Kate Hyndman worked in a meat factory
Kate Hyndman worked in a meat factory. Sylvia Woods worked in the laundry industry. Stella Nowicki worked in a stock department. He was Sylvia Woods’s father, was a black man, and started a black movement called universal black movement. 3) Oh, you cannot scare me, I’m sticking to the union I’m sticking to the union; I’m sticking to the union Oh, you cannot scare me, I’m sticking to the union I’m sticking to the union, till the day I die
The stock department, Stella, honestly admitted that she did not have any experience with the job. She said she was brought out of the farm.
The foreman is considered a cruel leader, whereby he would curse the workers out and call them bad names. He would insult the workers and even abuse them. The workers had no option but to take in the insults to secure their jobs.
She mobilized the women working in the department, and they came up with specific demands whereby She asked the women not to operate the machines till the company met their safety guards demands
Sylvia was furious about the appointment of the new white boss lady; she says there is no way they could pick someone from the streets to be the forelady who did not understand the job. She expected the slot to be filled by one of them hence told the women to stop working, and the management asked why she said the new forelady was not fit for the job.
Kate courageously opposed the decision made by the company, which stated that due to the economic drop, there would be a lay off of 50% of the employees, and there was no mercy to be shown to anyone regarding the decision. She pointed out where would these women who have worked for years for the company go to, where would they find new jobs.
AF of L could not organize the workers because it was made up of many separate groups; hence they could not strengthen up and unite. CIO(congress of the industrial organization) was formed for a need for unionism, thus dedicated to democracy, militance, and rank and file control.
It was a contract that stated that a person was not a union member, and as long as he or she was an employee of the company would not join any union.
It would mean that the means of production would be own by them, and the fruits of their labor would be a divide among them. Hence there would be havoc or hunger to some people and power to others.
The CIO had grown from a small number of organization committees to a powerful force of several million. The organized industries were Carnegie steel and Lewis steel.
They could take your regular card off when you were coming back to work and put in another card then write your excuse on it, which Sylvia sees it as unfairness to women because they work seven days a week furthermore had home responsibilities. She advised them to write tired on the cards which lead to the removal of the cards
Some of the workers refused to work, and Sylvia states that there was no room to plead with them; instead they could be easily replaced.
Over 20,000 families in Chicago were put out to the streets with no settlement area.
People flock along the streets. Young people with the sheet went along the sidewalls and threw money into the sheet. The cars could barely crawl along through the crowd.
Stella thinks that CIO has not organized the unorganized industries; it has become conservative, there are many white-collar workers to be organized, and it is not their major concern. She thinks it should be more involved with things outside the union.
Some of the women could not be related to working women. Women who work in factories, homes, and offices have a whole different concept of the life of what is needed and required; hence some never understood that.
In general, racism was in the whole context; blacks were not given the equal platform as the whites. They were seen as servants. On the other hand, Sylvia was not interested in organizing white workers who can possibly be considered as a racist trait.