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"Just Like a Death": The Closing of the International Paper Company Mill in Mobile, Alabama, and the Deindustrialization of the South,

2000-2005 TIMOTHY J. MINCHIN

IN DECEMBER 2000, THE LAST PIECE OF PAPER rolled off the giant ma- chines at International Paper (IP) Company's mill in Mobile, Ala- bama. IP officials had decided to close the plant, a backbone of the port city's economy, in order to reduce production in a flooded mar- ket. Increased manufacturing efficiency had meant that the domestic office-paper market was flooded with more paper than it could use. In this situation, only the most efficient, newest plants could survive, and the Mobile mill was more than seventy years old. "Basically, we have more capacity than we have markets for," explained IP manu- facturing director Bob Taylor, "and so we made a decision to curtail that capacity." 1

The move had a devastating impact on the eight hundred workers involved, who lost some of the best-payingjobs available in the Mobile

Timothy J. Minchin is a reader and associate professor in North American history at LaTrobe University in Melbourne, Australia. This article is dedicated to the late Charles "Chuck" Spence (1932-2005), who assisted the author greatly with the interviews cited be- low. The author is grateful to the Spence family, Myron Calhoun, Monteen Lucky, and oth- ers who were helpful during his time in Mobile. He also thanks Alabama Review managing t~ditor Stt'Vl' Murray and the three anonymous readers for their constructive and detailed rl'mling of an carlit'r version of this article. 1 Dinnr D. Fnyard to Boyd Young, October 31, 2000, anci.Jdl' Wargo to Union Presidents, Novrmht'l' I, llOOO, hoth in "lntc•rnational Paper: Nt·ws Articles and Correspondence" lc1lth•1·, I1MJWI'N nl' thr llnltrd Strrl, l'aprr and Fon•stry, Ruhhcr, Manufacturing, Energy, Alllt'tl lnduNtriMI 111111 Srrvkr Worki'I'N lntrrnationalllnion (USW) (hereafter cited as USW rttJK'I'll), llMW Kl-Mhuntl Ollkt', Mnhllt'; "II' to Clos1· Plant; 790 Jobs Lost," Mobile Register, Ot•hllwr Ill, ~IMHI (tJIIIIIMIInn).

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45

area. 2 Four years later, the vast majority of the former IP workers had found jobs, but most earned a fraction of what they had before. "Most of them are on minimum-wage jobs," reflected Myron Calhoun, a for- mer supervisor at the mill. "If they're lucky it's ten- or eleven-dollar- an-hour jobs, whereas IP was seventeen dollars up to, say, twenty-four dollars or higher." Beyond the economic impact, the plant closure also caused severe psychological and emotional problems for many workers, who compared the loss of their jobs to the death of a close relative. "Reality didn't hit me until I didn't have a job," explained former worker Stanley Key, a sixteen-year veteran. "As long as I was going out there and I knew that place was shutting down, I had hope, but once they closed that door, I lost my hope. I went through all of my different emotions. I didn't know how to handle it, plus I didn't have nobody there to counsel me .... It's just like a death. Until you go through something like that, you don't know what a person goes through."3

Over the last twenty-five years, millions of Americans have lost their jobs due to plant closings. In the 1980s, layoffs hit manufacturing workers hardest, but in the 1990s many white-collar workers were also affected. At the nation's largest corporations, major layoffs affected thousands. In 1991, General Motors laid off 70,000 workers, while later in the decade IBM idled 63,000 and AT&T 40,000. In the spring of 1996, a major New York Times investigation into downsizing high- lighted that over 43 million jobs had been lost in the United States since 1979. Nearly three-quarters of all households had experienced a close encounter with a layoff in this time, while in one-third of all households a family member had lost a job. 4

Since the early 1980s, scholars have explored the decline of manu- facturing industries and the emergence of downsizing in some detail.

2"IP To Close Plant." 3 Myron Calhoun, inte~view by author, Satsuma, Alabama, November 12, 2004; Stanley Key,

interview by author, Satsuma, Alabama, November 13, 2004. 4

Bill Bamberger and Cathy N. Davidson, Closing: The Life and Death of an American Factory (New York, 1998), 17; "On the Battlefields of Business, Millions of Casualties," New York Times, March 3, 1996. For the entire series on downsizing, see the Times, March 3-9, 1996, The detailed articles were compiled as The Downsizing of America (New York, 1996).

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46 T II E A L A 1\ A M A R F. V I ~: W

In 1982 Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison's pioneering work, The Deindustrialization of America, introduced the term deindustrializa- tion to a broad American audience. Their work, however, concen- trated chiefly on the emerging "Rust Belt," especially the ailing steel and auto industries. Other studies have also focused on the decline of heavy industry in the Northeast or Midwest, overlooking the fate of southern workers. Recent works by Ruth Milkman and Thomas Dublin have focused on post-industrial communities in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, adding to existing studies of Rust Belt communi- ties such as Flint, Michigan, and Youngstown, Ohio.5

In the last few years, however, a few scholars have begun to show that deindustrialization has also affected southern workers. Cathy N. Davidson and Bill Bamberger's Closing explores the 1993 shutdown of the White Furniture Company in Mebane, North Carolina, placing the story within the broader context of the decline of manufacturing industry across the U.S. Recent essays in Jefferson Cowie and Joseph Heathcott's Beyond the Ruins also spotlight the southern experience. Joy L. Hart and Tracy E. K'Meyer examine workers' reactions to two plant closures in Louisville, Kentucky, while Steve May and Laura Morrison explore how workers were affected by the shutting of a high-tech manufacturing plant in rural North Carolina. These works suggest that southerners, like their counterparts in other regions, identified closely with their jobs and were usually deeply affected by

5 Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison, The Deindustrialization of America: Plant Closings, Community Abandonment, and the Dismantling of Basic Industry (New York, 1982). For other studies of deindustrialization that have a northern focus, see Thomas Dublin, When the Mines Closed: Stories of Struggles in Hard Times, with photographs by George Harvan (Ithaca, 1998); Terry F. Buss and F. Stevens Redburn, Shutdown at Youngstown: Public Policy for Mass Unemployment (Albany, N.Y., 1983); Steven P. Dandaneau, A Town Abandoned: Flint, Michi- gan, Confronts Deindustrialization (Albany, N.Y., 1996); Barbara Rudolph, Disconnected: How Six People from AT&T Discovered the New Meaning of Work in a Downsized Corporate America (New York, 1998); Ruth Milkman, Farewell to the Factory: Auto Workers in the Late Twentieth Century (Berkeley, 1997). Some broader works also contain chapters on deindustrializa- tion. Again, these works generally focus on the North. See Kenneth C. Wolensky, Nicole H. Wolensky, and Robert P. Wolensky, Fighting for the Union Label: The Women's Garment Industry and the ILGWU in Pennsylvania (University Park, Penn., 2002), 187-218; Gregg An- drews, City of Dust: A Cement Company Town in the Land of Tom Sawyer (Columbia, Mo., 1996), 305-22; Daniel Nelson, Farm and Factory: Workers in the Midwest, 1880-1990 (Bloomington, Ind., 1995), 163-205.

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jANUARY 2006 47

plant closures, with many left feeling devastated and bitter. 6 In the South, where wage rates have generally lagged behind the rest of the country, the loss of good-paying industrial jobs was particularly cata- strophic; the IP workers, for instance, earned almost twice as much as the average manufacturing employee in the Mobile area. 7

The story of the Mobile workers adds to this emerging field but pro- vides the first examination of displaced paper workers. 8 Employment in the paper industry has slumped from 647,000 in 1990 to 499,000 in 2004 as companies struggle to adjust to increased overseas compe· tition and reduced earnings. 9 The existing literature has also yet to give any coverage to Alabama, even though the state's workers have been deeply affected by the recent decline of several manufactur- ing industries, including textiles, rubber, steel, chemicals, and paper. Between January 1999 and February 2003, the state lost more than 48,000 jobs due to plant closures and layoffs. Firms that had been part of a central part of the state's economy, such as apparel makers Russell Athletic and Vanity Fair, led the way in shifting production overseas. Between July 1998 and October 1999, for example, Russell closed no fewer than seven Alabama plants. In February 1999, Good-

6 Bamberger and Davidson, Closing, Steve May and Laura Morrison, "Making Sense of Re- structuring: Narratives of Accommodation among Downsized Workers," and Joy L. Hart and Tracy E. K'Meyer, "Worker Memory and Narrative: Personal Stories of Deindustrial- ization in Louisville, Kentucky," both inJefferson Cowie andJoseph Heathcott, eds., Be- yond the Ruins: The Meanings ofDeindustrialization (Ithaca, 2003), 259-83 and 284-304. For broader coverage of southern deindustrialization, see also Timothy]. Minchin's recent Fighting against the Odds: A History of Southern Labor Since World War II (Gainesville, Fla., 2005), 158-64,209-10. 7 "Mobile Mill: Statement of the Company's Position," May 20, 1987, "IP-Mobile Lockout Legal Files" box, United Paperworkers International Union (UPIU) Papers (hereafter cit- ed as UPIU Papers), USW International Union Headquarters, Nashville, Tennessee. The UPIU was a predecessor of the USW. 8 Two recent works cover the economic restructuring of the southern paper industry, but neither looks at the impact of plant shutdowns on employees. Kathryn Ziewitz and June M. Wiaz's Green Empire: The St. Joe Company and the Remaking of Florida s Panhandle (Gainesville, Fla., 2004) covers the 1999 closure of the St. Joe Paper Company's mill in Port St. Joe, Florida, and the company's efforts to redevelop its land holdings for tourist and residen- tial use. George Loveland's Under The Workers' Caps: From Champion Mill to Blue Ridge Paper (Knoxville, 2005) recounts the story of a group of North Carolina workers who purchased a paper mill in order to save their jobs. 9 U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2006 (Washington, D.C., 2005), table 979.

