlers. You know how.

00;42;29;04 - 00;42;37;16

Jonathan Hafetz

To do again. Okay. What role did race and racial tensions play in undermining the labor movement? And how well does the film capture them?

00;42;37;18 - 00;43;09;23

Fred B. Jacob

Well, like our country? Sadly, racial tensions and racism infiltrated the labor movement and labor organizing the law throughout the 20th century slowly improved to fight racism in both organizing and in the labor movement. There were numerous unions that wouldn't represent African-Americans in the 20th century. Supreme court made that clear that that was unlawful in a case called steel versus Louisville Railroad Workers.

00;43;09;25 - 00;43;40;23

Fred B. Jacob

And then the board jumped on that bandwagon and made clear that it was a violation of the union's duty to bargain in good faith. And a duty to represent its employees and members by refusing to represent African-American employees, minority employees. But the bigger issue, I think, facing organizing was ever present in the labor movement and still is to a certain extent, my sense is that one tactic that employers use to defeat unions is that they divide employees into smaller factions.

00;43;40;23 - 00;44;08;10

Fred B. Jacob

So it could be the higher paid workers versus the lower paid workers. It could be the craft workers versus the non skilled workers. It could be the production workers versus the maintenance workers. And for many, many employers throughout the 20th century and probably to today, it was black workers versus white workers. And in parts of this country, I shouldn't say parts of this country because it's not like, you know, the North or the Midwest or the West was immune from racism.

00;44;08;10 - 00;44;34;20

Fred B. Jacob

So it happened everywhere, but particularly in the South in the 1950s and 60s, using race as a cudgel to defeat unionization was extremely common, and the board began to police that in the 1960s with a really seminal case called civil manufacturing, where the board basically said, we're not going to tolerate purely racial appeals in elections, that we should have our laboratory conditions, and they should be appealing to reason, not passion.

00;44;34;22 - 00;44;58;24

Fred B. Jacob

And in this case, fuel. Like what we saw in Norma Rae, the employer essentially put out notices and put out letters and pamphlets to employees accusing the union of essentially supporting the civil rights movement, accusing the union of supporting integration in the plant and and essentially saying that the union, if you bring it in, would bring about integrated racial working conditions.

00;44;58;24 - 00;45;31;24

Fred B. Jacob

And the board found that that was an unlawful appeal to passion instead of reason and has prohibited that. But obviously, you know, by 1963 or 1979, when Norma Rae is being filmed, like it's still happening, Jackie Stevens did exactly what is depicted in Norma Rae. Chris Sutton was fired for trying to copy down a memo that essentially said the union is going to empower the black workers to take it over, and they were going to tell you white workers what to do and displace you from your positions in the plant.

00;45;31;26 - 00;46;05;17

Fred B. Jacob

And that's what Norma was trying to copy down. That's what Crystal Lee Sutton was trying to copy down when she was fired. And those appeals would probably be unlawful under the National Labor Relations Act. But they were still effective in a society where racial lines were very prominent and were still being drawn. And one of the things that you see and again, in the real J.P. Stevens was that from 1964, when the Civil Rights Act was passed through the mid-seventies, the number of black workers in these mill factories and these textile mills grew exponentially.

00;46;05;19 - 00;46;39;13

Fred B. Jacob

And because of black workers familiarity with the civil rights movement and their support for it, they were far more inclined to join the union and support that kind of solidarity and social movement than the white workers were. So one of the big challenges that the textile workers had was building these coalitions between black workers who had recently entered that workforce, and the white workers who maybe more senior had the better jobs, had their existing biases that they brought to the table from being raised in a culture that was a Jim Crow segregated South.

00;46;39;15 - 00;46;48;08

Fred B. Jacob

So racial tensions were real. And, you know, again, I think they still are in lots of different workplaces. And it's something that unions and employers still struggle with.

00;46;48;10 - 00;47;05;05

Jonathan Hafetz

The film also suggests that other factors, like anti-Semitism played a role. And it talks about this, I think, through the local opposition to Rubin. How much of a role did anti-Semitism play, and what were the implications, given the prominent role that Jews played in the labor movement?

