Memory, Enterprise Consciousness, and Historical Perspective among Maine’s Paper Workers
Memory, Enterprise Consciousness, and Historical Perspective among Maine’s Paper Workers
This chapter recounts how Maine's once-great mills lost jobs as the 1990s and 2000s wore on, and demonstrates how frequent layoffs hollowed out once-great institutions and ways of life. It mentions the historic Westbrook Mill, which contracted from over two thousand jobs to only several hundred in the early 2000s and the Great Northern Paper Company's employment at three mills, which shrank by two-thirds over the same period. It also talks about historic mills that hung on after 2000 as private equity companies swooped in and bought the mills using highly leveraged sources of credit. The chapter cites the well-established influx of paper imports from advanced mills subsidized by governments and the shrinking markets for publication papers as the digital reading became widespread. It elaborates how the loss of the well-paid source of rural employment sparked a progressive depopulation of rural towns in Maine.
Keywords: Maine, private equity companies, layoffs, paper imports, paper mills, digital reading, depopulation
Cornell Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