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48 T II ~: A L A B A M A 10: V I E W

year Tire and Rubber Company also closed their landmark facility in Gadsden, throwing more than 1,300 employees out of work. The loss of manufacturing jobs hit Alabama hard because the state remained more dependent on manufacturing than many others; in 2000, 19.3 percent of Alabama's jobs were in manufacturing, compared to 14.2 percent for the nation as a whole. Between 2000 and 2002, Alabama lost 12.5 percent of its manufacturing jobs, while the nation in gen- eral saw 9.5 percent of these positions disappear. 10

The IP closure represented a severe blow to the economy of Mo- bile, as the mill had an annual payroll of over $37 million. The com- pany spent an additional $39 million per year in the local economy and paid $1.7 million in annual local taxes. IP employees, suppliers, and contract workers also contributed around $74 million to the lo- cal economy. 11 In November 2000, three Mobile County commission- ers described the closure as "a grievous loss to the local economy." Gov. Don Siegelman, a Mobile native, even wrote U.S. Secretary of Labor Alexis Herman, a fellow Mobilian, to express his "concern"

about the loss of such a major employerP As Siegelman was aware, the IP shutdown occurred at a time when

other local manufacturing firms were also closing their doors, with serious consequences for local employment and the tax base. Six thousand Mobile residents worked in pulp and paper in 1992, but

10 Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs, Workforce Development Division, "Report of Plant Closing or Employee Layoff," January 1, 1999, through Feb- ruary 1, 2003, folder 6, SG 25687, Gov. Don Siegelman Administrative Files (hereafter cited as Siegelman Administrative Files), Alabama Department of Archives and History (ADAH), Montgomery; "Russell Closes Another Plant," Montgomery Advertiser, October 28, 1999, clipping in folder 4, SG 25687, Seigelman Administrative Files; "Siegelman Pledges Help for Goodyear Plant Employees," Mobile Register, February 17, 1999; "Economy Flawed, but Improving," Mobile Register, September 3, 2000;JeffRickert and Howard Wial, The State of Working Alabama: A Report and Agenda for Preserving and Growing Good jobs (Washington, D.C., 2003), 2-3 (available online at http:/ /www.workingforamerica.org/documents/ AL-

Report/ ALReport.htm). 11 "Harbingers of Harder Times?" Mobile Register, October 19, 2000. 12 Samuel L. Jones et a!. to Senator Richard Shelby, November 3, 2000, "International Pa- per: News Articles and Correspondence" folder, USW Papers; Don Siegelman to Alexis Herman, November 1, 2000, folder 6, SG 25687, Siegelman Administrative Files. This fold- er was one of several that Siegelman's office kept on plant closings across Alabama. The governor's papers do not contain a reply from Herman.

JANUARY 2006 49

fewer than fifteen hundred remained afi.er IP anrwtmet~d its dosing. Along U.S. Highway 43, which stretches north of Mobile, a variety of chemical companies were also pulling out of the area. In tht• 1960s seventeen chemical plants existed between the towns of Creola and Mcintosh, but by 2004 just seven remained. North of Mobile, neigh- boring Washington County, where many former IP employees lived, had an unemployment rate of 17 percent by July 2002, the high<~lll in the state. Although economic experts insisted that new post'i in the service sector were replacing the vanishing manufacturing jobs, most agreed that these positions did not pay as well. The experience!! of the IP workers spotlight this trend, as the vast majority of workcra ended up finding jobs that paid a fraction of what they had earned at the mill. 13

In their studies of deindustrialization, scholars have paid close at- tention to how the process affects workers, with many using oral-hill- tory interviews as a key source of material. Interviews, as Cathy N. Davidson notes, allow observers to view the "human pain" involved in job loss. 14 Social scientists have relied heavily on large numbers of interviews to trace workers' reactions to plant closures. Sociologist Ruth Milkman conducted more than 200 interviews for Farewell to the Factory and considered them the "most valuable" material that she collected. In Shutdown at Youngstown, urban-studies scholars Terry F. Buss and F. Stevens Redburn used their 146 interviews with displaced steel workers and their families to demonstrate the shortcomings of governmental assistance to laid-off workers. Other scholars have con- ducted a smaller number of more detailed interviews, using repre- sentative individuals to highlight broader themes about the impact of job loss. Historians such as Thomas Dublin and Michael Honey, for instance, employ edited life narratives to explore the personal

13 "IP Closure Could Slam Tax Base," Mobile Register, October 22, 2000, clipping in "Pa- per Companies 1972-present, International Paper-Mobile" folder (hereafter cited as II' Folder), Local History and Genealogy Vertical Files, Mobile Public Library (MPL); Chuck Spence, interview by author, Satsuma, Alabama, November 11, 2004; Alabama Department of Industrial Relations, Labor Market Information Division, "Alabama Unemployment Rates," July 2002, folder 12, SG 25685, Siegelman Administrative Files. 14 Bamberger and Davidson, Closing, 19.

50 TilE ALABAMA REVIEW

impact of deindustrialization upon workers in northeastern Pennsyl- vania and Memphis, respectively. 15

Taking its cue from such studies, this article draws on fifteen inter- views conducted in the Mobile area during the fall of 2004 and the early summer of 2005. Taken as a whole, the interviews offer vivid and close-grained insight into how the shutdown affected the work- ers involved. Of the fifteen interviewees, twelve were former hourly employees, two were former salaried supervisors, and one was a re- tired union representative. When the plant shut down, its wo'rk force was predominantly male, and Mrican Americans held just over 30 percent of the hourly posts. The interview sample reflected these pat- terns.16 Although no corporate executives agreed to be interviewed, the company's viewpoint is presented through interviews with the two shift foremen, as well as through company-sponsored anniversary histories. The company's motives also appear in its correspondence with the union and in Mobile Mill, 1929-2000, a commemorative his- tory prepared at the time of the shutdown. The book was manufac- tured from the last rolls of paper ever produced at the historic mill and was later presented to employeesP Although the study of such a recent period has its disadvantages, the four years that had passed since workers lost their jobs allowed me to piece together a record

15 Milkman, Farewell to the Factory, 199; Buss and Redburn, Shutdown at Youngstown, 7-8; Dublin, When the Mines Closed; Michael Keith Honey, Black Workers Remember: An Oral History of Segregation, Unionism, and the Freedom Struggle (Berkeley, 1999), 322-68. 16 Nine of my interviewees were white and six Mrican American, and their ages ranged from thirty-seven to seventy-two. The interviewees were recruited using community con- tacts that I had maintained since my first trip to Mobile in 1997, when I was researching the racial integration of the southern paper industry in the 1960s. Myron Calhoun, a black former supervisor, and Chuck Spence, a white former IP worker and union representative, helped me set up several interviews, while others resulted from the "snowball" method. As in all projects relying on interview data collection, the findings are influenced by the questions I asked. All interviews cited here were conducted by the author and were tape- recorded and transcribed. The tapes and transcripts are in my possession. 17 I approached IP's headquarters in Memphis with a request for their participation in this project, but no reply was forthcoming. The company produced detailed histories to mark the firm's 50th and 100th anniversaries in 1948 and 1998. Entitled International Paper Com- pany after Fifty Years, 1898-1948 (Purchase, N.Y., 1948) and Generations of Pride: A Centennial History of International Paper (Purchase, N.Y., 1998), these works are cited in subsequent notes. Mobile Mill, 1929-2000: Tradition of Excellence (Purchase, N.Y., 2000) also contains a great deal of information on the Mobile mill, its history, and the closure.

of workers' expericnn~s over a sustained period and to distinguish clearly between temporary difficulties and enduring hardships. 1"

These interviews confirm some of the findings of previous studies. Scholars have vividly documented that plant closures, in the words of Bluestone and Harrison, have a "startling" impact on workers. Fol· lowing shutdowns, workers' earnings suffer, their savings are wiped out, their mortgages are often foreclosed, and they suffer from a de- terioration of physical and mental health. As a result, displaced work- ers often feel angry and bitter about their fate. 19