00;47;05;07 - 00;47;48;12

Fred B. Jacob

I would suggest that I think the anti-Semitism issue towards Rubin is of a piece with the general provincialism that the Union struggled against to organize in small towns throughout the South that didn't have a culture or a background of unionization. One of the big struggles was that, again, I keep going back to Vernon's line about agitators, Jews, crooks and communists that unions were viewed and in many ways were like the birth of the modern labor movement in the 20th century was inspired by Eastern European immigrants, Jewish immigrants, Italian immigrants, immigrants from what were at that point were viewed as undesirable parts of Europe.

00;47;48;12 - 00;48;06;06

Fred B. Jacob

Right. And they were viewed as outsiders. And so I think what you're seeing with the reaction to Rubin, even Norma Rae saying, I've never met a Jew before, I thought y'all had horns. You know, to a certain extent, like what we see now where we talk about how do you help people overcome homophobia? How do you help people overcome what biases they have?

00;48;06;06 - 00;48;23;18

Fred B. Jacob

And they tend to overcome them when they actually meet people and interact with people and get to know people and see them as human. And that's a lot of what the story is. And Norma Rae, I like from a thematic point of view, is Norma getting to know Ruben and you're getting to know him as a person and overcoming her biases.

00;48;23;21 - 00;48;47;06

Fred B. Jacob

I can't speak holistically about all the anti-Semitism, a huge factor, but I think it was of a piece in real life. The Rubin character was actually a West Virginia miner who had been an organizer with the mine workers who came down who. So he was not a young, handsome Jewish guy from New York City. He was much more attuned to the kind of life and work that happened in rural communities.

00;48;47;06 - 00;48;48;22

Fred B. Jacob

And he still struggled.

00;48;48;24 - 00;48;54;25

Jonathan Hafetz

That's fascinating. That was not the outside agitator coming in, although that happened in a lot of other circumstances.

00;48;54;25 - 00;49;13;10

Fred B. Jacob

Yeah, and they view that though as an outside agitator. I mean, it didn't matter that I don't remember his name, but like, I didn't matter that this is a guy who grew up in West Virginia, a rural town, as a mine worker, organized for the mine workers and then came to this small town in North Carolina who theoretically could speak the language.

00;49;13;10 - 00;49;41;04

Fred B. Jacob

But he was representing an ideal and an idea that was foreign and viewed with skepticism and fear. People were afraid. I mean, repeatedly in this movie, people say something along the lines of every time y'all come around here, people lose their jobs, you know? And it kind of is true when you have an employer that is dead set on fighting unionization, like it leads to unfair labor practices and it leads to unlawful terminations, and it is hard fought.

00;49;41;10 - 00;49;52;04

Fred B. Jacob

So they viewed folks who came in from the outside trying to impose, but they might view as some other way of life on them with a fair amount of skepticism. And he got it's really hard to win them over.

00;49;52;07 - 00;50;22;14

Jonathan Hafetz

I mean, in a sense, it's understandable because if you try and you lose, they're going to end up worse off. Exactly. I mean, another thing that the film explores are the issues around gender and uneducated women, although clearly bright and talented in a small conservative town, has to navigate between Rubin, who, despite his education and worldliness, respects her, and Sonny Webster, played by Beau Bridges, her new husband, who's upset at Norma's unionizing and the way it's interfering with what he sees as her traditional role as wife and mother.

00;50;22;19 - 00;50;42;11

Jonathan Hafetz

I mean, Norma just kind of exploited that method, his two children by different fathers son. He also has children from a prior marriage, but nonetheless, he sort of has this view of what Goldman should be doing. Even though Dorman works in the factory, she really supposed to do both. Can you talk a little bit about the gender dynamics, and whether and how unions serve as a means of empowerment for women like Norma and others?

00;50;42;14 - 00;51;09;26

Fred B. Jacob

I can try I mean, I think one of the things that the movie does really, really well, and it just struck me is how it essentially tells these two parallel stories that the movie is a story about the workers at Opis Henley finding a voice, and it's a story about Norma finding a voice and they are both empowered by the Labor Act, and doing so like the Labor Act makes it possible.

