Title
Interview with Dave Martin & Arthur Gordon
Files
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Date of Interview
7-18-2003
Duration of Audio File
0:46:24
Interviewee
Dave Martin & Arthur Gordon
Age
Born 1939 or 1940, aged 63 or 64 at time of the interview
Gender
Male
Description
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.
Birth Place
Westbrook or Portland, Maine
Residence
Westbrook, Maine
Occupation/Work History
Paper machine hand and paper machine supervisor
Role
Management
Mill or Principal Employer
S.D. Warren Company
Mill Location
Westbrook, Maine
Keywords
S.D. Warren - history, paper mill work life, management, paternalism, corporate restructuring, dislocated worker
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Hillard, Michael G. PhD, "Interview with Dave Martin & Arthur Gordon" (2003). S.D. Warren Company. 29.
https://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/sd-warren/29
Comments
Martin was a third generation paper maker: he, his father, and grandfather all worked as paper machine hands. "Machine tenders" or "first hands" gained 20 or more years of experience on one machine, and the job was prestigious. Martin eloquently describes how in his view that Scott Paper's bad management strategies in the 1980s and 1990s caused the Westbrook mill and Scott Paper to lose markets and accelerate the mill's decline. Vivid description of underside of mill work, such as overwhelming presence of chemicals and punishing shift work. Arthur Gordon, a key leader of the paperworkers' Local 1069, was present during the interview and offers a few comments. PLEASE SEE THE SEPARATE GORDON INTERVIEW.