The IP workers certainly experienced this range of feelings, hut their attitudes toward the closure were also informed by the mill'a unique history oflabor conflict. The Mobile mill had been unionized since the late 1930s, and the relationship between labor and manage· ment became increasingly adversarial in the 1980s. Tensions came to a head in March 1987, when IP's managers initiated a lockout of the Mobile workers that they did not lift until November 1988. During this time, the company attempted to outsource 285 maintenance jobs to a non-union contractor on a permanent basis. The move initiated a bitter legal battle between the two sides that was not fully resolved for many years. In 1995 the National Labor Relations Board found that the company's conduct had been "inherently destructive" of em- ployees' rights and ordered the firm to grant back pay to the affected employees, but two years later this ruling was overturned by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. 20 Although not directly affect·

18 0n the advantages of conducting interViews with displaced workers around fimr ye11n

after a plant closure, see John Westergaard, lain Noble, and Alan Walker, Afttr Rltdundan": The Experience of Economic Insecurity (New York, 1989), xi-xii. Nevertheless, dr.twbadu n~r­ tainly exist in the writing of contemporary labor history, especially when the econornlr landscape is constantly evolving. In late June 2005, for example, after I had finished Inter- viewing for this project, the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company namt'd Mobile as the site for a proposed $600 million aircraft engineering and a~sernbly t:enter. The move promised to bring some good-paying jobs back to Mobile, although no murr than 150 positions were to be available in the short term. The company hoped evenlllally tu employ more, but this was dependent on winning lucrative contracts in competition with Boeing. "EADs Lands!" Mobile Register, June 23, 2005. 19

See "Severe Impact Seen in Plants' Closings," New York Times, April 13, 1980, which sum· marizes the results of early research by Bluestone and Harrison. 20

Decisions and Orders of the National Labor Relations Board vol. 319, no. 150 (Washington, D.C., 1996): 1253; "Decision of D.C. Circuit in International Paper Co. v. NLRB," D11ily

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52 THE ALABAMA REVIEW

ed by the ruling on the maintenance positions, 915 production work- ers had to give up a number of concessions in order to return to their jobs in 1988. In the ensuing years, many workers continued to feel resentment toward the company because of the lockout.21

Many former IP workers believe that the shutdown was linked to the lockout. Interviewees insisted that both sides never forgot the dispute and that managers closed the mill to remind the union of its economic power. This view is problematic, especially as it is doubtful that managers would have waited more than a decade to close the plant if they had really wanted to punish the union. Even if it were true, proving such a connection would be difficult. Because closing plants to avert unionization is illegal, one would not expect to find written evidence of the company's motives under the scenario of corporate retribution against labor. The fact that workers recalled the lockout so frequently, however, is an indication of its importance in their lives. Many lost homes, cars, and other. personal possessions during the dispute, in addition to suffering personal and emotional problems. They carried the psychological damage from the lockout for many years, and it affected how they viewed the closure, making them deeply suspicious and mistrustful of the firm's motives.

While the lockout is a major cause of workers' anger, it is not the only one. Workers and supervisors both feel betrayed by IP, arguing that the company should not have closed a profitable mill with such dedicated employees. As the company admitted, the mill was a "mon- ey maker" prior to closure, but the decision was based on the age of the mill and the overcapacity that existed in the industry. Workers

Labor Report, June 30, 1997, clipping in "IP-Mobile Lockout Legal Files" box, UPIU Papers; 325 U.S. App. D.C. 142. The circuit court upheld IP's conduct on the grounds that "IP had a substantial and legitimate business justification for its actions," i.e. the outsourcing of the maintenance jobs had saved it money. The union's lawyers decided against appealing the case to the U.S. Supreme Court because they feared creating a damaging precedent that would allow companies to replace locked-out workers permanently. As a result, the affected IP workers never received back pay, and many were forced to accept production positions if they wanted to stay with the company. 21 For workers' reaction to the U.S. Court of Appeals decision, see Willie Harrell eta!. to Boyd D. Young, December 15, 1997, and Archie 0. Dixon to Boyd D. Young, January 15, 1998, both in "IP-Mobile Lockout Legal Files" box, UPIU Papers.

jANUARY 2006 !;3

also feel angry about the way IP treated them after the closure, argu- ing that they should have been given more opportunity to transfer to other mills. The interviews also vividly highlight the devastating psychological and financial impact of the closing, as many involved have struggled to readjust both financially and emotionally. 22

The port city of Mobile became an important lumber center in the antebellum period because of its location on Mobile Bay, just below the confluence of two of the state's major river systems-the Tombig- bee and the Alabama. Its significance increased in the early twentieth century when northern paper companies expanded to the warmer climes of the South. 23 Chief among them was IP, a company that was to become the world's largest paper firm. Formed by a merger of eighteen paper companies in the Northeast in 1898, IP grew steadily over the ensuing decades. By 1997, the corporate giant employed eighty-seven thousand people, with twenty-seven mills in the U.S. and operations in thirty-one countries. Twelve of these mills were located in the South, mostly concentrated along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts. Reflecting an industry that is one of the most highly unionized in the U.S., all of the southern mills were covered by a common union contract until 1984, when managers succeeded in breaking up pat- tern bargaining. The move marked the start of a more aggressive approach to labor-management relations by IP's executives, who in- sisted that increased international competition was pushing them to cut their high labor costs. 24

22 Mobile Mill, 1929-2000. In contrast, some studies have found that downsized employees view their former employers in a positive light. See Dublin, When the Mines Closed, and espe- cially Bamberger and Davidson, Closing. On page 42, for example, Bamberger and David- son note that their interviewees' tone toward White Furniture Company was "reverential." This is a marked contrast to the IP workers and is partly explained by the fact that four of the five individuals featured in Closing were associated with management. 23 John A. Eisterhold, "Mobile: Lumber Center of the Gulf Coast," Alabama Review 26 (April 1973): 83-104. For more information on Mobile's history, see Michael V. R. Thomason, ed., Mobile: The New History of Alabama's First City (Tuscaloosa, 2001), and Michael Thoma- son, ed., Down the Years: Articles on Mobile's History (Mobile, 2002). 24 "International Paper to Cut Staff by 10%," New York Times, July 9, 1997; International Paper Company after Fifty Years, 7; Generations of Pride, 199; "A Proposal oflnternational Paper Com- pany, Multiple Mill Group," November 28, 1984, in "Distributions from UPIU President Wayne Glenn" folder, "IP Distributions to Locals" box, UPIU Papers. Until1984, all of the company's southern mills were covered by one contract that was negotiated by company

54 THE ALABAMA REVIEW

Constructed in 1928-29, the Mobile mill turned its first reel of paper shortly before the Wall Street crash. The plant operated continuously through the hard times of the 1930s and soon gained a name as one of the best-paying employers on the Gulf Coast. IP shared a sprawl- ing site next to the Mobile River with Scott Paper Company, and the two mills quickly became the backbone of Mobile's economy. Mobile, explained IP vice-president E.E. Ellis Jr. in 1974, was "referred to in the industry as the paper capital of the South." 25 In the 1940s, the IP mill became the headquarters of the company's expanding Southern Kraft Division, and it was widely viewed as a flagship mill. This status was confirmed in 1957, when a $43 million upgrade turned the plant into one of the most advanced and largest in the industry. 26 In the 1960s, employment peaked at more than thirty-six hundred people producing both newsprint and business-grade paper. From the late 1970s on, both Scott and IP slowly began to lay off workers, yet the two mills remained among the most highly regarded employers in Mobile. As former IP worker Grover Stewart put it, "People thought that a man working at International Paper or Scott Paper, he had one of the best jobs in the city." 27

Mter landing such desirable jobs, most workers expected to stay in the mill until retirement. "I thought it was a job for life," explained former IP worker Darryl Dawson, who was hired in 1977. "I wasn't planning on going nowhere." Employees typically worked in the mill for their entire working lives, progressing to hold desirable, well-paid jobs. At the time of the shutdown, the average worker at the mill was forty-eight years old and earned $19.56 an hour. This far exceeded the average hourly wage in Mobile, which stood at $12.89. 28 The high wages were partly a reflection of the fact that the industry had tradi-

and union officials for the entire group. Arguing that the mills had different economic needs, after 1984 IP succeeded in persuading the union to negotiate individual contracts for each mill, a move that many members saw as a way of reducing union bargaining pow- er. 25 "Mobile Manufacturers Outlook," May 13, 1974, folder 10, SG 6893, Public Information Subject Files-County Files, ADAH. 26 Generations of Pride, 112-13, 192. 27 Mobile Mill, 1929-2000; Grover Stewart, interview by author, Mobile, November 10, 2004. 28 Darryl Dawson, interview by author, Mobile, November 9, 2004; "IP to Close Plant"; "It's

JANUARY 2006 55

tionally enjoyed healthy profitability, and they were also compcn!la• tion for having to work rotating shifts in a hot and demanding envi· ronment. 29 In addition, strong unions had helped to push up wages. In a capital-intensive industry, employers had traditionally tolerated unions and had paid workers well in order to avert costly labor dis- putes.30