00;51;09;28 - 00;51;36;29

Fred B. Jacob

But, you know, the movie opens up and it's just one scene after another of Norma essentially being controlled by others, whether it's her father, whether it's the factory, whether it's her ex lover who, you know, engages in a really unpleasant act of domestic violence against her, and it's just one after another, and it's all because I said, oh, but like her, gender is a factor in all of that.

00;51;37;01 - 00;51;58;05

Fred B. Jacob

And her relationship with her father, her relationship with her lover, her relationship as a woman working in this male dominated factory where we don't see a single male supervisor in the fact, all men who run it. I'm sorry, female supervisor in the factory. You know, we don't see a single woman aside from workers. There's not a single female supervisor in the entire factory.

00;51;58;08 - 00;52;21;06

Fred B. Jacob

So, you know, Norma's gender is a huge factor in it. And I think the union helps empower her and find voice and find dignity in ways that were true historically. Again, just like with racism, I can't say that unions were free of sexism. They certainly were. They were institutions that reflected our society, and they were sexist in their ways.

00;52;21;06 - 00;52;54;24

Fred B. Jacob

But there is no question that there is a long line of wonderful stories about how unions, over the course of the 20th century, empowered women to have voice and to speak out on behalf of worker rights, whether it's Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, who spoke for the Wobblies to try to change the world, or Clara Black, who was a teenage factory worker who led the garment workers out on a strike on the Lower East Side in the 19 teens, I think, or leading all the way to Dolores Herta, who co-founded the Farm Workers with Cesar Chavez.

00;52;54;24 - 00;53;16;09

Fred B. Jacob

So there are powerful women who led labor and who helped create the modern workplace that provides the protections that you and I enjoy that wouldn't exist without people like Clara Lamb like and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Dolores Huerta and the international, you know, ladies garment Workers Union and a host of heroes who we can look up to.

00;53;16;11 - 00;53;19;18

Jonathan Hafetz

That's such a seminal part of labor history in the United States.

00;53;19;20 - 00;53;51;10

Fred B. Jacob

Exactly, exactly. In ways that other movements, you know, I mean, the suffrage movement, temperance movement at the time, the early 20th century allowed that avenue. But labor and work and industry was a traditionally male dominated field, and it provided an avenue for women to be leaders in ways that other fields didn't necessarily provide. I mean, it's no accident that our first female cabinet secretary was Frances Perkins, who was the secretary of Labor, who came out of the world of New York labor rights.

00;53;51;12 - 00;53;56;22

Fred B. Jacob

And that world provided opportunity in ways that others didn't.

00;53;56;24 - 00;54;16;24

Jonathan Hafetz

The film ends with the workers voting to unionize, which, as you explained earlier, is just a step in the overall process. Right? You talked about the film being kind of a snapshot somewhere in the middle of the effort to organize the J.P. Stevens plant. What would have happened next and what did happen next?

00;54;16;27 - 00;54;37;01

Fred B. Jacob

Sometimes I feel like this could be a mr. Smith Goes to Washington kind of ending right where he defeats the Taylor machine on the floor. But, you know, like back in whatever state he was from some Midwestern state. The Taylor machine is still powerful. It's still knocking over little kids and their newspaper carts. And there is a smidge of a ominous tone of what's next.

00;54;37;01 - 00;55;19;10

Fred B. Jacob

So I think that's a really good question. The ultimate goal of organizing is to build a mature collective bargaining relationship. Unions want the employees where they work to do well, and it's of no interest for a union to have an employer where they represent employees not do well because they want their employees to do well. And ultimately, the goal is to build a mature collective bargaining relationship where the union and the employer can work out their problems through the collective bargaining process, reach an agreement that memorializes all the terms and conditions of employment, and provides essentially a quasi legal pathway for going forward to continue to resolve disputes.

00;55;19;10 - 00;55;42;18

Fred B. Jacob

So on that pathway could involve a grievance process to grieve problems at work, a discharge or a change in schedule or some other issue that employers are facing that could lead to binding arbitration. And again, what we're trying to do is we're trying to replace like the sheer exercise of economic power through strikes or other work stoppages with a system of law.

