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Interview with Paul Brahms
Michael G. Hillard PhD
Brahms recounts 10 year career as a frontline chemist in S.D. Warren lab NOTE: lengthy delay at start of audio
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Interview with Tommy Lestage 5 of 5
Michael G. Hillard PhD
Tom Lestage discusses the attempt by Local 1069 to lead a worker buyout of the Westbrook mill in 1991 and 1992.
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Interview with Peter Kellman - 2 of 2
Michael G. Hillard PhD
Kellman's observations as an activist and historian of labor in Maine's paper industry. His focus was on his understanding of the ethnic and social character of Maine paper mill towns, including Jay, Madawaska, and Westbrook; as well as Maine's "Yankee" farmers. Kellman also describes Maine Woodsmen's Association strike of 1975, the Fraser Paper strike of 1971, and strategies by corporations to weaken unions after 1950.
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Interview with Bill Sterritt
Michael G. Hillard PhD
Discusses labor relations within S.D. Warren and Scott Paper from 1970s - 1990s. Rejection by Maine S.D. Warren workers of 1980s labor relations initiative by Scott Paper Company.
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Interview with Carl Turner
Michael G. Hillard PhD
Turner was president of UPIU Local 9 in 1980s and 1990s. Led effort to resist Scott Paper's "Jointness" Initiative in late 1980s early 1990s in Maine.
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Interview with Dana Babb
Michael G. Hillard PhD
Dana Babb offers a management perspective in the mill's practices and roles in people's lives in the mill and Westbrook. Babb describes mill paternalism - a company store, extensive credit provided to workers, and large donations by mill to community institutions.
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Interview with Dave Martin & Arthur Gordon
Michael G. Hillard PhD
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.
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Interview with Gary Cove
Michael G. Hillard PhD
Cook was a union official for Maine and New Hampshire with the United Paperworkers International Union (UPIU) from 1975 - 2000s. His first role was as an International Representative (business agent for many union locals) and later a regional Vice President of the UPIU. Before 1975 he worked as a paper worker at the International Paper Plant in Jay, Maine. Serviced UPIU Local 1069 at S.D. Warren, Westbrook in 1980s and 1990s.
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Interview with Harlie Lord
Michael G. Hillard PhD
Lord had a long career at S.D. Warren, Westbrook - 1924-1970 (approximately). This interview comprises of her recollections of work life, S.D. Warren's paternalistic practices, and general observations about how the company operated.
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Interview with Jane Slaughter
Michael G. Hillard PhD
Slaughter is a leading national writer, journalist, and educator. As co-director of Labor Notes, she is a leader of the radical wing of the U.S. labor movement from the 1970s to 2010s. Author of many books, including Choosing Sides: Unions and the Team Concept (with Mike Parker). Slaughter also acted as a consultant to Maine paper unions in 1988 and 1989.
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Interview with John Beck
Michael G. Hillard PhD
John Beck (1991-2015) has been a professor and director of Labor Education at Michigan State University. Beck was United Paperworkers International Union (UPIU) Education and Research Director, 1986-1991. This interview contains a wealth of Beck's experience and insight about critical labor relations' developments in the period when he was at UPIU.
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Interview with Karl Dornish
Michael G. Hillard PhD
Dornish was senior production manager at S.D. Warren Westbrook, 1954-1970s, then at S.D. Warren-Somerset/Hinckley from late 1970s until around 1990. He spent a few years at S.D. Warren's Muskegon, Michigan mill before retiring in Waterville, Maine area, and is a graduate of Colby College.
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Interview with Margaret Lowell
Michael G. Hillard PhD
Lowell briefly worked at S.D. Warren in her youth around the time she graduated high school in 1950. She worked in the finishing department with the hundreds of other women who inspected and counted reams of paper by hand. In addition to describing her experience, she spoke movingly about her aunt, Mae Bachelor (both were interviewed together), who was considered a superstar in their workroom.
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Interview with Michael Hamil
Michael G. Hillard PhD
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.
