Op-Ed Columns

The most enjoyable day I ever had working in a cotton mill was about as much fun as picking out a baby’s coffin.

But for 47 years, every meal I ate was paid for by money earned in the Valley, Ala., Fairfax Mill, so I naturally had mixed emotions when they shut it down. It was kind of like seeing your mother-in-law drive off a cliff in your new car.

Many might wonder why a person would spend a half century working at a job he despised. That’s an easy one: Four generations of my family worked in Fairfax Mill; I learned early on that you weren’t supposed to like it. But a bad job trumps no job every time.

You just get up every day, grit your teeth and endure it. You pray it will end soon, and not too badly.

Much the same way Democrats regard the Bush Administration.

But I wasn’t the only dog that got hit. According to recent numbers, nearly 400 American textile plants have closed since 1997, with the resulting loss of 440,000 jobs, not including the recent Avondale closings.

And every one of those nearly half million dispossessed mill hands are probably still wondering what happened to their jobs.

I can tell them what happened: Although textile employees are traditionally the lowest-paid workers of any major industry, even they can’t compete with folks who will work for two bucks a day and a sack of fish heads.

Somewhere, darker-skinned hands are fondling my old job.

West Point-Stevens, the owner of Fairfax Mill, closed three of its local facilities that made terry cloth for towels and washcloths. The company finishing plant in Valley is still operating, but with much of the cloth being imported from Pakistan and China.

Female acquaintances who work in the finishing mill say the cloth from Pakistan is so twisted and crooked ("biased," in their word) that it won’t run through their overedging (hemming) machines unless they pull and tug on it until they’re exhausted and aching from the strain.

Naturally, the supervisors blame them for the defects and reduced efficiency, and threaten to terminate them for not meeting production quotas.

A person involved with West Point’s quality control program confided that the washcloths coming from China were of such poor quality, they were reluctant to put the company labels on them (but not reluctant enough to stop importing them). He said they used to fire Fairfax weavers who made better cloth than this.

I tell these workers at the finishing mill to take heart. That operation, too, will probably soon be moved to Outer Mongolia, exporting these problems with it.

The reason American workers are being abandoned is not complex and elusive. There is a simple one-word explanation: greed.

In his New Deal, FDR forced American factory owners to treat employees with common human dignity by instituting eight-hour shifts instead of working employees 12-hours a day without overtime pay. At Roosevelt’s urging, retirement and unemployment benefits were established, as well as protection for workers’ personal health and safety on the job.

The only reason 6-year-old kids are not working in American factories today is that laws were passed to prevent it. Think about it –- they had to pass a law to prevent American mill owners from working 6-year-old children in their plants.

These changes meant wealthy factory owners had to share some of their loot. And rich manufacturers loathe Roosevelt to this day for improving the lot of working folk, and want nothing more than a return to that day of virtual employee slavery — back to the day when 1 percent of the population owned 90 percent of the wealth.

And, with the help and collusion of many of our elected representatives, they’ve almost turned back the clock. Already there are horror stories about the working conditions in foreign plants producing American goods — seven-day work weeks, 18-hour days, no benefits, unsafe work conditions, child labor.

These countries don’t have a Franklin Roosevelt to defend the poor and helpless. Sadly, nowadays, neither do we.

How much money do these people need? These American companies were making a profit in the United States, just not as much as they wanted.

The current owner of WestPoint Stevens (now called WestPoint Home) is Carl Icahn of New York City, who has a personal fortune of $8 billion.

Brother Icahn’s first move after buying the company was to default on the retirees’ pensions and cancel their insurance. This after the employees’ 401(k) plans had already been wiped out when the previous company owner went bankrupt.

Many revere and admire Icahn for his money-making ability and tough, macho business savvy.

Personally, I think a man with $8 billion who deliberately kicks people who are already down, just to make another buck, oughta be horse-whipped.

For the most part, American companies have abandoned any pretense that they care about workers. When Fairfax Mill was closed, I didn’t even get a postcard thanking me for my long years of servitude.

After 47 years of working in deafening noise, choking on lint and standing on a concrete floor; after a lifetime of being harassed by brutish, sadistic supervisors who were little more than thugs, all I had to show for it was hearing loss, varicose veins and a bad attitude.

Plus a world-class set of hemorrhoids.

After losing his job when Fairfax Mill closed, linthead emeritus JL Strickland has survived by picking up cans alongside Interstate 85 and writing insightful social commentary.