You Had a Job for Life Page 21

  Wemyss recalled giving her more and more responsibility in the early years. “Shirley was schooled something like me. I said, ‘Do it.’ ‘Well, how do I?’ [Raises voice] ‘Do it!’ Then I’d kind of watch her. If you give people confidence, they do well. The day I made her a vice president, she walked into my office and started asking me some questions. I said, ‘What the hell are you asking me for? Do it!’ She said, ‘I might make a mistake.’ I said, ‘Join the club. I’ve made a lot of them’ [laughs]. That’s the only way you learn.” MacDow said her gruff boss never second-guessed her: “I can never remember him saying, ‘Why did you do that?’ Or, ‘How come you made that decision?’”

  “I guess something within me was determined that I was going to be not just an invoice clerk,” MacDow reflected. “I wanted to do more than that. If there was an opportunity within the office, I did it; I took whatever job there was next. I wanted to be involved in everything. So I kept pushing away.” What made him decide to promote you? “I guess it was because I was doing those things and actually without any recognition until somebody said, ‘Who’s in charge of the office here?’ and all of a sudden, I’m the office manager; I’m the sales manager and whatever else you want to call me. Just sort of materialized. It wasn’t easy, but I have to say, bottom line, that I did enjoy it, or I wouldn’t have put up with a lot of the tough times when the men didn’t want any part of me, didn’t want to listen to anything I had to say, even if it was a good idea. I had to work through it. It was tough.”

  Several male managers resisted taking orders from a woman. “I had to work probably twice as hard to establish the fact that if I made a decision, it was the right one,” MacDow said. “I didn’t just willy-nilly say, ‘This is the way it’s going to be.’ I had to really work at, ‘What should we do here, and how should we make this work?’ Because I was the female that was being watched, targeted. Over the years it got better, but it never got totally better even until after I retired. Boy, those first twenty years or so, wow!”

  MacDow described herself as “a very detail person.” To defend against the hostility of some male subordinates, she said, “I always kept notes of everything on the decision that I made. I wrote who I checked it with. It saved my neck a lot of times because they always were accusing me of doing something that didn’t make any sense, just to get back at me because I was a female.”

  On one occasion a male manager stormed into Wemyss’s office to demand he fire MacDow: “He lit into Mr. Wemyss. I’m standing there because I knew you don’t light into Mr. Wemyss, and I thought he was going to throw him bodily out the door. Well, he didn’t last much longer after that [laughs]. No one ever said to Mr. Wemyss, ‘You will do this or do that.’ He was the boss.”

  One of MacDow’s most important jobs was “gatekeeper” for Jim Wemyss. “I made sure that people calling in, if it was somebody that I thought he should talk to, they could. [Otherwise], I just took care of it, or sloughed it off. I think any good right-hand person would do what I did as far as handling the life of the CEO.” Her job was to assure that his time was used efficiently: “Don’t bother us with piddling things.” For her efforts, she earned some nicknames. “You were known as the Dragon Lady,” Jim Wemyss teased. “Other words, too,” she replied. “Not quite so nice.”

  She recalled her maternity leave in 1969: “I worked up until I had to go to [the medical center in] Hanover because I had some problems. Then I was back home in about five or six days. They brought my typewriter to the house. I had probably only another week at home, and then I went back to work. When I walked in the door, Mr. Wemyss was standing there with a bunch of papers in his hands. I thought he was there to say, ‘Welcome back.’ Instead, he said, ‘These need to be typed up today.’ Maternity leave—what’s that? [laughs].”

  Did Jim Wemyss ever say “good job” to Shirley MacDow? “As far as ‘good job,’ forget it. No kudos. No, no, no, no. no. Not ever, never, to this day. Well, maybe the last two or three years [laughs].” Was his way of saying “Good job” to give you greater responsibilities? “Yeah. Now that’s probably the bottom line right there. He would just heap on more, not that I didn’t absorb it, because I never backed away from anything.”

  AT THE CONCLUSION of our public interview in 2011, Wemyss, then eighty-five, said: “All you people, I always considered you—whether you believe it or not—were part of my family. The greatest joy I had was driving around here on a school day and seeing the playground full of kids screaming and running, and going around Sunday and seeing you people fighting to get into your churches, and saying, ‘That’s a good thing. That’s a good thing.’”