For many, the money was the main reason for working at IP. In 1977, Robert Cannon quit his job at a state hospital and went to work in the mill. "I could double my money by going into the paper mill, and that's what prompted me to do it," he reflected. Hired around the same time, Arthur Williams also went to IP for "the money.'' At the time ofthe shutdown, paper-machine operators made around twenty· three dollars per hour, and with overtime they could boost their pay even more. Workers such as Grover Stewart, a fit Mrican American man in his forties, were able to clear large salaries by working long hours. In the last two years before the mill closed, Stewart recalled that he made $86,000 and $96,000 respectively. Even lower-level jobs paid around sixteen or seventeen dollars per hour, and these wages were complemented by generous benefits, including comprehensive health and dental insuranceY

While valuing their high wages, most former workers also took great pride in their jobs. This was especially the case for those who followed their fathers and grandfathers into the mill. Hired in 1976, Terry Lynd was proud to be a fourth-generation paper worker. "The main reason I went there [was] my Dad worked there," he declared. "When he retired he had forty-something years in." As Stanley Key explained, "We all had pride in that company because our dads and grandpas worked there." Workers usually got jobs after finishing high

All Over at IP," Mobile Register, December 23, 2000, clipping in folder 4, SG 25687, Si~gcl­ man Administrative Files. 29 Paper mills operate continuously, meaning that workers have to work one of three eight- hour shifts. Their shift patterns are constantly changed in order to ensure that all employ· ees work their fair share of the less popular evening and night shifts, which ran from !-\:110 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. to 7:00a.m. in the Mobile mill. 30 Herbert R. Northrup, The Negro in the Paper Industry (Philadelphia, 1969), 36. 31 Robert Cannon, interview by author, Mobile, November 9, 2000; Arthur Williams, inter• view by author, Theodore, Alabama, November 12, 2004; Stewart interview; Chuck Sptmc·~ interview.

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56 '1'111•: 1\L/\H/\M/\ REVIEW

Terry Lynd, pictured in Satsuma in 2004. (Courtesy of the author)

school, and they felt that the paper mill would enable them to provide for their families just as previous generations had. "At the time, the paper mills were the place to be," explained Kyle Spence, who started at the plant in 1984. "They were considered probably the most stable jobs around here. We didn't have to worry about the paper mills shut- ting down .... My father worked there, his father worked there, and that's the way most ofthe people there were." Across the company, it was common for several generations to have worked in the same IP mill, a theme emphasized in the corporation's 1998 glossy centennial history, Generations of Pride. 32

At the time of the closure, the IP workforce was more than 80 per- cent male. 33 Men had traditionally dominated the operating posi- tions, and women such as Monteen Lucky, who was hired in 1983, had fought hard to secure access to production jobs. "It never was a whole lot of women," explained the Mrican American worker, "never

32 Terry Lynd, interview by author, Satsuma, Alabama, November 13, 2004; Key interview; Kyle Spence, interview by author, Satsuma, Alabama, November 8, 2004; Generations of Pride, 7, 17. 33 Mobile Mill, 1929-2000.

JANUARY 2006 !S7

Monteen Lucky in her Mobile home, 2004. (Courtesy of the author)

was a whole lot of black women, and then the work was so strenuous, and then for a mother to have children, and you had to do shift work. So you had all these things against you .... You really had to make a choice; either you was going to work at this mill or you was going to be a mother to your children." Lucky recalled that she was able to hold down her job only because her oldest daughter ran the household. She also related that her male co-workers were reluctant to accept women as equals. "Even the black men would tell you it was a man's job," she explained. "It was a man's world, and we was just taking up a little space." White worker Axzelmajett recalled similar resistance from men in the mill after she got a job on the paper machine in 1983. "There weren't too many women out there," she recalled, "and they didn't want women on the paper machine, and you had to carry your own load." Like Lucky,Jett was a single mother and wanted to keep her paper-mill job in order to provide well for her family. 34

34 Monteen Lucky, interview by author, Mobile, November 11, 2004; AxzelmaJett, interview

by author, Mobile,June 20, 2005. Gilbert Courchesne confirmed that male workers resisted women coming into the mills, and he expressed agreement with the sentiment that women were not able to handle paper-mill work as well as men. Courchesne interview.

58 THE ALABAMA REVIEW

The challenging environment that Lucky and Jett described also helped to forge workers' pride. The IP mill was hot and noisy, with paper machines the length of several city blocks thundering away continuously. Workers felt that they deserved their high wages be- cause they battled away in this environment and also had to work rotating shifts that disrupted family life. "It's all got to revolve around what shift you were working," explained Terry Lynd. "Whichever par- ent is working shift work, the other one is going to run the house." Workers also derived satisfaction from making a quality product de- spite all the obstacles they faced. "I really enjoyed my job," recalled Grover Stewart, "because I was good at it. You know I know how to make some paper. "35

The paper mill also emitted a noxious smell, a consequence of the chemicals used in the pulping process, and this odor spread outside the plant. Even the smell became a source of pride to workers, who used it as a reminder of how they made their livelihood. "I used to take my kids by there when they was growing up; I'd roll the windows down," explained Gilbert Courchesne, who started in 1968. "They said, 'What you doing Daddy?' I said, 'Stick your head out of the win- dow.' They said, 'What?' I said, 'Smell that.' They said, 'That stinks.' I said, 'No, it don't. That's your bread and butter, that's a good smell that."' Courchesne's pride was typical. In Mobile, as in other paper- making communities, local people even referred to the mill's linger- ing residue as "the smell of money," a constant reminder of how they made their living. 36

The closure of the mill was part of a broader restructuring in the paper industry. Like other paper companies, IP expanded in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when paper prices rose. But as prices fell in the mid-1990s, the industry became burdened with overcapacity. Pa- per executives had traditionally resisted downsizing, but investors

35 Lynd interview; Stewart interview. This paragraph also draws on my own experience of touring the Scott Paper Company mill (now called Kimberly-Clark) in Mobile in the sum- merof2000. 36 Courchesne interview; Chuck Spence interview. The attitudes revealed by Courchesne and Spence were common in paper-mill communities. See Julius Getman, The Betrayal of Local14: Paperworkers, Politics, and Permanent Replacements (Ithaca, 1998), 25-26.

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jANUARY 2006 59

now viewed their industry as being "in desperate need of consolida· tion." 37 IP officials soon began to trim their work force, cutting 1,~00 jobs in January 1996 and 9,000 in July 1997. As a continuation of this pattern, in October 2000 IP announced the imminent closing of its mill in Mobile, along with smaller plants in Camden, Arkan11as, and Lock Haven, Pennsylvania. CEO John Dillon defended the cutl, saying that they were necessary "to win in the tough, global busine111 environment in which we operate today." He added that the deci· sion had been hard to make because "terrific, hardworking people are hurt at times like this." 38 In order to reduce overcapacity, IP alao began to take over smaller paper companies and then cut produc· tion. In April1999 the firm purchased Union Camp Corporation and promptly laid off 1,600 employees. In spring 2000, IP also concluded a deal to buy Champion International Corporation, a move that hu- tened the closure of the Mobile plant. By purchasing Union Camp and Champion, IP acquired thirty-four extra paper mills, and many of them manufactured the same product. 39

Once they lost their jobs, the vast majority of the IP workers strug- gled to find work that paid as well. Robert Cannon, a twenty-three year veteran of paper making, got work performing air-conditioning maintenance at a local hospital, but he earned only two-thirds of his mill salary. Gilbert Courchesne had worked in the mill for more than thirty years and earned $23.59 per hour when the plant closed. Like many operators, Courchesne was qualified only to make paper, and he ended up driving a school bus for the city. "Between my school- bus pay and the little old package they gave me when I retired, I ain't making half of what I made when I worked at the mill, and none of the benefits," he explained. Terry Lynd went from earning $24 per

37 "Another Big Paper Company Acquisition," New York Times, February 23, 2000; "lnterna· tiona! Paper to Buy Union Camp in a $5 Billion Deal," New York Times, November 25, 199H (quotation). 38 "Industrial Anchor in Mobile Closing Next Month," Associated Press and Local Wirl', November 17, 2000, http:/ /www.lexisnexis.com/; "International Paper to Eliminate 1,300 Jobs," New York Times, January 4, 1996; "International Paper to Cut Staff by 10%." 39 "International Paper in Deal For Purchase of Champion," New York Times, May 13, 2000; "IP To Close Plant"; Dick Blin to Gary Cook et a!., November 20, 2000, "International Pa- per: News Articles and Correspondence" folder, USW Papers.

