On the list of great US labor films, Norma Rae is certainly near the top. I saw it more than twenty years ago, before I knew much about unions. After working in the labor movement for many years, I wanted to watch it again to see how well it dealt with unions and the organizing process.

The 1979 film, starring Sally Field, for which she won the Oscar for Best Actress, is based on a real seventeen-year campaign to organize the J. P. Stevens textile mill in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina. The main character, Norma Rae Wilson, is based on a real mill worker, Crystal Lee Sutton, who had experiences similar to the ones depicted in the film.

For most of that time, the union involved was the Textile Workers Union of America (TWUA), the union shown in the film. In 1976, TWUA merged with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, so that the union that negotiated the contract at Stevens was the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU). In 2000 I went to work for the union UNITE, which was the product of the 1995 merger of ACTWU and the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. We saw Norma Rae and the campaign it was based on as an important part of the union’s legacy.