Unionization is important for southern labor
Wright explains why, after his fifty years of work for Cone Mills and fifteen years of work with the labor movement, he believes that unionization is important for Southern workers.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Lacy Wright, March 10, 1975. Interview E-0017. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- WILLIAM FINGER:
-
Lacy, after fifty years in the mill and about …
let's see, about fifteen years real active in the union
(since about '55), what do you see as the value of a union
here in Greensboro?
- LACY WRIGHT:
-
Well the value… In my opinion, if the textile industry
doesn't get organized, with the organization of everything
else in this country eventually it's going to run into a
situation but what they won't have no say-so whatsoever of
what they get. They'll just have to take whatever is offered
to them.
- WILLIAM FINGER:
-
So you think a union's important.
- LACY WRIGHT:
-
Sure!
- WILLIAM FINGER:
-
Well, why do so few people even want to pay dues? Five percent, ten
percent, even in these plants that are organized.
- LACY WRIGHT:
-
I don't know. I never have been able to figure that out,
because I have tried to show people that even though they were
paying… When we first started out, we started out with, I
believe it was seventy-five cents a week; and when I left it had got to
a dollar and a quarter. OK, now if that union, if the people all of them
together would get any strong enough that the International could work
through them or with them without them being a dead-head to them, that
union could make them many times more than what they're going
to pay in dues back in fringe benefits and wages, in working
conditions.
- WILLIAM FINGER:
-
But people don't see that.
- LACY WRIGHT:
-
I just never could get them to see it to save my life. I don't
know why. It's just something that's beyond my
understanding. And living with the people, people that I grew up with,
people that I've lived with all my life, and people that I
had confidence as friends, people that… They
weren't ignorant people; they weren't completely
ignorant people. None of us were highly educated, but we
weren't completely ignorant.
- WILLIAM FINGER:
-
But you sound like you believe in the union completely.
- LACY WRIGHT:
-
Oh, I'm 100 percent for a union that
END OF INTERVIEW