Exploration of Capitalitsm In Norma Rae
While many of us tend to view capitalism as the ultimate goal when talking of profit capability and worker freedoms, we are shown a much different reality in the film "Norma Rae" in which the economic system comes under direct and harsh scrutiny. While the economic system on display in "Norma Rae" is a vast improvement from the impoverished feudal economic system shown in Matewan, there are still several improvements that can clearly be made to the O.P. Henry Textile Mill's definition of capitalism in this 1978 film based on actual events.
The textile workers at the O.P. Henry Mill are used to struggle and adversity as both characterized thier employment in the factory and the hardships they had to face in their everyday lives. Many of the factory employees had been working in the mill for their entire lives, enduring the worker cruelty that the company dealt out with alarming regularity. However, many of the workers in the factory had little or no choice in seeking other employment, as the Textile Mill was the largest employer in the area, especially for unskilled laborers. While the employees were not forced to work in the factory, they stayed so as not to risk unemployment.
This fear of unemployment was the mechanism that allowed the Textile Mill to push its workers to the limit. In this particular capitalist system on display in Norma Rae, the workers were the ones who had everything to lose. The workers had their livelihoods tied up in their jobs and would have to face the consequences if the company suffered economic difficulty, relocated, or had to downsize and make worker cutbacks. In this way, the workers' bargaining power with the company was weakened...
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...a vote of 427 to 373. The negative capitailism that existed in the story of Norma Rae was modified to a much more worker-friendly type of capitalism in which worker concerns could be voiced and even answered without the fear of job termination while the company was still satisfied because it ws turning a profit. In this way, unions help to neutralize the potential for capital job markets to become dominated by an elite few and ingore the rights of laborers. Union helps secure the worker liberty of being able to compete for a position in a labor market rather than being forced to work in a poor working environment outof simple necessity. Unions provide workers with a valuable bargaining tool so that their rights will be protected in an ever changing and expanding profit-driven system, hopefully bringing the realization of capitalism closer to its intended state.
The citizens of Matewan, a coal -mining town in West Virginia lived amidst a feudalistic class process. One may think of medieval times in connection with feudalism, but the film “Matewan” directed by John Sayles was based on historical events that took place in 1920. The feudal lord was not a European king, and the serfs were not farming his land. Nevertheless, feudalism existed in this southern town, as the workers did not have the ability to choose their employer. Unlike Capitalism, the members of Matewan could not go out into the free labor market and choose the businesses for which they wished to work. The Stone Mountain Coal Company made choice nonexistent and in doing so gained feudal power over the employees.
Economic systems are attempts to solve the following questions: Who does the production? Who controls the profits? And what is the social arrangement by which the two previous questions are resolved? There is an interlocking triad of considerations: economic relationships; political relationships; and cultural relationships. We see these relationships brought to life in the events of Matewan. Feudalism exists when free people have to work for a single employer, or not work at all. Capitalism, in contrast, allows free people to choose their employers. There is often in history a struggle between feudal and capitalist structures. The story of the coal miners is the story of one such clash.
It is the worker’s condition that he truly focuses on. Many of the problems that people faced during this time include: tenement housing, poor working conditions, child labor, monopolies of business, social and political inequality, and most importantly people putting profits over lives. It is around the same time that a terrible fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. The unsafe working conditions made the employees escape nearly impossible.
Unions are voluntary associations joined by workers. The Combination Act of 1800, which hindered the growth of unions, states that every workman's goal, who are entering into any combination should not be obtaining an advance of wages, or to lessen or alter the hours, or influencing any other to quit his work. Any workman who did so shall be committed to jail (Doc 1). Although the Combination Act of 1800 prevented the growth of unions, Ralph Chaplin believes that a worker should join the union. He states that there can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun, but the unions, which makes it strong (Doc 2). Since there's so many workers working in bad conditions, the labor laws came to action.
Rebecca Harding Davis wrote “Life in the Iron Mills” in the mid-nineteenth century in part to raise awareness about working conditions in industrial mills. With the goal of presenting the reality of the mills’ environment and the lives of the mill workers, Davis employs vivid and concrete descriptions of the mills, the workers’ homes, and the workers themselves. Yet her story’s realism is not objective; Davis has a reformer’s agenda, and her word-pictures are colored accordingly. One theme that receives a particularly negative shading in the story is big business and the money associated with it. Davis uses this negative portrayal of money to emphasize the damage that the single-minded pursuit of wealth works upon the humanity of those who desire it.
Throughout the history of the United States of America the continuation of misfortunes for the workforce has aggravated people to their apex, eventually leading to the development of labor unions.
Over the last century, the life expectancy of the elderly has increased. This means that the largest growing population right now, in the United States, is persons over the age of 65 (Sex Tips for Older Adults, 2000). With this in mind, it would be helpful to talk about the personal aspects or as I like to call it, "sex lives" of the elderly. When people in our society think of the elderly, they almost never think of this population having sex or good sex for that matter. But they do! Unfortunately, the elderly encounter problems with sex as they become older and that is what I will be discussing along with way of coping with sexual dysfunction.
