Date of Interview

6-26-2000

Duration of Audio File

Audio file #1 00:47:05; Audio file #2 00:47:31; Audio file #3 00:36:18

Interviewee

Arthur Gordon

Age

Born May 6, 1924, aged 76 at time of interview, died January 28, 2006

Gender

Male

Residence

Duck Pond Road, Westbrook, Maine

Occupation/ Work History

Lab technician, finishing department worker, union leader, Democratic Party activist, Senator in Maine State Legislature, founder of Maine Labor Group on Health, Merchant Shipman during World War II.

Role

Union

Mill or Principal Employer

S. D. Warren

Mill Location

Westbrook, Maine 04092

Keywords

S.D. Warren, Sappi, Paper Mills - Maine; Paper industry - Maine - History

Abstract

Arthur Gordon is considered by Maine labor union leaders and activists to have been the "institutional memory" of S.D. Warren's unionization and Local 1069 of the United Paperworkers International. Gordon spearheaded Local 1069's transformation of Westbrook in the 1960s from a management-dominated Republican city to a union-dominated Democratic city. He served on the Westbrook city council and then the Maine State Legislature, also while being a leader of the movement to improve occupational safety in Maine industrial workplaces.

Comments

Recollections are detailed and colorful. Describes his work in the finishing department, difficulties of mill work life such as effect of shiftwork, and recounts his astute, mostly behind the scenes, efforts to make Local 1069 a powerhouse in both local Democratic politics and within the Maine AFL-CIO.

Document Type

Interview

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License.

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