Streaming Media
Date of Interview
7-18-2003
Duration of Audio File
Audio file # 1 00:14:13 Adio file #2 00:46:24
Interviewee
Dave Martin & Arthur Gordon
Age
Born 1939 or 1940; aged 63 or 64 at time of the interview
Gender
Male
Birth Place
Westbrook or Portland, Maine
Residence
Westbrook, Maine
Occupation/ Work History
Paper machine hand and paper machine supervisor
Role
Management
Mill or Principal Employer
S. D. Warren
Mill Location
Westbrook, Maine 04092
Keywords
S.D. Warren - history, paper mill work life, management, paternalism, corporate restructuring, dislocated worker
Abstract
Dave Martin and Arthur Gordon recount their mill experiences including topics such as: life as a skilled paper machine tender, the hazards and difficulties of work in the mill, Martin's short tenure as a supervisor, and S.D. Warren's status as a premier paper maker. Martin describes difficult experience of new corporate management and how he was laid off several years after becoming a manager.
Document Type
Interview
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Dave Martin & Arthur Gordon, interview with Michael Hillard, July 18, 2003, Stories of Maine's Paper Plantation, Digital Maine, Maine's Economic Improvement Fund, Digital Commons, University of Southern Maine
Included in
Labor History Commons, Oral History Commons, Social History Commons, Unions Commons, United States History Commons
Comments
Martin was a third generation paper maker: he, his father, and grandfather all worked as paper machine hands. "Machine tenders" or "first hands" gained 20 or more years of experience on one machine, and the job was prestigious. Martin eloquently describes how in his view that Scott Paper's bad management strategies in the 1980s and 1990s caused the Westbrook mill and Scott Paper to lose markets and accelerate the mill's decline. Vivid description of underside of mill work, such as overwhelming presence of chemicals and punishing shift work. Arthur Gordon, a key leader of the paperworkers' Local 1069, was present during the interview and offers a few comments. PLEASE SEE THE SEPARATE GORDON INTERVIEW.