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Interview with Oscar Fick
Michael G. Hillard PhD
Fick was son of Oscar Fick Senior. Oscar Fick Senior was part of a small cadre of professional managers that wrested full control of the company from Warren family descendants in the late 1910s; this group included John Hyde and George Olmstead. Fick Junior and sons or sons in law of this group still ran the mill when it was sold to Scott Paper Company in 1967. The interviewee assisted his father and then became the chief electrical engineer for the mill. S.D. Warren owned a series of hydroelectric dams that provided energy to the mill, the first being built in 1878. Fick’s observations include his impressions of shop-floor life when he first worked summers there while attending engineering school. He recalls strong prejudice against Franco-American workers, and also describes the strong culture of workers bringing personal problems to their supervisors.
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Interview with Peter Kellman - 1 of 2
Michael G. Hillard PhD
Kellman was the most effective militant labor movement organizer in Maine from late 1970s until 2010s. The interview focuses on dramatic labor relations developments in Maine in the late 1980s, including his leadership of Jay workers in building a statewide social movement to attempt to win the 1987-1988 Jay Strike at International Paper. Kellman also details the impact of the strike on labor relations at Scott Paper (including two S.D. Warren mills) in Maine.
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Interview with Ray Pineau
Michael G. Hillard PhD
Ray Pineau was a leader in the historic Jay, Maine International Paper Strike in 1987-88. He is featured in Julius Getman's book on the strike, "The Betrayal of Local 14." Pineau's interview includes his observations on the politics and attitudes of the S.D. Warren workers and union leaders during the Jay Strike; Pineau worked at S.D. Warren for a brief period during the strike. Later he became a representative in the Maine State Legislature, helping to found a labor caucus in the 1990s and 2000s.
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Interview with Rodney Hiltz
Michael G. Hillard PhD
Hiltz is a paperworker from the S.D. Warren Somerset Mill. He became president of the United Paperworkers International Union Local 9 in the 1990s, and previously was a lower level union leader. He has been highly involved in state politics and union activism, and was part of the Somerset mill's union leadership that rejected Scott Paper's "Jointness" Initiative.
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Interview with Roland Sampson
Michael G. Hillard PhD
This interview covers how Jay strike included participation from paper union members across all of Maine, including Westbrook/Warren Local 1069.
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Interview with Ute Lestage
Michael G. Hillard PhD
Ute Lestage describes how the Union supports workers and families in Westbrook, and how a charitable fund set up by the mill founder's daughter funded her training to become a health care worker.
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Interview with Clyde Harriman
Michael G. Hillard PhD
Harriman was a leader of the workers' successful unionization effort in the 1960s. He was Vice-President of the paper workers local for a few years before leaving the mill to work in the Portland, Maine post office.
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Interview with Gary Schauzer
Michael G. Hillard PhD
Schauzer worked at the mill from 1969 to 1999. He was an electrician, who eventually got a B.S. Degree and went into management. His prime goal as a manager was to rectify problems with management and support he had during his first 15 years as an hourly employee. Schauzer provides detailed descriptions of mill work life and S.D. Warren management culture.
S.D. Warren Company in Westbrook is Maine's oldest paper mill, first opened in 1854. Warren was known for having the highest quality publication papers in the world, particularly coated publication paper used in glossy company annual reports and magazines. Innovation was key to Warren's long term success, thanks to its "Technology Center" which performed product and process research and developments. The mill always produced a great number of specialty products. The focus of the interviews is the business and labor history of the mill. Warren was famous for one the nation's longest and most successful paternalistic traditions, which kept the company union-free until 1967. Workers and managers alike recall generous employment terms, and a company based social safety net that took care of injured, sick, and financially troubled employees, often thanks to direct appeals by employees to the mill manager. The company was purchased by Scott Paper Company in 1967, and was sold again to South African Pulp and Paper Industries (SAPPI) in 1995. Many interviews deal with the suddenly contentious relations between the new union locals, especially United Paperworkers' International Union Local 1069, the largest union local in the mill. Interviewees also paint a detailed picture of the difficult conditions of paper mill work life - heat, danger, exhausting shift work, abusive treatment by supervisors and favoritism by managers in work assignments. Workers stress the important role of their skills in the company's success, and their overall pride in working for Warren. Two other themes of interest to economists and historians: (1) the traumatic experience of the mill's precipitous decline after 1985 (employment fell from a peak of 3200 in 1966, to 2200 in the late 1980s, and then heavy cuts that left the mill with only 200 employees in 2003); the role of community memory in dealing with the mill's demise, centered on filiopietistic recollections about Samuel Dennis Warren, the mill's founder.
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