  Jack Hiltz, “GM Reviews Events, Progress,” Papermaker, August 1981, 1.

  J. Hiltz, “No. 1 Boiler Conversion,” Papermaker, May 1982, 1–2.

  Gregory Cloutier, “No. 1 Boiler Conversion Update,” Papermaker, April 1983, 4.

  Democrat, April 30, 1980.

  Jack Hiltz, “A Company Newspaper Fulfills a Need,” Papermaker, December 1980, 1.

  Susan Breault, “Alkaline Size: Practice Makes Perfect,” Papermaker, May 1982, 3.

  Democrat, September 16, 1981.

  Democrat, October 7, 1981.

  Democrat, October 14, 1981.

  Democrat, November 11, 1981.

  Ivan Fallon, Billionaire: The Life and Times of Sir James Goldsmith (Boston: Little, Brown, 1992), 359.

  Manchester Union Leader, July 13, 1983; Fallon, Billionaire, 375, says JR paid $149 million.

  Chapter Twelve

  THE WORST YEARS

  “SINCE THE ANNOUNCEMENT there has been a lot of concern about what exactly will take place. Please try not to get upset over this change. James River has a good record in their previous takeovers and they are capable of recognizing a well-run operation. We have nothing to be concerned over,” mill manager Jack Hiltz wrote in the Papermaker shortly after the May 10, 1983, announcement that James River Corporation of Richmond, Virginia, intended to buy the Groveton mill.1 Goldsmith would retain Diamond’s timberlands, and for the first time since the early 1890s, the Groveton mill owned no timberland.

  Founded in 1969, James River had grown spectacularly throughout the 1970s. JR acquired scores of struggling paper mills via “friendly takeovers.” Its rapid growth and unconventional strategy for operating without large timberland holdings inspired Bradstreet’s Business Month to rate it one of the five best-managed companies in the United States in December 1983.2 James River touted employee involvement in running the mill and boasted of good relations with unions. However, after each takeover, JR usually fired many of the executives of the swallowed corporations and pressured unions for concessions.3 In August 1983, James River and Union Local 61 reached a two-year contract with a 6 percent raise the first year and a 5.5 percent raise the second year. A three-year contract in 1985 gave annual raises of 3, 4, and 4 percent.4

  Vice President Terry Brubaker from James River’s Richmond headquarters informed Democrat reporter Peter Riviere that JR’s local managers enjoyed considerable autonomy. As part of the new owner’s corporate strategy to integrate operations between its many mills, Groveton began to acquire hardwood pulp from the Berlin pulp mill. Groveton also continued to purchase more expensive Old Town pulp that was only 30 percent hardwood.

  Groveton Paper Board signed an operating agreement with James River whereby it paid JR a monthly fee to cover the wages and salaries of the JR employees working on Paper Board jobs. This monthly payment also covered mill overhead, energy costs, and other shared expenses, as well as James River’s management fee. Jim Wemyss claimed that two Paper Board directors went behind his back to sign the management agreement: “I think someone from James River said, ‘We’re going to fire Wemyss, and you’d better talk to us because we’ve got control of all the management here.’ They didn’t have control of anything.”

  James River acquired the Campbell stationery and envelope operations when it bought Diamond’s Paper Division. “It started going downhill
a year or so [later],” Sandy White remembered. “We were told that that wasn’t going to happen. They can tell you anything they want. They never come right out and tell you anything. They just let you find out a little at a time. People started getting laid off. Machines started going down. People started bouncing around. You get the message. I hung in until I actually got laid off. I knew then it was for good. It had been touchy for a good year before that.”

