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Interview with Anonymous Company Forestry Manager
Michael G. Hillard PhD
This interview describes evolution of economic arrangements between a paper company and woodcutters over thirty year period beginning in the 1970s.
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Interview with Carl Van Husen
Michael G. Hillard PhD
Van Husen describes Scott's logging operations in the Bingham area. Van Husen was responsible for company-hired loggers known as "company crews" of loggers, as opposed to independent contractors. Scott owned about 500,000 acres of woodlands in central Maine. Two key themes: 1. the use of Canadian guest workers, some of whom had an informal wildcat strike in 1966, and 2. the early experiment of Scott's to use 4 Beloit mechanized harvester machines.
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Interview with Dan Corcoran
Michael G. Hillard PhD
Corcoran's biggest story is overseeing the building of the Golden Road -- he has a detailed and rich account of the process of shifting from river drives to trucking wood to GNP. The building of the Golden Road began in 1940s, 30 years before it was ended statewide by regulation after the spring of 1976. The key advantage is that river drives meant stocking the mill wood supply only once a year, there was a loss of up to 20 percent of the trees, and the wood quality was inferior to freshly trucked wood.
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Interview with Dave Edson
Michael G. Hillard PhD
Edson discusses the impact that the MWA (Maine Woodmen’s Association) strike of 1975 and various environmental organizations on changing industry practices and also making Maine less attractive to large national paper companies that had purchased Maine mills.
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Interview with Jim Pinkerton
Michael G. Hillard PhD
Pinkerton offers detailed accounts of Scott Paper Company logging operations in central/northern Maine from 1960s on. Pinkerton describes on-going labor supply problems, company views about Canadian guest workers versus local Maine loggers. He also describes the difficulties Scott had when it began using mechanized feller-bunchers in 1966, and logger militancy (including an informal strike by Canadian guest workers in the mid 1960s and the Maine Woodsmen's Association strike of 1975).
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Interview with Bill Butler
Michael G. Hillard PhD
Butler was a key leader and founder of the Maine Woodmen's Association (MWA). The interview includes a description of working conditions for small logging contractors from the 1950s through the time of the 1975 strike. Butler also provides a detailed account of the 1975 strike itself.
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Interview with Claire Bolduc
Michael G. Hillard PhD
A Franco-American from northern Maine, Bolduc was first hired as to analyze poor working and economic conditions for loggers in northern Maine in the early 1970s. She helped lead an effort to create a woodcutters’ organization that was a precursor and became part of the MWA. She describes the poor working conditions – cold, isolation, frequent injuries and death, and over the very hard lives led by loggers. Bolduc also a vivid portrait of company power wielded.
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Interview with Don Fontaine
Michael G. Hillard PhD
Donald Fontaine has been a labor lawyer since the late 1960s, working first with Pine Tree Legal and later as an independent labor lawyer. The interviewee was the lawyer that represented the Maine Woodsmen's Association (MWA) during the 1975 strike, and describes the origins of the MWA and the extensive legal proceedings during the strike. Donald Fontaine has represented dozens of local education associations on behalf of teachers, bus drivers, educational technicians, janitors, and school secretaries. He has also represented the United Paperworkers International Union, the Amalgamated Transit Union, U.N.I.T.E., the AFL-CIO, and the employees of the DeCoster Egg Farm
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Interview with John Birmingham
Michael G. Hillard PhD
John is the younger brother of the late Wayne Birmingham, President of the Maine Woodsmen's Association and leader of the 1975 MWA strike. John worked briefly as a logger. The interview highlights John's memories of his brother and the strike.
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Interview with Jon Falk
Michael G. Hillard PhD
Interviewee Jon Falk was a key organizer and leader of the MWA (Maine Woodmen's Association) at the time of the strike and for several years after. The interview describes the difficult conditions and domination by paper companies that provoked loggers to strike in 1975. Falk gives a detailed account of the strike itself, and the ensuing history of the MWA until its demise in the early 1980s.
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Interview with Larry Palmer
Michael G. Hillard PhD
Palmer was an important participant in the Maine Woodmen's Association (MWA) statewide strike of 1975. His close friend Wayne Birmingham was President of the MWA. The interview includes an account of the strike, descriptions of logging work, and the fall out of the strike and MWA's activities during its ensuing existence as a small organization that survived the strike's defeat.
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Interview with Mel Ames
Michael G. Hillard PhD
Ames discusses his life as a logger and trained forester. He is a longtime proponent of sustainable harvesting methods since being trained as a forester in the 1940s. Ames became a leader of the MWA just before the 1975 statewide strike by logging contractors. He became President of the MWA in its last years (1978-early 1980s), and he wrote the state MWA newsletter.
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Interview with Peter Haggarty
Michael G. Hillard PhD
Hagerty was a co-founder and leader of the Maine Woodmen's Association (MWA) at the time of the 1975 MWA strike. The interview includes a detailed account of the strike, especially meetings and protests southern Maine. Hagerty was educated at an elite college and was active in the antiwar movement against the Vietnam War which shaped his perspective on the issues causing the strike.
The interviews for this strike were for the author's research on the Maine Woodmen's Association (MWA) Strike of 1975. The strike lasted for three weeks in early fall of that year, and was the only strike in the history of Maine's paper industry to shut down all of the state's mills. Small, independent logging contractors that cut pulpwood that fueled Maine's paper mills (wood is paper's primary raw material) were protesting reduced payments for wood and also lack of steady work. The MWA was comprised for a short time of 3000 out of about 7500 loggers, and were Maine/US citizens. Strikers focused their ire on Canadian guest workers imported by paper companies, whose presence reduced Maine citizen loggers' income. While strikers failed in getting immediate concessions, the number of Canadian guest loggers fell by 75% in the ensuing five years as a result of the strike. The author interviewed both strike leaders and company forestry managers on the two sides of the strike, along with activists and public officials who were part of the event. As background for the strike, MWA woodcutters described their working conditions and work life. Forestry managers for the paper companies described the history of different economic arrangements between companies and loggers, and the evolution of tree cutting and harvesting technologies, including advanced mechanization accelerated by the uncertainties created by the strike.
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