by Bryant Simon
59.“Testimony of Conester Williams,” June 23, 1992, NCOSHP, SHC. See also “Some Facts on the Imperial Food Products Murders in Hamlet, NC,” Box 35, Folder, Hamlet Organizing Contacts, NCOSHP, SHC, UNC, Chapel Hill, NC.
60.Author interview with Ada Blanchard.
61.Edin and Lein, Making Ends Meet, 56–57.
62.Author interview with Zimmerman.
63.Ada Blanchard noticed the same problems with the equipment and the overworked maintenance crew. Author interview with Ada Blanchard.
64.Quick’s pregnancy is revealed in a court document, “Georgia Anne Quick: Summary of Injuries and Damages Resulting from September 3, 1991 Industrial Plant Fire,” Woodrow Gunter Files, in author’s possession, and from an unnamed source in an author interview.
5: Bodies
1.These reports can be found in Imperial Foods File, Office of Medical Examiner, North Carolina Department of Environment, Health, and Natural Resources, Raleigh, NC.
2.Harvey Levenstein, Paradox of Plenty: A Social History of Eating in Modern America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 101–15.
3.This draws on a point made by Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001), 113. See also Mark Schatzker, The Dorito Effect: The Surprising New Truth About Food and Flavor (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015), 18, 73, 81–82, 110–11; Michael Moss, Salt, Sugar, Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us (New York: Random House, 2013), xvi; and Greg Critser, Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003). For engaged and critical readings of these numbers, see J. Eric Oliver, Fat Politics: The Real Story Behind America’s Obesity Epidemic (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); and Julie Guthman, Weighing In: Obesity, Food Justice, and the Limits of Capitalism (Berkeley: University of California, 2011).
4.The medical term for this is slipped capital femoral epiphysis.
5.John Hoffman and Judith A. Salerno, The Weight of the Nation: To Win We Have to Lose (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2012), 22–23.
6.Hoffman and Salerno, The Weight of the Nation, 22–23; Michael Carolan, The Real Cost of Cheap Food (London: Routledge, 2011), 75; and Kelly D. Brownell, Food Fight: The Inside Story of the Food Industry, America’s Obesity Crisis, and What We Can Do About It (New York: McGraw Hill, 2004), 3.
7.Prepared by the Staff of the Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, United States Senate, “Dietary Goals for the United States” (Washington: February 1977), 1, 9.
8.Alton Ochsner, Smoking: Your Choice Between Life and Death (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1970), 110.
9.Hoffman and Salerno, The Weight of the Nation, 81.
10.Moss, Salt, Sugar, Fat, 328.
11.Levenstein, Paradox of Plenty, 10, 242, 262.
12.“Kids Weigh in on Growing Waistlines,” Atlanta Journal Constitution, May 20, 2007.
13.Hoffman and Salerno, The Weight of the Nation, 11.
14.Levenstein, Paradox of Plenty, 204.
15.For a detailed treatment of this bill and its fate, see Jefferson Cowie, Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class (New York: The New Press, 2012), 262–80. See also Marisa Chappell’s smart reading of this measure in The War on Welfare: Family, Poverty, and Politics in Modern America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 126–27.
16.Sarah Wu, Fed Up with Lunch: The School Lunch Project (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2011), 81. Laura Moser, “Physical Education in American Schools Is Getting Lapped,” Slate, April 12, 2016, available at www.slate.com/blogs/schooled/2016/04/12/most_states_are_shortchanging_kids_on_physical_education_study_finds.html. See also Division of Public Health, North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, “The Burden of Obesity in North Carolina,” (Raleigh, 2009), available at www.eatsmartmovemorenc.com/ObesityInNC/Texts/OBESITY_BURDEN_2009_WEB.pdf.
17.Critser, Fat Land, 48.
18.Susan Levine, School Lunch Politics: The Surprising History of America’s Favorite Welfare Program (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), 150–78.
19.Aaron E. Carroll, “How Restricting Food Stamp Choices Can Fight Obesity,” New York Times, September 22, 2016; Government Accounting Office, “Food Stamp Program: Options for Delivering Financial Incentives to Participants for Purchasing Targeted Foods” (July 2008), available at www.gao.gov/new.items/d08415.pdf; and Olga Khazan, “Should Food Stamps Buy Soda,” The Atlantic, November 11, 2013.
