The passing of Crystal Lee Sutton, the inspiration for the movie Norma Rae, has already been noted in diaries by hissyspit, bendygirl, and others. But there are just a couple more things I'd like to note about her story.
In case you're not familiar, that story:
Sutton’s role in the history of labor is assured. In the early 1970s, Crystal Lee was 33 and working at the J.P. Stevens plant in Roanoke Rapids, N.C., where she was making $2.65 an hour folding towels. The poor working conditions she and her fellow employees suffered compelled her to join forces with Eli Zivkovich, a union organizer, and attempt to unionize the J.P. Stevens employees.
"Management and others treated me as if I had leprosy," said Crystal. She received threats and was finally fired from her job. But before she left, she took one final stand, filmed verbatim in the 1979 film Norma Rae. "I took a piece of cardboard and wrote the word UNION on it in big letters, got up on my work table, and slowly turned it around. The workers started cutting their machines off and giving me the victory sign. All of a sudden the plant was very quiet..."
Sutton was physically removed from the plant by police, but the result of her actions was staggering. The Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU) won the right to represent the workers at the plant and Sutton became an organizer for the union. In 1977, Sutton was awarded back wages and her job was reinstated by court order, although she chose to return to work for just two days. She subsequently became a speaker on behalf of the ACTWU and was profiled in interviews on Good Morning America, in The New York Times Magazine, and countless other national and international publications during the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Most of us can probably picture Sally Field standing there with that "union" sign. But at the same time we honor the memory of this strong, outspoken woman, it's important not to reduce change to strong individuals.
As United Steel Workers President Leo Gerard wrote in The Hill, the fact that Sutton's employer didn't sign a contract with the union for a decade is another reason to fight for the Employee Free Choice Act:
Not only do companies threaten, harass and illegally fire workers like Sutton who try to form unions, but even when workers finally do win union representation, corporations wrongly hold up negotiations to deny workers their first labor contract – as J. P. Stevens did.
In that case, the workers won on both counts. They ultimately got a labor contract – a decade later, and in 1977 a court ordered Stevens to pay Sutton back wages and restore her job.
But in far too many cases, workers win on no counts. They never get to organize because of aggressive and illegal actions used with impunity by corporations that hire union-busting consultants.
That is tragic for America because good union wages were critical to creating and are crucial to sustaining the nation’s middle class.
That's one thing we should take from the most famous fight of her life.
There's something we should take from her final fight, as well. In June, 2008, her local paper wrote that:
She went two months without possible life-saving medications because her insurance wouldn't cover it, another example of abusing the working poor, she said.
"How in the world can it take so long to find out (whether they would cover the medicine or not) when it could be a matter of life or death," she said. "It is almost like, in a way, committing murder."
She eventually received the medication, but the cancer is taking a toll on her strong will and solid frame. Her thin black hair is brittle from the drugs and chemo treatments. She has had brain surgery twice -once on Jan. 29, 2007, and again on Jan. 11, 2008.
We've all read plenty of stories about people whose insurance companies delay them literally to death. This is nothing new in that regard. But I want you to think about this: Crystal Sutton wasn't just a regular fighter. She was the kind of fighter they make movies about -- the kind of movies that are still remembered thirty years later. She went from making $2.65 an hour to a labor icon because of her fight. She was famous, even if she wasn't rich and most people pictured Sally Field when they heard her name. And she still got delayed and dragged out and suffered because her insurance company wouldn't give her the treatment she needed.
That's why we need real health care reform so badly: Because if you're an individual, no matter the kind of fighter you are, you're not going to beat the insurance companies.
Crystal Lee Sutton's two great fights illustrate her strength, yes. But they also illustrate why we need laws that protect and strengthen us against corporate predators -- whether in the workplace or in the hospital.