RALEIGH — Perhaps the proudest achievement of labor organizer Bruce Raynor — the real-life basis of a character in the film "Norma Rae" — was the unionization of six Pillowtex-Fieldcrest-Cannon mills in the Kannapolis area. After four failed votes, the first one in 1974, Raynor's union finally succeeded in 1999.
CHAPEL HILL — Journalists and military experts featured at a recent seminar examining news coverage during the Iraq War questioned the effectiveness and importance of embedded journalism. Guest speakers at the seminar, sponsored Sept. 12-13 by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Journalism and Mass Communications,…
Private-ambulance official Marc Pickard is clearly frustrated as he explains why a Lenoir County man who suffered a stroke last week did not receive faster medical attention. Even though Pickard's company, Convalescent Transport, sits across the street from the stroke victim’s house, county law prevented its ambulance from responding. Instead,…
RALEIGH — A report filed recently with the Federal Election Commission shows that U.S. Rep. Frank Ballance of North Carolina donated $3,000 in campaign money to a nonprofit organization named for his mother. The contribution to the Alice Eason Ballance Education and Justice Foundation on June 19 was listed on…
RALEIGH — The sixth annual North Carolina Charter School Conference brought educators and activists to New Bern in late July to talk about issues such as the No Child Left Behind Act. The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction sponsored the meeting to “provide charter school stakeholders the opportunity to…
RALEIGH—The 6,450 layoffs at Pillowtex, Inc., which included about 4,800 workers in North Carolina, may have been mitigated had the union representing its employees not intervened in a deal to sell parts of the company. The largest manufacturer of home fashions in the United States, Springs Industries, offered as much…
Duke’s summer reading selection, Jonathan Kozol’s Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools, rivals UNC's choice of Barbara Erenreich's Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America for its one-sided portrayal of life for children in America's public school system. Savage Inequalities decries the poverty of America's schools and ignores…
North Carolina’s institutions of public higher education are hardly the only ones in the nation affected by an economic downturn in their home state. A report released this summer shows how many public universities and colleges across the country received cuts, some substantial, in their budgets.
RALEIGH — The North Carolina Center for Applied Textile Technology, a state-owned higher-education institution that since 1996 has received more than $1.2 million annually in aid from the state, was audited recently for the first time. Carolina Journal obtained copies of the center’s class rosters for school year 2002-03, which…
CHARLOTTE — Under North Carolina law, churches are exempt from paying property taxes on buildings and associated property they own that are used for “religious purposes.” Does the exemption also apply to land owned by churches that is used for outdoor worship services? And would it matter if a religious…
