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Wilson Workers: James
Wilson Workers: James
James Jenkins
Workers like myself wanted to organize because we were tired of the different things that went on inside the plant—from fair treatment to having a voice in the plant on the side of workers. The worst thing for me is that our point system is messed up, first because the company can use favoritism deciding if you get a point. But they still fire people using it. And it’s too easy to get points, and too hard to erase them. You can get a point for being one minute late. But you don’t get paid if you’re three minutes early. Then, it takes 60 days to erase that one point against you—and if you get legitimately sick on day 59, you have to start all over again.
We had a lot of support, there were 25 or 30 people from second shift signing up people, and we had over 300 cards signed. I think the majority of us wanted to have a union.
But then, the company showed films of different plants closing and the film made comments like “don’t let history repeat itself.” They held mass meetings and small, one-on-one meetings and people got to feeling like the plant was going to close down.