60 THJ<: ALABAMA REVIEW

hour to just $8 per hour after he got a job mowing grass and doing re- pair work for the city of Satsuma, located just north of Mobile. Several workers struggled to make even this much; former service operator Henry Kennedy, for instance, went from earning over $17 per hour down to just $5.50. Others endured spells of unemployment. Fred Carter, another former paper-machine operator, was out of work for a year, and Arthur Williams experienced extended periods of unem- ployment that were exacerbated by health problems. 40

Even workers who had stayed in the paper industry no longer made as much as they previously did because they had to take lower-level jobs in other mills. Kyle Spence's earnings went from $22 to $12 per hour when he started at Mobile Paperboard, a local recycling mill. "Most of us took about a 40 to 50 percent cut in pay whenever we took our new jobs," he commented. One of a small number of workers who managed to transfer to another IP mill, Darryl Dawson earned $23.75 in Mobile but had to start out "from the bottom" at the firm's mill in Pensacola, where he began at $9.50 per hour but later pro- gressed to higher-paying positions. 41

The loss of their jobs caused both financial and emotional prob- lems for workers. Many described how these problems had affected them and their former colleagues. "Marriages broke up, and people lost homes, lost cars," recalled Fred Carter, an Mrican American in his forties. 42 The financial impact of the closing was severe, especially as many workers needed their wages to make credit payments. Al- though they received a severance package that gave them a lump- sum payment that was linked to their years of service, most found this support sufficient for no more than a few months. 43 "Everybody had car notes, everybody had all kind of credit cards, just everything,"

4° Cannon interview; Courchesne interview; Lynd interview; Henry Kennedy, interview by author, Mobile, November 13, 2004; Carter interview; Williams interview. 41 Kyle Spence interview; Dawson interview. 42 Carter interview. 43 The severance payment was one-and-a-half times a worker's weekly vacation pay for the previous year, multiplied by their years of service. Vacation pay was 2 percent of gross annual pay per week. Therefore, if a worker's vacation pay for the year 2000 was $1,000, their severance pay would be $1,500 multiplied by their years of service. See "2000 Effects Bargaining due to the Indefinite Closure of the Mobile Mill," November 6, 2000, "Interna- tional Paper: News Articles and Correspondence" folder, USW Papers.

JANUARY 200f\ 61

explained Montet~n Lucky. "So many of us had to file bankruptcy and stuff, so many of us. I had just got a new car, and our severance pay that they were going to give us, it wasn't enough to take care of a car note and a house note too .... So I had to let my car go." Grover Stewart also lost his new car after the plant closed. "They repossessed my car I had, but I kept a living, putting food on the table," he com· mented. "I had an old truck, my wife had to drive it to her job, 11he didn't like that." Stanley Key lost his house because of the closure and moved to his parents' home to help make ends meet. Four years later, he was still coming to terms with the mill's closure.44

The financial impact on the broader community was also appar- ent. In 2004 either side of Highway 43, the main route to the former mill site, was littered with pawn shops and cash advance facilities, and the adjoining neighborhoods were more rundown. Prior to the closure, the highway had been lined with a greater number and vari· ety of retail stores. "It wasn'tjust the people at IP it hurt; everybody around it [suffered]," explained Darryl Downey, "anybody that had any dealings with the Mobile mill." "It affected the economy here in

Mobile so badly," added Monteen Lucky. 45

In Mobile as a whole, most residents shared workers' worries about the decline of the local manufacturing base. Mobile Register columnist Quin Hillyer spoke for many, calling the closing "a huge economic blow to the area." A minority of residents were glad to see the closing of the paper mill, having blamed it for pollution problems for many years. Former workers lashed out at those who had criticized the mill. "I hope all of you people who complained about the pollution from the paper mill will be happy now," said one. "There are those of us who will be on unemployment and welfare."46 Most residents regret· ted the mill's closure, however, especially considering that its envi· ronmental record had clearly improved over the years. As the &p;i.fter found, the plant had caused environmental problems in the past,

44 Lucky interview; Stewart interview; Key interview. 45 Darryl Downey, interview by author, Satsuma, Alabama, November 10, 2004; Lucky in· terview. This paragraph also draws on my experience of driving up and down Highway 4~ since my first visit to Mobile in 1997. 46 "As IP Leaves Town, What Can Mobile Get out of Dodge?" Mobile Register, October lW, 2000; "Sound Off," Mobile Register, October 20, 2000.

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62 T H ~: A L A B A M A R E V I E W

but by 2000 it was only "a minor contributor to the area's pollution problems." Although most residents mourned the loss of good-pay- ingjobs, a few unidentified callers used "Sound Off," an anonymous phone line to the Mobile Register, to claim that the IP workers were overpaid and that this had helped to put the firm out of businessY

For a few interviewees, the emotional damage caused by the plant closure was striking. The case of Stanley Key, who started working at the mill in 1984, illustrates the kinds of problems that worl~ers could suffer when they lost their jobs. A slim, gray-haired man in his early forties, Key found that the loss of his job led to the break-up of his marriage. "It was my fault because I didn't know how to handle losing my job," he admitted. "At the time my wife didn't understand what I was going through. As a matter of fact, it caused so much in the family that we got a divorce after fifteen years of marriage. Compa- nies today don't realize the impact, what it does to your family." Key compared losing his job to dealing with bereavement. "Everybody handles a death differently," he explained. "On my part I try to get the grief out right away, and I don't know how to deal with it. That's what I tried to explain to my wife ... that this was my pride. I had pride that I'd bring a pay check home and give it to my family. When that place went away, anger come in and different things come in." Arthur Williams also described how the closure led to the break-up of his marriage and to health problems that made him unable to work. "The way they did, it wasn't right," he recalled. "Because of all this shit, you worried about stuff and it trickled down to your family .... We wasn't ready for it. ... I reckon that's what caused my marriage to break up." 48

Some former IP workers linked the mill's closure to an increase in drinking and drug use among their former colleagues. "It turned a lot of our men to use drugs and drink," asserted Monteen Lucky. "These are things not what people told me, these are things that I've seen myself, happen to my friends, guys that I've worked with. It was just terrible .... These are good, hardworking men, worked all their

47 "Environmental Boon?: Not Really," Mobile Register, October 22, 2000, clipping in IP Fold- er, MPL; "Sound Off," Mobile Register, October 20, 21, 2000. 48 Key interview; Williams interview.

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.J A N ll A R V 2 0 0 6 6S

life, and then they wt•n.• reduced to standing on the corner drinking wine and stufl'. It was just devastating." Two former IP workers also killed themselves shortly after the mill closed, and in both cases the plant closure played a major role. As Stanley Key related, "I've got a friend, he started his own lawn business. He worked at Interna- tional Paper Company and he shot himself. ... It was because of stufl' like that, because people change when life changes. When your job changes, everything changes." Darryl Dawson admitted that he had experienced problems sleeping since the mill shut and had sought counseling to try to cope. "I'm on five or six different medication11 and I can't sleep at night, dreaming about the paper mill or atuff that happened to me in the service," he recalled. "I just stay up in the house and keep myself isolated." Grover Stewart reported that hla daughter, a nurse at Mobile Infirmary, had dealt with several cases of former IP workers who had been admitted in a "suicidal" state "be- cause of the mill shutting down." 49

Stanley Key was not alone in using the death metaphor to describe the experience of losing his job. Other workers expressed feelings of loss, explaining that they had spent so much time at the mill with their co-workers that they found it hard to adjust when the plant suddenly closed. "I miss the people," admitted Mrican American worker Fred Carter, "because most of them, you know when they got married, you know when their first kid was born. It's just like a family. You've been knowing them people for twenty years, you know what I'm saying. I don't care if they're black, white, blue, green, you know them." Oth- ers also used the family metaphor, stressing that they spent more of their waking hours with their colleagues at the paper mill than they did their own relatives. "I knew them people better than I did my family because I was with them more," asserted Gilbert Courchesne. "I had a lot of friends, knowing that I wasn't going to see them no more, worked with them all my life .... It wasn't a very good feeling

49 Lucky interview; Key interview; Dawson interview; Stewart interview. On the increaaed frequency of suicides associated with deindustrialization, see "Severe Impact Seen in Plant Closings," as well as "Social Cost Analysis of the Impact of the Closing of Internatiomtl Paper and Rohm and Hass in Moss Point, Mississippi" (study by the Center for Labor and Community Research, Chicago, 2001).