The working class faced conditions in the factory that wealthier skill workers did not have deal with. These men were not in a comfortable financial situation at home, and could not find comfort in hazardous working conditions with the dangerous machines they had to operate. Workers were harmed daily and among these injured employees were children (Shi 62). Many of these children were as young as nine years old, and due to financial reasons their families sent them away to work in workshops, mines, and even in factories surrounded by dangerous machinery. Realistically, these children were doomed to working in a factory for their entire lives.
The people of Omelas have become so consumed with happiness that they can’t see anyone but themselves in bliss. The residents of Omelas can only imagine the destruction fair treatment would bring. “If the child were brought up…all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed…To exchange all the goodness and grace of every life in Omelas for…the chance of happiness of one” (LeGuin 5) The people of omelas will do whatever it takes to keep the child oppressed to maintain peace and prosperity within the utopia. Saving the child will in essence destroy everyones happiness. This injustice is not only apparent in the city of Omelas, but also apparent in the world of inhuman labor. As the child of Omelas is forced into confinement, sweat shop workers also face the need to be forced in to labor. Both are pushed to the side and neglected in order to maintain the happiness of the oppressor. Angelo young, a writer for International Business Times covered the Chinese labor strike. Chinese workers were tired of unjust and unfair treatment so, in unison the workers stood to big business. “A strike at a Chinese factory that makes shoes for Nike, Timberland, Kenneth Cole and other popular brands grew on Tuesday to about 5,000 workers who are demanding their employer pay its government-mandated housing fund money.” (Young, Angelo. "Chinese Labor Strike: 5,000 Workers Strike At Factory
“I regard my workpeople just as I regard my machinery...When my machines get old and useless, I reject them and get new, and these people are part of my machinery” (Sands 12). A foreman at a textile mill in Fall River, Massachusetts spoke these words in possibly the worst time during American labor history, the Industrial Revolution. During the Industrial Revolution, large numbers of people in the United States flocked to work in factories where they faced long hours, unsanitary and unsafe conditions and poor wages. Labor unions, or groups of organized workers, formed in the United States to ensure workers the right to a safe workplace and a fair wage in the face of capitalistic factory owners seeking wealth. In exchange, union members owe the responsibility to work diligently and to the best of their abilities or face the failure of their company and the loss of their jobs.
Provoking thoughts occurred as a result of viewing a certain piece of art at the San Jose Museum of Art. This piece of art piece labeled Fallen Fruit by David Burns and Austin Young was the awe and inspiration for my topic of this paper. The piece made me think of working conditions and how far they have improved in the past century. The digital print coldly depicts assembly line workers packaging fruits for a company. The print displays the average worker in monochrome while the environment juxtaposes the workers with its tinted bright colors. The contrast between the monochrome workers and the tinted environment creates a feeling where the worker is lost in a sea of color and reveals a sense of seriousness of the morbid reality that most workers faced during the 1920s. This contrast was created by Burns and Young as a metaphor to illuminate the audience on the emphasis that companies placed on the workplace itself and the products that were being produced rather than the conditions of the workers. The angle and focus of the workers in the print also help establish a feeling of disregard for the workers. This cruel reality established by the print led me on the train of thought of the Progressive Era. An era of great change, Progressive reforms helped the quality of life for the average worker and helped pave the way for future improvements. Although Progressive reforms for the workplace were loosely enforced, these labor reforms were effective to help create better working conditions, help regulate big business, and push for the creation of unions and bureaus.
Norma Rae a loom operator in the weaving room is an outspoken individual and is very out spoken about her poor working conditions such as excessive noise, long hours with short breaks, physical stress from standing for long periods and abnormally high temperatures in the work areas. Added to all this is management¡¦s apathy for the working conditions, as seen when her mother looses her hearing temporarily with little or no sentiment from the company doctor, who knows this is a common problem for the workers. With this setting, the film progresses through most of the stages for employee organization. While management tries to get the workers support to keep the union out, and labor struggles to get a foothold to develop worker unity and get the union elected as the official bargaining agent both sides violate federal laws or come precariously close. First the Unfair Labor Practices (ULP) of the union will be examined.
Nevertheless, conditions for workers during the Porfirio era were grim. Hernandez Chavez maintains, “What is more, working conditions in the period we are discussing, universally described as hellish, were subject to legislative supervision, leaving the workers utterly unprotected” (MBH 211). Workdays of long hours were the norm for textile workers and miners. The wages of a textile worker ...
Throughout American history, labor unions have served to facilitate mediation between workers and employers. Workers seek to negotiate with employers for more control over their labor and its fruits. “A labor union can best be defined as an organization that exists for the purpose of representing its members to their employers regarding wages and terms and conditions of employment” (Hunter). Labor unions’ principal objectives are to increase wages, shorten work days, achieve greater benefits, and improve working conditions. Despite these goals, the early years of union formation were characterized by difficulties (Hunter).
People who reach and practice sexual fitness are more likely to function efficiently in all aspects of their perceptual world. These fortunate individuals are more confident, physically ill less often, and manage stressful events more successfully. Sexual fitness is an achieved state of being allowing people to perform better in every action they engage in. Having this capability affords people to feel confident in all situations whether a partner is involved or not.