00;55;42;20 - 00;56;05;26

Fred B. Jacob

So that's ultimately like what you would want to see it openly after the movie ends. And in a good collective bargaining relationship, that's what happens. One of the really important provisions of the National Labor Relations Act is that it imposes a duty to bargain in good faith on the parties at the bargaining table, so they have to come to the table with a sincere intention to reach agreement.

00;56;05;28 - 00;56;28;15

Fred B. Jacob

And that is a really, really powerful obligation that the law has imposed. That, again, gets people to contract and gets people to a harmonious bargaining relationship. It can be really hard to reach that first agreement. It's really hard. Recent studies show that on average, you can take up to 465 days to reach a first contract because you're starting from scratch.

00;56;28;15 - 00;56;49;10

Fred B. Jacob

And if you have a really recalcitrant employer or maybe a really unrealistic union, you could end up engaging in lots and lots of delay and back and forth, and it could never reach agreement. Oftentimes, where you have an industry that's already unionized, an industry where there are models for unionization, you can start with that contract and it may go faster.

00;56;49;10 - 00;57;09;23

Fred B. Jacob

But in a case like J.P. Stevens or Henley, they were not really interested in reaching agreement. So where there were wins, where employees did select unionization, took a really long time, took years and years and years and court battles and up to the board and back down and up to court and back down. And ultimately, what happened wasn't there.

00;57;09;23 - 00;57;29;25

Fred B. Jacob

By around 1980, J.P. Stevens had a new CEO who said, we got to put all this behind us, reached a global settlement with the plants that were unionized and reached agreement. And so it took probably 7 or 8 years to get a contract at these J.P. Stevens, and if only because of the tenacity of the textile workers that they didn't give up.

00;57;29;27 - 00;57;50;23

Fred B. Jacob

So it is very challenging. But again, I think what you want is parties to sit down and work together in good faith. And the government is there to provide support, not the NLRB, but the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service provides mediation services to help parties get the contract. I don't have the stats to know how many relationships get to first contract, but I think most do.

00;57;50;25 - 00;58;03;00

Fred B. Jacob

It's just hard. It's bumpy. It's like starting a new relationship. You know, you and your partner, you got to figure out like which side of the bed do you sleep on? And you know who likes spaghetti and who likes ravioli? I guess it's like a lot of things to be determined.

00;58;03;02 - 00;58;07;12

Jonathan Hafetz

And J.P. Stevens was, challenging partner, to put it mildly, was.

00;58;07;14 - 00;58;08;16

Fred B. Jacob

Exactly not.

00;58;08;17 - 00;58;12;21

Jonathan Hafetz

Like they voted to unionize. Like in the movie that says, okay, let's go.

00;58;12;23 - 00;58;13;17

Fred B. Jacob

Let's just sit down.

00;58;13;21 - 00;58;17;02

Jonathan Hafetz

Yeah. I mean, it's hard to imagine them having that, change of heart.

00;58;17;05 - 00;58;46;03

Fred B. Jacob

And it's challenging, too. Like in reality, the vote was pretty close. I didn't write it down, but it was pretty close. It was like 420 to 380 or something like that. Well, it's that close. The employer may be kind of keeping an eye on. Well, you know, what can we do? Maybe if we just wait it out long enough, we'll have another election, because you have a year to bargain a contract without any interference, without any possibility of having another election or challenging the unions status as bargaining representative.

00;58;46;03 - 00;58;57;07

Fred B. Jacob

But once that year is over, then it's over, and employees can challenge the bargaining representative. So sometimes, you know, employees who are acting in bad faith or just trying to run out the clock time is on their side.

00;58;57;09 - 00;59;15;17

Jonathan Hafetz

Right? They realize how close it was and how few, relatively few votes they need to shift. The employer, like J.P. Stevens, doesn't seem like is going to give up anything else from the film versus the real life story of Krystal Lee Sutton, who helped lead the fight to unionize J.P. Stevens plant in North Carolina. Any other significant divergences?

00;59;15;19 - 00;59;24;18

Jonathan Hafetz

we talked a little bit about the character and the character from, North Carolina, Bill person to a Jewish man from New York. But anyway, yeah.

