Abstract

Out in the Cold At Cannon Mills

"The little man's going to lose, it doesn't make any difference which way you turn." Clarence Lawson, a textile worker in the United States rolls the word carefully in his mouth. "I believed from day one that the pension money could never be moved. We just got stuck." He is one of the workers who put their trust in the boss and lost out. Until recently their story was a footnote in the chronicle of the collapsing financial system, obscured by more flamboyant losers in speculations gone reckless and wrong. Now, with national attention, a high-energy union drive and some timely maneuvering by financiers converging to raise the prospect of salvation, that story risks becoming an object lesson in the system's capacity for self-correction. The seeds of Clarence Lawson's discontent were planted six years ago, when Fieldcrest-Cannon textile mill's owner, David Murdock, liquidated the workers' pension plan, skimmed off a hefty surplus and rolled over the pension money itself into insurance annuities.