20.Michael Pollan, Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (New York: Penguin Press, 2006); and Amelia Urry, “Our Crazy Farm Subsidies, Explained,” Grist, April 20, 2015, available at grist.org/food/our-crazy-farm-subsidies-explained.
21.Carolan, The Real Cost of Cheap Food, 103.
22.Quoted by Schatzker, The Dorito Effect, 145.
23.James Hamblin, “Look Inside a Chicken Nugget,” The Atlantic, October 21, 2013, available at www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/10/look-inside-a-chicken-nugget/280720.
24.Carole Sugarman and Tom Sietsema, “Nugget Mania: The Low-Down on Country’s Hottest Snack,” Washington Post, November 5, 1986.
25.The American Heart Association, “The Effects of Excess Sodium,” available at www.heart.org/HEARTORG/HealthyLiving/HealthyEating/HealthyDietGoals/The-Effects-of-Excess-Sodium-Infographic_UCM_454384_SubHomePage.jsp; and Michael F. Jacobson, “Salt: The Forgotten Killer” (2005), available at cspinet.org/new/pdf/salt_report_with_cover.pdf.
26.Schatzker, The Dorito Effect, 73. Second quote from Hoffman and Salerno, The Weight of the Nation, 71–73.
27.Striffler, Chicken; The Dangerous Transformation of America’s Favorite Food (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007).
28.“North Carolina Health News,” available at www.northcarolinahealthnews.org/interactive-physical-activity-health-in-north-carolina-county-data.
29.“The State of Obesity in North Carolina,” available at stateofobesity.org/states/nc.
30.Diane Duston, “Kids Prefer to Eat Pizza,” Richmond County Daily Journal, September 12, 1991.
31.Ann Vileisis, Kitchen Literacy: How We Lost Knowledge of Where Food Comes From and Why We Need to Get It Back (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2008), 7, 8–9.
32.Michael Pollan, Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation (New York: Penguin Press, 2013), 191. See also Levenstein, Paradox of Plenty, 105.
33.“The State of Obesity in North Carolina,” and “The Burden of Obesity in North Carolina.”
34.Author interview with Blanchard.
35.J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis (New York: HarperCollins, 2016), 138.
36.Tracie McMillan, The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee’s, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table (New York: Scribner, 2012), 1. On the working poor and the difficulty they typically have finding time to cook, see also David K. Shipler, The Working Poor: Invisible in America (New York: Vintage Books, 2005), 36–37; and Linda Tirado, Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2014), xv.
37.Pollan, Cooked, 193. Laura Shapiro, Something From the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America (New York: Penguin Books, 2005), 253; and Helen Zoe Veit, “Time to Revive Home Ec,” New York Times, September 5, 2011.
38.Author interview with Zimmerman.
39.Thomas Borstelmann, The 1970s: A New Global History from Civil Rights to Economic Inequality (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 60–61.
40.Peter Coclanis and Louis M. Kyriakoudes, “Selling Which South? Economic Change in Rural and Small-Town North Carolina in an Era of Globalization, 1940–2007,” Southern Cultures 4 (Winter 2007): 94.
41.Wilbur Hobby, President of NC AFL-CIO, to Holshouser, December 30, 1975, Box 332, Folder, “Labor, Department of, A–J,” Governor James E. Holshouser Papers, North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh, NC.
42.Ted Genoways, The Chain: Farm, Factory, and the Fate of Our Food (New York: Harper Collins, 2014), 42. On the
larger shift in meatpacking, see Donald D. Stull and Michael J. Broadway, Slaughterhouse Blues: The Meat and Poultry Industry in North America (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing, 2012).
43.On the importance of this way of thinking, see Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumer’s Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Knopf, 2003), 54–56.
44.Cowie quoted by E.J. Dionne, “Fighting Nostalgia and Amnesia in America’s Search for Greatness,” Washington Post, July 6, 2016. See also Cowie, The Great Exception: The New Deal and the Limits of American Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016), 153–54.
45.Christopher Leonard, The Meat Racket: The Secret Takeover of America’s Food Business (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014), and Guthman, Weighing In, 134.
46.Nestle quoted in A Place at the Table (Motto Pictures, 2012); See also Marion Nestle, Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007).
47.Author interview with Annette Zimmerman. See also the interviews in A Place at the Table (Motto Pictures, 2012).
48.Eric Finkelstein and Laurie Zuckerman, The Fattening of America: How the Economy Makes Us Fat, If It Matters, and What to Do About It (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2008), 128.