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64 T II E A I. A I\ A M A R E V I E W

at all." One of Courchesne's closest friends, Terry Lynd, admitted to sitting on the couch in tears after he realized that he would no longer see his co-workers. "This is people that I'd worked with for twenty- four years of my life," he explained. "Emotionally, you get to thinking about it .... I sat there and cried like a baby." Former supervisor Dar- ryl Downey recalled that many workers broke down when the huge paper machines finally went quiet. "There was a lot of tears shedded at that time," he recalled. "I would say probably 90 percent of it was the fact that they were losing part of their family." 50 '

With the former IP workers generally unable to find comparable jobs, many wives were forced to seek work. Men who had always taken pride in being able to provide for their families found it difficult to accept this change. Kyle Spence found that his income was cut in half after he lost his job, pushing his wife to take a full-time job at a local car-rental company. "As a man in general," he reflected, "where you married this woman and you told her that 'I will take care of you.' Okay, well now you're not in a position where you can say 'I'll take care of you,' it's 'You've got to help now. You've got to go out and earn a living again, where before you didn't have to.' As bad as it is to say it, it almost makes you feel like you're less of a man because you're not able to take care of your family the way you know you should be able to, and it does tend to tick you off. There's a lot of built-up anger and resentment at IP." Other male workers whose wives were forced to work after the closure also disliked the change. "I always felt like I should be the provider," asserted Robert Cannon. "I hate that she had to [work]." "I minded," added Henry Kennedy, "but I knew that I needed her help, so I had to kind of like bite the bullet and say, 'I know it's a strain on her, her working full-time,' which she probably don't want to do, but she knows she's got to do it to help to make ends meet. I thought about it a whole lot, that I wished that she didn't have to." 51

The plant closure had a particularly harsh impact on Mrican American workers. Blacks had fought hard to secure good-paying paper-mill jobs, and the plant closed soon after they began to make

5° Key interview; Carter interview; Courchesne interview; Lynd interview; Downey inter- view. 51 Kyle Spence interview; Cannon interview; Kennedy interview.

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JANliARY 2006 65

real progress. Until the HJ()Os, African Americans throughout tht' southern paper industry had been confined to a small nurnbt~r of menial jobs. Lines of promotion were segregated, preventing blacks from moving into the higher-paying production positions. The situation slowly began to change after the 1964 Civil Rights Act pru· hibited discrimination in employment and enabled black worken across the South to bring lawsuits to redress discrimination. In I 97 I, Mrican Americans at the Mobile plant still earned around 15 percent less than whites and complained that whites were reluctant to accept them in higher-paying jobs. Frustrated with the slow pace of change, blacks filed a class action suit to address their complaints. In I 975, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals decided the case in favor of the plaintiffs, who received improved rights to bid on formerly "white" jobs. 52

IP subsequently increased its efforts to integrate jobs, but many white workers continued to fight change. "They really didn't want us there on the machines," asserted Arthur Williams, who became a paper-machine operator in the early 1980s. "They didn't want to really train us on the job. I learned most of my stuff looking over people's shoulders." Hired in 1973, Grover Stewart added that "there was some prejudice problems there. I had a guy that called me a nigger one time .... Those older guys, I guess they had it instilled in them, so it came out at times." By 1998, more than 25 percent of southern paper workers were Mrican American, up from 15 pcrct~nt in 1966. At the Mobile plant, blacks were well represented in the pa· per-machine jobs, but penetrating supervisory jobs proved especially difficult. At the time of the shutdown, the plant employed only three black shift supervisors, and two of these had been promoted only after complaints from Mrican American employees. 53

52 For an overview of the history of segregation in the southern paper industry, see Northrup, Negro in the Paper Industry, 31-46; Timothy]. Minchin, The Color of Work: The Struggle firr Civil Rights in the Southern Paper Industry, 1945-1980 (Chapel Hill, 2001), 7-9. The inf(>rmatiun about the civil rights case in Mobile comes from "Average Hourly Rates by Dcpartmrnt and Race," December 31, 1971, Plaintiffs' Exhibit 3, Stevenson et al. v. Internationall'a/Jiff' Company, Case No. 6647-71-T, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama, National Archives Southeast Region, Atlanta. The appeals court ruling is publisht'd at516 F2d 103 (5th Circuit, 1975). 53 Minchin, Color of Work, 155-58, 213-14; Williams interview; Stewart interview; Calhoun interview; Carter interview.

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66 TilE AI.ABAMA REVIEW

For blacks, as for whites, high wages compensated for the negative aspects of working at IP. By the time the plant closed, there were very few jobs in Mobile where blacks could earn as much as they did at IP. Once the plant shut its doors, idled black workers soon realized how precious their mill jobs had been. Some, including Henry Ken- nedy and Arthur Williams, were even forced to file for bankruptcy. "Whites, they probably found jobs more easily," explained Williams, a heavily built man in his late forties. "If they cut jobs, it does affect the black community more." Monteen Lucky added, "It affected the black community more so than it affected the whites, because in the white community, the people had friends. We're in Mobile, Alabama, in the South, and most of the whites had friends that they could put them on somewhere and give them a job. The average black man could not even feed his family. It caused a lot of frustration, it caused a lot of divorces. I know a lot of my friends separated."54

Myron Calhoun, one of the three Mrican American supervisors at the mill, agreed that the closing had hit the black community par- ticularly hard. "That phrase you always hear, 'last hired, first fired,"' he reflected, "it's true." Although the black supervisors had come up through the ranks, Calhoun charged that the white supervisors had greater opportunities to transfer to other IP mills. When the mill closed, Calhoun left IP to take a job as an operator at a local chemical plant. To some degree, the announcement of the closure exacerbat- ed racial divisions in the plant. "When they did tell us that they were going to close it down," related Terry Lynd, "the mill kind of split that way .... The black people hung around the black people more than they did [whites]." Nevertheless, some whites realized that their M- rican American co-workers had been hit hard by the closure. Gilbert Courchesne, for example, acknowledged that blacks "had it rougher and harder finding jobs" after the mill closed. 55

Ultimately, the plant closure hurt both black and white communi- ties, and their fates were strikingly similar in many respects. As Fred

54 Williams interview; Lucky interview. For an important study which finds that blacks were hit particularly hard by plant closures, see Alfred]. Field Jr. and William R. Winfrey, 'job Displacement and Reemployment in North Carolina: The Relative Experience of the Black Worker," Review of Black Political Economy 25 (Winter 1997): 57-75. 55 Calhoun interview; Lynd interview; Courchesne interview.

JANUARY 2000 67

Carter succinctly put it, "it affect[ed] everybody." Both black and white workers struggled to find comparable jobs, and many experi- enced similar emotional and psychological problems. Regardless of race, many former IP workers were also angry with the company. Af· rican American Darryl Dawson thought IP was "a low-down company to work for," while white worker Kyle Spence termed the firm's man· agers "a bunch of cutthroat assholes."56

This anger was rooted in several sources. Former employees were angry at IP's decision to close the mill, with most feeling betrayed by the firm. 57 In particular, workers recalled that they had been rea!Jo sured that their jobs were safe shortly before managers pulled the plug. In june 1998, two years before the closure, mill manager Walter Bronson responded to speculation about the long-term viabilil)' of older plants such as Mobile by commenting publicly that "the mill ia secure. It is an excellent part of the country to do business." Shortly afterward, CEO John Dillon visited the Mobile plant and reiterated his subordinate's message. Workers recalled these assurances andre- membered that they had taken them to heart, toiling to "turn the mill around." They were consequently surprised by the sudden an· nouncement of the closure. "I was angry because of how they did it," recalled Arthur Williams. "Don't tell us one minute, 'you're do- ing good, y'all the best' and all this, and then they turn around and cut your throat. They don't realize, you've got family and all that de· pending on you." Some employees had bought new cars and houses in the wake of management's assurances, and the company's timing angered them. "When I first heard the news, my mind was a whirl because ... I had just bought this house, I had just got another car," recalled Henry Kennedy. "I was thinking that, 'Wow, where am I go- ing to find another job around Mobile to pay my house note, pay my car note?' I was hurt and I was scared at the same time."58

Most workers felt that company officials did not properly explain their actions, and four years later many were still searching for an·

56 Carter interview; Dawson interview; Kyle Spence interview. 57 Local union president Wayne Fisher, interview by author, Creola, Alabama, June 21, 2005. 58 "Survival Tactics," Mobile Register, June 14, 1998, clipping in IP Folder, MPL; Williams interview; Kennedy interview.

68 T II E ALABAMA REVIEW

swers. "I just don't know why they shut it down," declared Grover Stewart, "because I thought we was making a profit." Company of- ficials admitted that workers had significantly improved the profit- ability of the mill since 1998, when four hundred jobs had been cut in an effort to keep the mill competitive. In a letter to his employees, Bronson himself called the company's decision to shut the mill "dis- appointing." "You should be very proud of the many extraordinary accomplishments we made in turning the mill around," he ,noted. These accomplishments included reducing manufacturing costs by 30 percent, thereby "turning a big money loser for the corporation into a money maker." In 2000, the mill made over $35 million.59 Bronson and local union leaders together protested the decision to close the mill. "During this difficult time," they wrote in an October 2000 letter to CEO John Dillon, "we ask that you consider the progress we have made. We don't want anyone to look at Mobile as a failure." Dillon refused to change his mind, however, and he received accolades from within the broader corporate community. Shortly after announcing the closures, Dillon was named "Global CEO of the Year" by members of the financial community who follow the paper industry. "Hats off to Mr. Dillon," noted one, "for his role in consolidation in the pa- per/forest products industry .... It will ultimately reward IP's patient shareholders." Workers, however, were left fuming. As Anthony Glen Caten wrote to the Mobile Register, "This closure is motivated by one motive: greed .... Why else would you shut down a money-making operation?"60

Many workers believed that IP gave no consideration to their years of dedication to the company. They emphasized the sacrifices they had made to arrive at work at unsociable times, as they knew that their "buddy" on the previous shift would have to work longer if they did not. "They didn't understand that Key went to work with a 102

59 Stewart interview; Bronson quoted in Mobile Mill, 1929-2000; "Mobile International Pa- per Workers Say Goodbye to Facility," PACEsetter,January /February 2001, 13. PACEsetterwas the journal of the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical, and Energy Workers International Union, now part of the USW. 60 Walter Bronson eta!. to John Dillon, October 26, 2000, and Karen Nesbitt to Boyd Young, November 8, 2000, both in "International Paper: News Articles and Correspondence" fold- er, USW Papers; Anthony Glen Caten to the editor, Mobile Register, October 28, 2000.