00;59;24;20 - 00;59;42;09

Fred B. Jacob

No, I mean, the movie does a really good job adhering to the labor aspects that happened in real life. I actually read Crystal Lee, a woman of Inheritance, in preparation for the podcast. I've never read it before. It's great. It's out of print. So I had to get it through the library and it was, you know, hard to find, but it was worth reading.

00;59;42;14 - 01;00;08;00

Fred B. Jacob

And the movie does a really good job at tracking from a labor standpoint. What happened. So it is true there were racial appeals at JP Stevens that were married in the movie. Kristen Lee Sutton got up on a table with a sign that said Union as she was about to be fired. And that is true. I don't know if everybody shut off their machines, but she did get up on a table and write in pencil on the sign union.

01;00;08;02 - 01;00;28;01

Fred B. Jacob

She was promoted the same way that Norma Rae was promoted. And the whole issue where Ruben goes into the plant to inspect the bulletin boards that happened in real life, too, like the union organizer realized, oh my gosh, we have this way to get into the plant. It'll be so powerful for us to go in and show employees that we're real, and we're here and we have some power.

01;00;28;04 - 01;00;48;13

Fred B. Jacob

So all that's right out of the true story, where they take liberties is all the other stuff, everything that makes it like a personal, melodramatic movie. That's all fiction. So Ruben is, as I mentioned, you know, it's not an organizer from New York who she kind of has this publication's relationship with. If anything, she puts the union organizer in a paternalistic role.

01;00;48;13 - 01;01;11;29

Fred B. Jacob

He's an older gentleman. You know, her relationship with Sonny is very different. Her relationship with her dad is very different. Her mom and dad don't work in the mill, but it works. It works because I think, again, from a storytelling viewpoint, watching Norma Ray's journey makes the union journey far more powerful and vice versa. And having these two stories told at the same time through melodrama.

01;01;11;29 - 01;01;21;29

Fred B. Jacob

Emma and I say that really affectionately, you know, like through this dramatic way it hits the emotional beats of the union campaign. It makes the emotional beats more resonant. And I think.

01;01;22;02 - 01;01;35;00

Jonathan Hafetz

Yeah, I think it does. And it makes the story compelling that you see, and it allows the film to bring in these other dimensions of the union struggle. which, although not true in the particular case of Crystal Lee Sutton, resonate with some larger truths.

01;01;35;03 - 01;01;36;03

Fred B. Jacob

Exactly.

01;01;36;05 - 01;01;58;11

Jonathan Hafetz

So just fast forwarding to today, we've seen an increase in union activity in traditional sectors. The UAW strike against the Big Three automakers and in newer areas due to concerns about technological change. For example, the Hollywood actors and writers strike. Can you describe this time in the labor movement in America, and how things have evolved in the nearly 45 years since Norma Rae was released?

01;01;58;13 - 01;02;17;06

Fred B. Jacob

We started out talking a little bit about where Norma Rae falls as an inflection point in labor history. Right? And I think as an observer from the outside, the labor movement, but who's kind of peripherally attached to it as an employee of the National Labor Relations Board and someone who teaches labor law, it hasn't been a great 45 years for the labor movement.

01;02;17;12 - 01;02;44;24

Fred B. Jacob

Union density has continued to decline pretty dramatically. It's increased in the public sector, but not in the private sector. So the private sector, we're at about 6% union density, compared to 33% in the 1950s. Globalization has made things really hard for union workers. Part of what we see in Norma Rae is the effect of northern plants moving to the south, and the need to organize the textile plants that have moved to the south, to non-unionized areas in this country.

01;02;44;27 - 01;03;08;11

Fred B. Jacob

And then over the last 45 years, we've seen them move even further away. They moved out of the country altogether, and there's been a huge desire to figure out how to stem the losses in union membership in the manufacture ring sector with other sectors, whether it's the health care sector or the retail sector. So, you know, again, going back to where we started, the unions are trying to organize new industries.

