I watched Norma Rae for the first time. It is on Max if you have a subscription. I also found it streaming on Vimeo.
The film was released in 1979 (right before the devil took office in 1981) and is about a cotton mill worker and single mom who decides that she has no choice, but to fight for a union. It stars Sally Fields and Beau Bridges. It won best actress and best picture at the Academy Awards that year.
Norma Rae is based on Crystal Lee Sutton. I do not know much about her. (No surprise that schools do not teach about labor organizers in school). Wikipedia states that the fight between union organizers and the company was one of “the ugliest episodes in labor history … from 1963-1980”. Sutton and other labor organizers was repeatedly harassed and fired.
“In 1973 Crystal saw a union poster hanging in one of the seven mills in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina owned by J.P. Stevens & Company mills where three generations of her family had worked—living in a neighborhood where the Company “owned every shotgun house“[2] in Sutton's neighborhood. She had been “thinking about the paltry wages, the bone-tiring work and the stingy benefits that she and her parents had suffered. She wanted something better for her children.”
Please, watch it. I know some people have a hard time watching older movies. I personally have a hard time watching movies made in the 70s, but this movie was not a hard watch. It flows well, Sally Field is great in this role, it is entertaining and inspiring. If you pay attention to Rotten Tomato scores it has 91% rating. IMO should be watched by every worker in this country.
Here is the famous scene if you need more convincing.