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Interview with Tommy Lestage 4 of 5
Michael G. Hillard PhD
Tommy Lestage was a long time militant labor activist and union leader at Westbrook mill. He recounts experience of working in paper mill in his various jobs - what it is like, safety problems and injuries, skills, and generally what happens while doing shiftwork and braving difficult conditions. Lestage recalls features of mill culture including practical jokes, manly relations among male workers, and varying experiences with supervisors and managers. As a low level union shop steward and later leader of the union, he has very detailed accounts of all aspects of union-company relations. The interview includes an extensive description of resistance by Local 1069 to Scott Paper's "Jointness" labor-management cooperation and work reorganization project (1988-1994), and participation in solidarity actions in support of paper mill workers on strike against International Paper Company in Jay, Maine in 1987-1988.
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Big Talk: Radio Interview
Michael G. Hillard PhD
This radio interview discusses labor relations at S.D. Warren in the 1980s and 1990s. Themes include the difficulties of paper mill unions in Maine in the wake of the 1987-88 Jay, Maine strike that resulted in 1250 unionized workers losing their jobs. In the "no strike" environment post-Jay, unions sought to defend contracts by remaining hard nosed. Warren had been purchased by a South African company in 1995 from Scott Paper Company; the mill's skilled workers took a certain measure of control from new outside mill managers, taking advantage of their superior knowledge of the mill's operations.
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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