Title
Interview with Michael Hamil
Date of Interview
4-2003
Duration of Audio File
audio file # 1 1:10:57; audio file #2 1:21:07; audio file #3 00:47:57
Interviewee
Michael Hamil
Gender
Male
Residence
Waterville, Maine
Occupation/ Work History
Paper mill worker & union leader
Role
Union
Mill or Principal Employer
S.D.Warren at the Scott Paper Mill in Winslow, Maine
Mill Location
Winslow, Maine
Keywords
Paper Industry, S. D. Warren, Labor Unions - Maine, Scott Paper Company- Winslow - Maine, Paper Industry - work reorganization
Abstract
Hamel describes his career at Winslow; including becoming a younger union President. Hamel tells two important stories: the unusual embrace by himself and other union leaders of Scott's Jointness program to reorganize work and union relations in the early 1990s, and then how Chainsaw Al Dunlap's CEO reign destroyed the experiment and led to mill's closure in 1997.
Document Type
Interview
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Michael Hamil, interview by Michael Hillard, August 1, 2001, Stories of Maine's Paper Plantation, Digital Maine, Maine's Economic Improvement Fund, Digital Commons, University of Southern Maine
Comments
A crucial tale in the state's labor history of the 1990s. Scott tried to implement a very progressive version of team concept work reorganization and codetermination of mill management with local managers and union leaders. Hamel gives an account that claims it was very sucessful, and Winslow became a model for Scott nationally. Then Al Dunlap pulled apart Scott Paper in 1995 and 1996, and then sold Winslow to competitor Kimberly Clark which shut down the successful WInslow mill to reduce competition