01;03;08;11 - 01;03;34;10

Fred B. Jacob

And that's really, really hard. It was really, really hard in the 1930s when the UAW organized the big three, and they were able to do it because it was a really special moment in time that they were able to capture in the wake of the passage of the Wagner Act, in the wake of the Great Depression and the wake of such phenomenal public support for unionization, and employers thought that it was okay to get on board with it.

01;03;34;16 - 01;04;07;26

Fred B. Jacob

What we're seeing now, though, 45 years later, is we're seeing an uptick in unionization and we're seeing an uptick in union organizing activities. I can certainly speak for the labor board that we have seen a dramatic uptick in our caseload just over the last 2 or 3 years. And again, maybe it's a special moment in time after the pandemic where labor power is high, wages are going up, there's worker shortages in lots of industries, particularly retail and food and food service and labor has a little bit more power than they may have had in prior years.

01;04;08;01 - 01;04;27;05

Fred B. Jacob

We're seeing some really big campaigns, obviously, I mean, without commenting on the merits of it. But we see obviously what's going on at Starbucks is a huge campaign organizing hundreds of stores, creating lots of work for us at the Labor Board on running elections, what's going on at Amazon, and efforts to organize other tech industries are really powerful.

01;04;27;08 - 01;04;44;08

Fred B. Jacob

The other really interesting data point is that support for unions right now, at least according to Gallup, is higher than it's been since the 1960s. So I always like to try to end on an optimistic note and say, you know, maybe people are feeling more empowered to exercise their rights under the National Labor Relations Act than they have been.

01;04;44;08 - 01;05;08;14

Fred B. Jacob

They're feeling maybe more secure and exercising these rights. And that's why the law is there. The law is there to empower people to take advantage of the collective strength that employees have when they work together. We'll see what happens going forward. But right now at least, is a moment in time. It's a really interesting time to be thinking about labor and teaching labor and practicing labor law.

01;05;08;17 - 01;05;13;16

Jonathan Hafetz

So are there any other insights that film provides into the labor movement in the United States?

01;05;13;19 - 01;05;36;01

Fred B. Jacob

What I like to think about whenever anybody asks me why I love working at the National Labor Relations Board and being a labor lawyer, is that I think the movie does a really great job of showing how the National Labor Relations Act empowers people to be brave, and empowers people to be fearless in speaking up for themselves. And the chairman of the NLRB.

01;05;36;01 - 01;05;59;08

Fred B. Jacob

She likes to say. When people ask her why the act remains relevant, she says the National Labor Relations Act is about whatever employees want it to be about. It's not like OSHA, which is only about health and safety or all these other laws are really important. The Fair Labor Standards Act, which is just about minimum wage and maximum hours, the National Labor Relations Act is about whatever employees are concerned about.

01;05;59;08 - 01;06;28;08

Fred B. Jacob

So maybe in the 1930s they were concerned about an eight hour workday. And maybe in the 1960s they were concerned about civil rights. And maybe in the 1980s they were concerned about globalization. And maybe now we're concerned about AI and artificial intelligence and how that will affect the workplace. As we saw in the writers and actors strike. And the National Labor Relations Act empowers people to stand up and speak up for themselves and a group for whatever they find important.

01;06;28;08 - 01;06;44;10

Fred B. Jacob

And as someone who sadly has to work for a living, and I assume you have to work for a living and everybody listening to us has to work for a living, right? It's really important to have dignity in the workplace. That's what we all strive for. And I like to think that the act allows people to have a little dignity in the workplace.

01;06;44;10 - 01;06;54;18

Fred B. Jacob

And I think you see that in the movie. Like ultimately, it is a journey for Norma to find personal dignity and professional dignity. And I think that's why it's worth watching. It's just great.

01;06;54;21 - 01;07;19;00

Jonathan Hafetz

You know, that brings to mind, Frank, it's so important to express there's a scene. I'll just play the clip now where Norma finally has the meeting at her house to her husband and neighbors. Fran. And one by one, the workers go around the room black and white, and talk about the conditions and the other oppressive circumstances that they face, which I think goes to your point about, you know, Maria, empowering workers.