49.Quote from A Place at the Table. See also Brownell, Food Fight, 201–2.
50.In general, CHOP has a terrific website describing the problems associated with obesity. Interestingly enough, beginning in 2005, their data suggests that there is no longer a linear relationship between poverty and obesity. “Being wealthy,” add John Hoffman and Judith Salerno, “is not nearly as protective against obesity as it used to be.” Hoffman and Salerno, The Weight of the Nation, 11.
51.The discrimination that goes along with the appearance of alleged “fat-ness” and body shaming is one of the central insights of the emerging scholarly field of “fat studies.” See for instance, Esther D. Rothblum, “Fat Studies,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Social Science of Obesity, edited by John Cawley (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 176–77.
52.In 2011, this McDonald’s outlet was eventually closed. See Don Sapatkin, “Children’s Hospital Is Closing Its McDonald’s Restaurant,” Philadelphia Daily News, September 16, 2011.
53.Charlotte Biltekoff, Eating Right in America: The Cultural Politics of Food and Health (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013), 120, 124; Brownell, Food Fight, 45, 46; and Carolan, The Real Cost of Cheap Food, 75.
54.Author interview with Bob Hall.
6: Deregulation
1.Randy Diamond, “Plant Never Had Safety Inspection,” Raleigh News and Observer, September 4, 1991.
2.On this inaction, see John Conway, “Feds Took No Action Despite N.C. Safety Violations,” Greensboro News and Record, September 4, 1991.
3.NBC News, September 4, 1991, Vanderbilt Television News Archive, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN. See also for more on this report on North Carolina’s OSHA enforcement, Committee on Education and Labor, House of Representatives, “The Tragedy at Imperial Food Products, December 1991, Serial No. 102-N, pp. 6–7.
4.“A Handy Reference Guide to The Williams-Steiger Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970,” in a brochure in a packet called, “Your Union Welcomes You,” circa 1975, UFCW Papers, Box 5, Folder, Our Union Welcomes You, circa 1975, SHSW, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI. By far the best book, and really the only quality monograph on OSHA, is Charles Noble, Liberalism at Work: The Rise and Fall of OSHA (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986).
5.I.W. Abell to President Lloyd, May 7, 1971, Frame 650, Reel 280, Frame 653, Folder, “UFCW Action Photos,” UFCW Papers, SHSW, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI. And I.W. Abel, President, Industrial Union Department, AFL-CIO, to Brother Gorman, August 31, 1972, Reel 280, Frames 469–70, Folder, “UFCW Action Photos,” UFCW Papers, SHSW, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI.
6.H.W. Brands, Reagan: The Life (New York: Doubleday, 2015), 178. See also Erik Loomis, Out of Sight: The Long and Disturbing Story of Corporations Outsourcing Catastrophe (New York: The New Press, 2015), 66–67.
7.“Martin Plan: Start Hot Line,” Charlotte Observer, September 12, 1991. Mike Casey, “Safety Penalties Less in Carolinas: Serious Violations Costlier to Firms in 39 Other States,” Charlotte Observer, October 26, 1991.
8.Harry Bernstein, “Fatal Fire May Stir OSHA Action,” Los Angeles Times, September 7, 1991; Martin Gensler, Letter to the Editor, Washington Post, October 17, 1991; and NBC Nightly News, September 4, 1991.
9.Casey, “Safety Penalties Less in Carolinas.” See also Russ Bargmann, “OSHA: The Urgency of Revival” (1977), AFL-CIO Records, AFL-CIO Bound Pamphlets, RG-34-002, Box 20, Folder 27, Special Collections, University of Maryland, College Park, MD.
10.Michael Steward Foley, Front Porch Politics: The Forgotten Heyday of American Activism in the 1970s (New York: Hill and Wang, 2014), 23. On the timing and substance of this shift in attitudes, see also Daniel T. Rodgers, Age of Fracture (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011), 122.
11.“The National Economy,” AFL-CIO Records, AFL-CIO Bound Pamphlets, RG-34-002, Box 23, Folder 54, Special Collections, University of Maryland, College Park, MD.
12.Foley, Front Porch Politics, 23.