  James River viewed Campbell as a nonstrategic asset, and in April 1985 it transferred Campbell’s Customer Service Department to North Stratford.5 Two months later JR sold Campbell to Ampad, a large stationery company headquartered in Holyoke, Massachusetts.6 Ampad claimed it planned to maintain current operations, but soon it laid off fifty to sixty workers in an attempt to “adjust our inventories downward.”7 Late in December 1985, Ampad moved Campbell Pads to Holyoke, reducing employment by fifteen to twenty jobs. In six months Ampad had cut Campbell employment in half.8 Mead Corporation bought Ampad in 1987 and sold it three years later to Bain Capital, headed by future presidential nominee Mitt Romney. On January 10, 1992, Campbell Envelope, reduced to thirty employees, was shut down by Bain. A belated employee buyout attempt fizzled.9

  “James River ruined Campbell Stationery,” Jim Wemyss fumed. “That was a blue-eyed gem. That little plant we had up in North Stratford had the most modern machinery for that type of work in the world. You had a workforce up there which were good, dedicated people. It was very disgusting what happened there.” With the sale of Campbell’s and divorce of James River and Groveton Paper Board, the mill no longer offered as diverse a product line as it had under the Wemyss family.

  Former mill workers’ attitudes toward the new owner varied. “I think if they hadn’ta come in we’da been done,” Dave Miles said. “I thought that things weren’t going quite that well. And when they took over I just thought, ‘Well, we’ve got a new life.’”

  Ted Caouette was always focused on production, and he felt that the arrival of James River made the mill a better and safer place to work: “The management would talk to you. The other way around was pretty autocratic. You just did your job and didn’t say too much. When James River came, now you had to work safely. [JR] put guards everywhere that a person may get hit by a piece of machinery. A paper machine is a million turning parts, so there’s always a chance of bumping into something if you’re just daydreaming. So they would put guards to keep fingers, hands, arms away from the turning parts. That was a major difference for us.”

  Many workers welcomed the end of old-school management. “The guy who took her over used to come up and tell you what was wrong right off the bat. He didn’t give you hell or nothing,” Armand Dube, a machine tender on Number 4, pointed out. “Jimmy was a hard guy to work with because he used to give you hell all the time. Then, of course, he’d get you nervous. When you get nervous, you don’t give a shit.”

  John Rich was grateful that James River significantly improved the pension plan at the mill. Lolly LaPointe thought JR treated its employees well, but wastefully: “They run seminars and schools all over hell. All you had to do was apply. They might have one six months from now coming to Berlin, but the next one happened to be in Seattle, Washington. You went to Seattle. They didn’t wait. They were just free with their money. I don’t wonder they went down.”

  James River was notorious for requiring its workers attend meetings on teamwork and cooperation. Cassandra “Sandy” White was one of scores of workers who loathed the endless rounds of meetings: “What they basically were trying to teach you is what everybody knows after they’ve gotten out of the eighth grade—work well together. Standard common sense. The biggest waste of money I ever heard of. If it was on shift, they’d hire somebody to come in and pay them overtime so you could go to these seminars or meetings. There were different times I damn near fell asleep at these meetings.”

  Not long after James River arrived, Bill Astle was promoted to supervisor of shipping. He thought JR often focused on hackneyed, feel-good incentives instead of efficient production: “A lot of it was just the flavor of the month: What’s management doing these days? It was ‘risk taking.’ ‘If you’re not taking a risk, you’re not doing your job well.’ Somehow that even got contorted to where you got an ‘attaboy’ if you screwed something up because that meant you were taking a risk. It really seemed a little perverse, to my thinking. Gee, I don’t think that’s the way risk taking was intended.”

  “James River had its problems, but when it came to how it treated women, I think they did a really, really good job,” said Louise Caouette, who was hired by JR in 1988. “If you could do the job, you could do the job. If you couldn’t, you couldn’t, and it didn’t make any difference whether you were a man or a woman.”

  The 1972 Equal Employment Opportunity Act had opened the door to women bidding onto paper machine crews. Tough times and the increasing threat of layoffs in the mid-1980s forced a few women to tackle the quintessential “man’s job” in the mill. In 1984 Sandy White left Campbell Stationery because of layoffs and low seniority. She was not allowed to count her time worked at Campbell’s for seniority and bumping rights in Groveton. Consigned to the mill’s labor pool and always facing the threat of layoffs, she was desperate: “I was just trying to stay working. If I’m not working, I’m pretty unhappy and pretty worried. You take what comes along. I begged. I’ve got to do something; I’ve got to work. The supervisor out there was a friend of mine, Bill Paradis. A real nice guy. I said, ‘Put me out there, put me out there.’ He said, ‘Andy you don’t want to be on those machines; trust me.’ ‘I gotta work. I gotta work.’ He said, ‘I’ll try it, but that’s no place for you girls.’ So, he let me go.”