01;07;19;02 - 01;07;53;05

Norma Rae Dialogue

I remember some of you, Fanny, check out your church. I did all of the talking that day. Now, I would like for you to speak, please. A man's work should be a man's work. In order to meet you. The Black hand and push. Pull is gone for what it is. Whatever. Believe that I'm for all the way. Excuse me for saying this with many folks in the room, but when I get my Mr. Cramps, which come pretty hard, they don't let me sit down on my job.

01;07;53;07 - 01;08;13;06

Norma Rae Dialogue

This lady got to keep. Do you think they should bring a note from the doctor? We wouldn't say we were sick. You go in. You want to look at a brick wall an hour a day? I used to be a one. That. Do they come and break it up to give us the feeling that we should, in. It has been on that about two months ago.

01;08;13;09 - 01;08;21;14

Norma Rae Dialogue

His children are going to grow up, not even warning I level always close. If someone could use.

01;08;21;17 - 01;08;34;18

Jonathan Hafetz

I think that's such a poignant scene where you really hear the workers kind of expressing their views. And that's really what, as you're saying, the film is about, and the NRA is about, is about empowering workers to act on those and to be able to work with dignity.

01;08;34;21 - 01;08;50;25

Fred B. Jacob

Exactly. And that scene is really just so moving, because the demands of all those workers are so human. It's just basic human needs, and they're being put in an environment every day where they're just not shown the respect that we all deserve.

01;08;50;27 - 01;08;56;22

Jonathan Hafetz

Read before we wrap up, I have to ask you, do you have any other favorite labor movies?

01;08;56;24 - 01;09;28;28

Fred B. Jacob

How long do you have so there are so many good labor movies, and I wish I could say I've seen all of them, but I haven't the handful I would I would recommend for folks. Obviously, Norma Rae is fabulous. I love a movie that is not a particularly well known labor movie called The Devil and Miss Jones, which is a movie from 1941 featuring Jean Arthur, who was in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and a host of other great Capra and classic Hollywood actors.

01;09;29;00 - 01;09;49;28

Fred B. Jacob

Yeah, she's wonderful, she's wonderful, and it's basically like a 1940s version of Undercover Boss, where there's a union in a department store. They're trying to organize a department store. The tycoon who runs the department store says, I can infiltrate this union, and he goes to work on the shop floor undercover. And of course, he's treated horribly. High jinks ensue.

01;09;49;28 - 01;10;10;18

Fred B. Jacob

It's great. It's super fun. And it's just a great snapshot again of like, what organizing was and the idealism about unions in the 1940s. If you want a documentary, obviously Harlan County, USA is one of the best documentaries ever made about the miners strike in West Virginia. Another great documentary I will throw out There is and it's not for the faint of heart, but it is wonderful.

01;10;10;18 - 01;10;45;08

Fred B. Jacob

Called Live Nude Girls Unite, which was produced believe in the early 2000, and it is about dancers at the Lusty Lady peep show in San Francisco who organize and it is a great success story of organizing campaign in an unusual industry with workers who are truly empowering themselves to speak out. The NLRB has a little cameo, which is very exciting, and then the most recent one that people love and is really, I think, great, is sorry to bother you, which is Boots Riley's recent movie about race, telemarketing, organizing, and capitalism.

01;10;45;11 - 01;10;48;11

Fred B. Jacob

I'm not sure I love where it ends up, but I love the journey.

01;10;48;13 - 01;10;53;23

Jonathan Hafetz

That's a great list. And you mentioned before too, I don't know if you meant to include or not here. Matawan, the John Sayles movie.

01;10;53;23 - 01;10;54;12

Fred B. Jacob

Oh yes, yes.

01;10;54;12 - 01;11;01;02

Jonathan Hafetz

Yes, a personal favorite of mine. Yeah, it's a great list. And you don't have to come back and talk about one or all of these movies sometime.

01;11;01;07 - 01;11;10;13

Fred B. Jacob

Any time I any time. This was so much fun. And like you, I love lore and movies. So it's I'm on deck. Just call me anytime.

01;11;10;15 - 01;11;12;08

Jonathan Hafetz

But thanks again for coming on.

01;11;12;10 - 01;11;14;19

Fred B. Jacob

My pleasure. Thank you for having me.