13.Rick Perlstein, The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014), 478. On the broader currents of economic thinking going on in the United States and Europe during the last century, see Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Inventing Free Markets Since the Great Depression (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012). On independent truck drivers, in particular, and their break with the New Deal, see Shane Hamilton, Trucking Country: The Road to America’s Wal-Mart Economy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014).
14.Charlotte Montgomery, “Pressure to Scrap Key U.S. Health Laws Forecast,” The Globe and Mail, May 26, 1981.
15.Edwin McDowell, “OSHA, EPA: The Heyday Is Over,” New York Times, January 4, 1981; Laura Kalman, Right Star Rising: A New Politics, 1974–1980 (New York: Norton, 2010), 240; and the final quote from W. Edwards Deming to Congressman George Hansen, July 11, 1978, ACU Papers, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT.
16.Kim Phillips-Fein, Invisible Hands: The Businessmen’s Crusade Against the New Deal (New York: Norton, 2009), 210. See also for a similar point, Kalman, Right Star Rising, 41.
17.On this key point, see Meg Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics: Economic Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005).
18.Joseph A. McCartin, Collision Course: Ronald Reagan, the Air Traffic Controllers, and the Strike That Changed America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); and Jefferson Cowie, Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class (New York: The New Press, 2010). Reagan quote from Cody Carlson, “This week in history: Ronald Reagan fires 11,345 air traffic controllers,” Deseret News, August 5, 2012, available at www.deseretnews.com/article/865560028/This-week-in-history-Ronald-Reagan-fires-11345-air-traffic-controllers.html?pg=all.
19.For information on rates of union membership, see data available at digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1176&context=key_workplace.
20.Jim Larkee (Arden) to Holshouser, Holshouser to Larkee, July 21, 1976, Box 433, Folder, “Safety and Health Review Board, Labor Department of,” Governor James E. Holshouser Papers, North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh, NC.
21.HJB to Harley F. Shuford, President of Shuford Mills in Hickory, May 19, 1980, Beard Papers, Box 4, Folder 28, UNCC, Charlotte, NC; Draft letter on yellow legal paper, Addressed to “Dear Fellow . . . ,” n.d., Box 34, Folder 31, UNCC, and Affidavit, State of NC, County of Mecklenburg, Box 34, Folder 23, Beard Papers, UNCC, Charlotte, NC; and George Hansen to Dear (blank), February 14, 1979; Beard to Bill Keyes, September 25, 1979, ACU Papers, BYU, Provo, UT.
22.Phillips-Fein, Invisible Hands, 208–9.
23.Phillips-Fein, Invisible Hands, 208–9. S
ee more on the values of the ACU, available at conservative.org/who-we-are.
24.Damon Stetson, “Carter Backed by State Labor Federation,” New York Times, August 26, 1980; Memorandum to the President, From Charles L. Schultze (Chair, Council of Economic Advisors), Stu Eizenstat, (Assistant to the Pres for Domestic Affairs and Policy), and Bert Lance (Office of Management and Budget), May 27, 1977, Council of Economic Advisors, Charles L. Schulze’s Subject Files, Box 59, Folder, OSHA Reform, Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, GA. On Ford, see “Tennessee and Kentucky: A Profile,” Ford campaign memo, 1976, available at www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/0204/1512257.pdf.
25.Jimmy Carter, “Statement of OSHA,” circa 1976, Box 5, Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, GA.
26.Philip J. Simon, “Reagan in the Workplace: Unraveling the Health and Safety Net” (Washington, DC: Center for Study of Responsive Law, 1983), 6; “Eula Bingham,” Wikipedia.com, available at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eula_Bingham; Nolan Hancock, “Employer Retaliation Can Chill Workers’ Support for OSHA,” AFL-CIO Records, AFL-CIO Bound Pamphlets, RG-34-002, Box 23, Folder 17, OSHA: A 10 Year Success Story, Special Collections, University of Maryland, College Park, MD.
27.Michael Verespej, “OSHA: Under New Management,” Industry Week, November 2, 1981.
28.Hancock, “Employer Retaliation.”
29.Press Release: Council on Wage and Price Stability, “Council Criticizes OSHA Approach,” September 22, 1976, Council of Economic Advisors, Charles L. Schultze’s Subject Files, Box 59, Folder, OSHA, Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, GA.
30.Memorandum to the President, May 27, 1977.
31.On Carter’s drift toward deregulation, see Bruce J. Schulman, The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2001), 125. See also Daniel Steadman Jones, Masters of the Universe: Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 217.