Title
Interview with Shirley Lally
Date of Interview
10-27-2000
Duration of Audio File
00:45:07
Interviewee
Shirley Lally
Age
Born approximately 1930 or 1931, age 69 or 70 at date of interview
Gender
Female
Birth Place
Westbrook, Maine
Residence
Brown Street, Westbrook, Maine
Occupation/ Work History
Paper inspector and counter in finishing department.
Role
Union
Mill or Principal Employer
S. D. Warren
Mill Location
Westbrook, Maine 04092
Keywords
Labor History, Maine, S.D. Warren Company, paper inspector, union activist, family member
Abstract
Lally worked 40 years at the mill in the predominantly female finishing department, inspecting and counting reams of paper by hand. She was married to another mill worker. At the time of unionization in the late 1960s, she led a group of activist women who rebelled against the mill's practice of laying off women with greater seniority than men, successfully changing seniority policy for women for the better.
Document Type
Interview
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Shirley Lally, interview by Michael Hillard, October 27, 2000, Stories of Maine's Paper Plantation, Digital Maine, Maine's Economic Improvement Fund, Digital Commons, University of Southern Maine
Comments
Reminiscences include life and work in finishing department - how women counted reams of paper by hand while inspecting their quality, rampant favoritism in job assignments and sexual harassment. Also discusses legendary mill paternalism, for example financially rescuing workers. She and her husband purchased one of the mill's original housing for workers, a John Calvin Stephens designed home on Brown Street in Westbrook, Maine.