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JANUARY 2006 69

fever for twenty years, and Key ain't missed but five days of work," fumed Stanley Key. "When they shut the door, they didn't give Key that thing oflooking in his files and saying that he's never been wrote up, he's never been disciplined, he's the one that gave a hundred percent. They didn't even take that into consideration." Workers like Key also felt that their past performance should have enabled them to transfer to other mills as openings occurred. Instead, IP officials allowed workers to transfer only if they could pass a basic education test in subjects such as English and algebra. 51

Like Terry Lynd, most saw the test as a "slap in the face." "You would have to take a test, see if you can pass this test to work in a paper mill after you've been working in one for twenty-five years," he explained. Gilbert Courchesne, who tried to transfer to IP's mill in Selma, was similarly bemused and angered by the test requirement. "They shut us down, I want to transfer to a mill. They said, 'Well, you have to take a test.' Well I took this test. This is all algebra and stuff I ain't seen since I've been in high school. Naturally, I didn't pass the test. They told me I wasn't qualified, and here I was qualified to run this paper machine for them for thirty-something years, but I wasn't qualified to get a laborer's job and start off in another mill." The experience had left the veteran paper maker with "nothing but bad feelings" for his former employer. "I feel like I was just cast away and cast out," he declared. 52

Former workers also believed that the plant closure was revenge for the way that workers had fought the firm during the bitter lock· out of 1987-88. Although membership was not compulsory, dose to 100 percent of workers belonged to the United Paperworkers Inter- national Union (UPIU), and the Mobile group had a reputation for militancy. 63 In March 1987, this reputation was confirmed when IP

61 "Mobile International Paper Workers Say Goodbye," 13; Key intt'rview. 62 Key interview; Lynd interview; Courchesne interview. 63 Fisher interview. The UPIU was formed in 1972 and existed until IIHI11, whl!n 1 merpr with the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers' Union led to tht' <:re~ttlon nl' lhl! Pllpt!l\ Aa. lied-Industrial, Chemical, and Energy Workers Internationalllnlon (PACK) (101! noll II), In early 2005, a further merger of PACE with the United Steelworkei'IIC'd 10 the c....- fl the current USW, mentioned in note 1. UPIU was the union at thC' Mohllt pl1n111 lt\t illl of the lockout, and its successor PACE was the union when the mill dmcod,

70 THE ALABAMA REVIEW

locked out the Mobile workers after they refused to agree to a range of concessions, including giving up premium pay for working on Sundays and allowing managers to contract out maintenance work. The move triggered a bitter battle between IP and the UPIU. When workers at three other IP mills struck in support of their Mobile col- leagues, executives hired more than twenty-two hundred permanent replacements at those plants. 64

Unlike their striking colleagues, in October 1988 the ,Mobile workers eventually got their jobs back, but many felt that managers had hoped they would strike so they could then hire new employees. The bitterness generated by the dispute was all too apparent in negotiations, with lead union negotiator Donald Langham calling the company "a bunch of thieving bastards" and "the Sons of a Bitches of the Industry." Workers remained angry that the company had locked them out for so long, especially as most had struggled to find good- paying work during the dispute. Many alleged that IP officials had pressured local industrialists not to hire their staff during the lockout. Workers were also angry that they lost Sunday premium pay and that they ended up with no back pay for the time they were locked out. 65

Many workers felt that IP's managers had never forgotten the lock- out and were punishing workers for taking a stand. As Grover Stewart explained, "because we didn't accept the contract during the lockout ... that's another reason why they shut it down, getting back at us." "I believe that they was going to show us one way or another that they could take that plant out of there," added Stanley Key. Former union representative Chuck Spence was also convinced that manag- ers had shut the mill for this reason. Because IP had locked out the workers, he explained, the company had been unable to hire perma- nent replacements, and its temporary workforce was widely viewed

64 The company's position in the dispute is summarized well in "Time is Running Short:

A Message From International Paper Company," Mobile Register, March 18, 1987. For the union's position, see "An Unfair Contract Offer," Mobile Register, March 6, 1987. Both clip- pings are in IP Folder, MPL. For a broader account of the 1987-88 conflict between IP and the UPIU, see Getman, Betrayal of Local14. 65

Minutes of 1987 Labor Negotiations, March 2, 1987, p. 2, and March 13, 1987, p. 3 (quo- tations), both in "IP-Mobile Lockout Legal Files" box, UPIU Papers; Calhoun interview; "Decision of D.C. Circuit"; Harrell eta!. to Young, December 15, 1997.

'•c;;;q _ u .. _Q . . .\J•.F ~ ,....,, - :--~~~·'1::::""'~1-..~".';j"f•~, JANUARY 2006 71

as inefficient: "I'll go to my grave with the belief in my mind that the reason they shut the mill down was to teach the union a lesson abuut beating them in that lockout. Because that cost International Paper Company hundreds of millions of dollars. They never made any pa· per that they could sell. They had warehouses full of rejected paper that the scabs made."66

The labor-management relationship was permanently transformed by the lengthy dispute. "There was still a lot of animosity after the lockout," claimed Kyle Spence. "We didn't forget and they didn't forget." Former supervisor Myron Calhoun agreed that the working environment was never the same after 1988. "There are people who once adored the company before the lockout, [but afterward] they hated it," he admitted. "But it was basically the only work they knew for years, so they stayed on there and tried to endure it." IP officials never publicly linked the closure to the lockout, although the com· pany's conduct in the 1980s had established its desire to take on the union. In 1992, CEO John Georges had also admitted that his firm "would prefer operating non-union." Calhoun linked the shutdown to the fact that the Mobile mill was "one of the few plants that they'd actually had some resistance out of as far as union workers." This interpretation, however, overlooks the fact that IP's managers had a reasonably stable relationship with the union after the dispute, as well as the fact that the firm also closed non-union mills as part of its downsizing initiatives. 57

Even after the closure, some workers hoped that the mill might eventually be restarted, especially as IP officials let the plant stand untouched for more than a year. Mter this, however, the firm's top

66 Stewart interview; Key interview; Chuck Spence interview. Unlike during a strike, in a lockout situation companies can hire only temporary replacements. See Philip Mattera to Corporate Campaign, November 14, 1988, "Replacement Workers" folder, UPIU Papen; and Getman, Betrayal of Local 14, 226. 67 Kyle Spence interview; Calhoun interview; "Union-Management Animosity Flares at. In· ternational Paper's Annual Meeting," May 12, 1992 (UPIU press release), "IPC Mobile, AL NLRB Charges and Correspondence" folder, "IP-Mobile Lockout Legal Files" box, UPllJ Papers. Several interviews I conducted in 1998 revealed IP workers' lingering bitterness from the lockout. Worker Gary Huff, for example, recalled that "I think that they was trying to show us that they could break the union .... It changed my attitude towards IP big time." Gary Huff, interview by author, Creola, Alabama, July 2, 1998.

72 T II E A L A B A M A R ~: V I E W

executives authorized the demolition ofthe mill without offering any public explanation of their actions. As IP spokesperson Karen Harris commented after the closure, the company was determined that the mill would not produce paper "for anyone else." Demolition offered the best way of ensuring that the Mobile mill would never operate again. 68

The flattening of the mill wiped out any chance that the company might restart operations. "That left no hope," explained Stanley Key. "Even though they closed it, I figured that maybe one day they would reopen it back up, and when they bulldozered it, it was no hope then." Withip a few months, the site was empty and desolate, the way it has remained to this day. Weeds now grow up where the paper machines once stood, and passersby can see clear across to the Mobile River. While workers generally avoided passing the old site, when they did so they often found it a harrowing experience. It was strange to see nothing in a place where they had spent so many hours and created so many memories. "This past year I rode by there and it did, it about broke my heart to see that, but you can't really say anything about it," noted Kyle Spence. "There's a lot of memories of good times and bad times, but they're just ghosts out there now."69

Although many of the former IP workers suffered emotionally and financially from the mill's closure, a few experienced positive results from the transition. Darryl Downey explained that his mill job had been very stressful, especially because upper-level management had tried to influence how he treated his crew. When the mill closed, Downey set up a successful home-repair company and enjoyed the freedom to run his own business. "I actually felt like I had a ton of bricks lifted off me," he asserted. "The worst part of my job was deal- ing with upper management." Terry Lynd, while admitting that he missed his mill salary, claimed that he had "got tired" of working odd

68 "Mobile Mill Still in Limbo," Mobile Register, October 14, 2001. clipping in IP Folder, MPL. Neighboring Scott Paper Company (now Kimberly-Clark following a 1995 merger) continues to operate in Mobile, but it no longer has a pulp milL See "New Year Could Bring Stability to Paper Industry," Mobile Register, December 26, 1999, clipping in "Paper and Pa- permaking-Alabama" folder, Local History and Genealogy Vertical Files, MPL. 69 Key interview; Kyle Spence interview.

