Norma Rae Leadership

Abstract
Norma Rae is a true story set in a Southern mill-town in the summer of 1978. Norma Rae and the mill workers were victimized by the mill owners - low, unfair wages, and poor health conditions from the work in the textile mill. During this time Norma was fearful for her family's health and becomes aware of a labor organizer trying to bring the union to the mill. Norma decides to join forces with the union organizer, Reuben Warshosky. Management saw her as a threat and ordered her out of the mill, but not before she inspired the mill workers.   It is greatt leadership that finally brings the mill workers together and they vote in and start a branch of the Textile Workers Union of America. The film is a real testament to the transformation of an oppressed woman who was a follower and then become a leader.

The story of Norma Rae is based on an actual event, it tells how a fast talking, middle class union organizer named Reuben Warshovsky comes to a small souther mill town to organize a branch of the textil workers union. The textile mill O.J. Henley Plant was run with low, unfair wages, and unhealthy working conditions. In the beginning Reuben wasn't having any luck and through his struggle with the mill workers he inspired one worker Norma Rae and she joined forces with Reuben. Norma was a tough, southern middle class working woman who felt stick in her ho hum drab extistence. She has a love-hate relationship with her father Vernon, who was overprotective of Norma. She was trapped with a job going no where and two teenage children. She has very little time for anything else but with Reuben's prodding finally joins him in his efforts to bring a textile workers union to the mill. He was horrified by their working conditions and pay.
Norma is not just about union organizing she is very concerned with the class struggle and class solidarity of the mill workers. The growing relationship of Reuben and Norma is not just a personal relationship but shows how the...