  She promised her crew she would remain only until she could bid onto another job: “I told them, ‘I’m here because I don’t have any choice if I want to work. If I don’t do something right, tell me. Let me know; don’t baby me. I promise you I’ll get the hell out of here the first chance I get.’ And that’s exactly what happened.”

  Her first day on Number 4? “Oh, my God. You can’t describe it. Terror [laughs]. ‘What is wrong with my head? Why don’t I just take a couple of days off and say “forget it” and hope something comes along?’ I got to thinking, ‘You’re on your own; you’ve got a family to support. Get off your ass. It can’t be worse than some of [the jobs] you’ve been through.’ I found out it could be. It was hard work. As long as the machines are running good, everything is really nice. You know what to do, when to do it. But if something goes wrong on those things, oh, my God, it’s unbelievable the trouble you can get into, and the danger. I didn’t sleep a few nights when I first went out there. And dragging my butt when I came home. But the guys went through it too. There were days on that machine when it would just about kill you, even a good strong, rugged guy. I’ve always felt that’s no place for a woman. I really have. I’ve always been a super-strong woman. But there are jobs that women just are not made for. There’s a difference; don’t let anybody tell you any different [laughs].”

  Ted Caouette, a tour boss, supported the women who worked on paper machines even though he felt it was unfair to ask them to do such difficult work: “I have nothing against women. Nothing. I didn’t think it was a job for a woman because it’s too darn hard. It’s a very physical job. You have to put a wet felt or a dryer felt on a paper machine, it’s a difficult task, but these women did it.”

  A few years later, Sandy Mason bid onto Number 3 paper machine. She described her reception: “There was one crew that was very male testosterone crew, and that was B crew. If you walked out to train on their crew, you knew you were in trouble because they laid it right out for you. I had one guy in specific—he’s not alive now, he died of cancer. He told me, ‘You’re not welcome out here. Women are only good for one thing and one thing only.’ I said, ‘You want to pay my bills, I’ll leave.’ He said, ‘I’m not gonna do that.’ I said, ‘Well, then I guess I’ll stay.’ That’s the way we left
it. When I got done the first time, that crew wished I hadn’t left. They all loved me except for him. Ted Caouette at the time was the head of the paper machines, and I went to him, and I said, ‘I don’t want to make waves out here.’ He said, ‘Don’t sign off the bid because we really like what you’re doing.’ I said, ‘Try not to put me on that crew.’ They would try not to, but if somebody would call in sick, they would call me up, and I’d go right in. Towards the end he [the hostile B-crew member] got so he’d just tolerate me. I grow on you [laughs]. I always left him to himself. I would never sit in the break room with them. They always had another table outside, and that’s where I would sit. When you go into a man’s profession and a man’s job, you don’t try to win them over overnight because it’s not going to work. You just take your time, do your job the best you can, and show them that you can do it too. They’re pretty adaptable.”

  B crew’s chief, Joe Berube, supported Mason. “I know who that guy was because she told me about it,” Berube later said. “I said, ‘Anytime these guys give you any problem, you come see me.’ I had a rough crew. Those guys didn’t get along with much of anybody. I knew that they were going to give her a hard time. It weren’t just that guy; my whole crew gave her a hard time.” Web Barnett, president of the union, recalled it took six months to a year to stop chauvinism on the paper machines: “Even the paper machines, when [women would] go on there, they [the men] were stinkers. It usually was a certain few that would bring it on. The girls did well. They’d do the job. Their hands would be bleeding and everything else. We stopped that shit after a while.”

  Sandy White and Sandy Mason earned the respect of the men they worked with because they combined a strong work ethic with sensitivity for the feelings of their fellow crew members. “My father always taught all his kids good work ethics. Do the best job you can with what you’re doing,” White said. “I found if you don’t go on a job thinking you know it all after five minutes time, you ask questions. Everybody I’ve ever worked with has been great. I never met anybody down there that I couldn’t find something that I liked about them.”