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.JANUARY 2006 7~

Chuck Spence at the former IP site, November 2004. The disused eln· ployees' parking lot lies beyond the gate. (Courtesy of the author)

hours, which took a toll on his family life. He enjoyed his new job in local government, which only required him to work "straight day!l." Workers' lingering anger with IP also meant that some were keen not to stay with the firm. "I really didn't want to work for IP anymore, after the way they did everybody," explained Kyle Spence.70

Four years after the shutdown, former IP employees took a keen interest in the decline oflocal manufacturing industries. The closure of the IP mill is in fact clearly part of the broader decline of manu- facturing industry in the U.S. In 1950, half of the American work force was employed in the manufacturing sector, but in 200ljust 12 percent were. As more and more firms have moved production over- seas, even American emblems such as Levi's jeans and Bass shot~s are now made abroad. The growth of the service sector has ensured that unemployment rates across the U.S. have generally remained low, yet

70 Downey interview; Lynd interview; Cannon interview; Kyle Spence intervit'w; Calhoun

interview.

74 THE ALABAMA REVIEW

for workers who lose stable manufacturing jobs this has been little consolation. Like the IP group, many displaced manufacturing work- ers have worked in one job since high school, making them poorly qualified for new careers. National or state unemployment figures can also gloss over smaller pockets of unemployment caused by plant closures. 71

The experience of the IP group supports conclusions reached in other studies. Barry Bluestone's work has shown that laid-ofhyorkers in the steel and auto industries were at an earnings disadvantage "for years to come." In addition, Bluestone has linked plant closures with higher rates of stress and psychological problems. Daniel Nelson's study of workers in the Midwest found that only a small minority of those who lost their jobs in the 1980s were able to secure comparable positions. Most took large pay cuts or endured long spells of unem- ployment. Scholars have frequently linked long-term unemployment with increased levels of alcoholism, family violence, and crime. Exam- ining the social consequences of unemployment, sociologist Harvey Brenner has even correlated a 1 percent increase in the unemploy- ment rate, sustained over six years, with approximately 37,000 total deaths, 920 suicides, 650 homicides, 4,200 admissions to state mental hospitals, and 500 deaths from cirrhosis of the liver. 72

As Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb have noted, losing a job is so traumatic because "social legitimacy in capitalist society comes primarily from what a person produces." For the predominantly male IP workers, their well-paid jobs gave them standing in the community

71 Calhoun interview; Bamberger and Davidson, Closing, 168; Barry Bluestone, "Foreword,"

in Cowie and Heathcott, eds., Beyond the Ruins, xii; "An American Emblem's Presence Fades," Washington Post, February 23, 1 999; "Firm Uproots a Tradition, Unsettles a Town," Washington Post, February 13, 1998. 72 Barry Bluestone, "Deindustrialization and Unemployment in America," in Paul D. Stau- dohar and Holly E. Brown, eds., Deindustrialization and Plant Closure (Lexington, Mass., 1987), 3-15 (quotation on p. 5); Nelson, Farm and Factory, 191. Brenner's findings are pre- sented in Bluestone, "Deindustrialization and Unemployment," 6-7, and originally pub- lished in Joint Economic Committee, "Estimating the Social Costs of National Economic Policy: Implications for Mental and Physical Health, and Criminal Aggression," study pre- pared by Harvey Brenner, paper no. 5 in Achieving the Goals of the Employment Act of 1946: Thirtieth Anniversary Review, vol. 1, Employment, 94th Cong., 2d sess., 1 976,Joint Committee Print, 5-6.

JANUARY 2006

and at home, and they took pride in being able to proviclt~ lbr their families and allow their wives to be homemakers. Once this was taken away, workers felt angry and worthless, and this placed an enormou11 strain on their health and their personal relationships. They were not the only workers to compare the wrenching experience to death. Dis- placed furniture workers interviewed by Bill Bamberger and Cathy N. Davidson expressed similar feelings. "I stayed there and saw the furniture move on out," reflected one. "I even helped put the ma- chinery on skids and helped skid it out the back door. It was like part of you dying." 73

Like Bamberger and Davidson's fine study of a plant closing in Mebane, North Carolina, above all the Mobile story reminds us that deindustrialization has not affected just the Northeast or Midwe11t. While concentrating largely on the traditional Rust Belt, Bluestone and Harrison's pioneering work noted that southern workers hacl their share of plant closures to contend with. Although some high· profile firms have relocated to the Sun Belt in recent years, the col- lapse of traditional industries such as textiles and furniture has hit the region hard. Between 1990 and 2004, the number of workefll employed in textile manufacturing, previously the South's largest in· dustry, fell from 492,000 to 239,000. Historians and social scientistll are beginning to realize that deindustrialization cannot be dismissed as a regional phenomenon, yet much remains to be learned about the impact of factory closings on southern communities. 74

As was the case in Mobile, plant closures as a whole have also had a particularly harsh impact on Mrican American communities. Blacks are more concentrated in urban areas, where the number of plant closings has been particularly high, and they are less likely to live in suburban areas where job opportunities are opening up. Black com- munities in other southern cities, particularly Memphis and Binning-

73 Richard Sennett and jonathan Cobb, The Hidden Injuries of Class (New York, 1972), 267- 68; Bamberger and Davidson, Closing, 135 (quotation), 168. 74 Bluestone and Harrison, Deindustrialization of America, 39-40; Statistical Abstract, tahlt• 97!1. The stories of southern textile workers who have lost their jobs over the last ten year~ ~till largely remain to be told. For an illustrative press account, see "Empty Mills Burden Caro- linas," Charlotte Observer, July 22, 2002.

76 THE ALABAMA REVIEW

ham, have been hit hard by the decline of traditional industry. There was a bitter irony in the fact that industrial plants started to close just as Mrican Americans were finally gaining access to the better-paying jobs. "When I first went over there, wasn't a black operator on the floor anywhere, not one," recalled Fred Carter. "The only time we move up, they decide to close it down .... As long as all the white guys was operators, it was fine." 75

Four years after the closure, some former IP workers had lost their jobs again. Stanley Key was one of more than fifty former IF work- ers who secured positions at Bredero-Shaw, a pipe-coating plant that opened in nearby Theodore in 2001. Mter just three years of op- eration, the plant closed, with company officials blaming weak lo- cal demand for pipe-coating services. 76 In 2004 Henry Kennedy lost his position with a pharmaceutical company, his second job since IP. Hardened by their experiences, Key and Kennedy had become ac- ceptant of job loss. ''I'm going to put in some applications," reflected Kennedy in the fall of 2004. "A lady told me at work that if I want to I could be in touch with her; her son-in-law, he manages a couple of Waffle Houses. She said if I could stand the cooking or whatever, that she'd put in a good word for me." It was a big change from the days when Kennedy had earned over seventeen dollars per hour and had been able to take his family on two-week vacations. ''You couldn't ask for it to be no better than what it was in the latter years," he com- mented in looking back at his work at IP. 77

By 2004, most former IP workers took nothing for granted. Like other laid-off workers, they changed their economic behaviour after the experience, saving more and buying little or nothing on credit. Although most were lifelong Mobile residents, some were consider- ing relocating to other cities. 78 Above all, workers' feeling that they

7-"Bluestone and Harrison, Deindustrialization of America, 54-55; Honey, Black Workers, 322- 26, 359-64; David R. Goldfield, Black, 'White, and Southern: Race Relations and Southern Cul- ture, 1940 to the Present (Baton Rouge, 1990), 204; Carter interview. 76 Key interview; Lucky interview; "Plant Closing: 450 Jobs Lost," Mobile Register, November 4, 2004. 77 Key interview; Kennedy interview; Carter interview. 78 Bamberger and Davidson, Closing, 166-71; Lucky interview; Chuck Spence interview; Cannon interview.

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JANUARY 2006 "'"'

could stay on any job for life had been shattered. "It taught me if you've got a job working, making good money, he thankful, hecau11e things change real quick," explained Arthur Williams. "For a long· term job, I don't think too many people [are] looking at that happen· ing too much around here, because you never know when companie11 [are] going to go, move, shut down." "I know it ain't nothing for sure now," added Henry Kennedy from his Mobile living room. "I know what look like maybe a sure thing ain't always a sure thing." 711

79 Williams interview; Kennedy interview.