OLD TOWN — Like many of his classmates in 1972, Duane Lugdon graduated from Penobscot Valley High School in Howland, got a job at the Old Town paper mill and punched his union card.

Being a millworker in the 1970s not only paid well, it provided workers with a sense of stability, Lugdon recalled. The federal minimum wage in 1972 was $1.60 an hour. Millworkers started at $2.78 and their average wage was $6.50 that year.

What these workers didn’t know is that Maine’s dominance as a paper-producing state was slowly coming to an end after a three-decade period of prosperity. What has occurred in the industry, especially this year, seemed impossible during that era of success.

“It was predicted 25 years ago that computers would be the end of paper,” Lugdon, 61, said recently from a seat inside the United Steelworkers Local 80 hall in Old Town, down the road from where he started making paper at the then-Diamond International Corp. mill.

The mill has changed owners five times since then, a testament to the seismic changes in the paper industry, and by extension, organized labor.

Now Lugdon is arguably the face of organized labor in Maine at the most challenging time for unions in recent history.

As the international representative for the United Steelworkers International Union in Maine, Lugdon spends his days helping with negotiations, disagreements or mitigations to keep employees and employers happy.

When there is a shutdown, he helps workers with unemployment, health insurance and accessing resources.

Union membership in the U.S. has dropped from 17.7 million in 1983 to 14.5 million in 2013, according to Bureau of Labor statistics. As a percentage of the U.S. workforce, the membership rate fell by about half: from 20.1 percent to 11.3 percent over that time.

“We’re still here, but there are a lot less of us,” Lugdon said.

In Maine, the percentage of union members in the workforce slowly has fallen from 13.8 percent in 2000 to 11.1 percent in 2013, when there were 64,000 union members. The steelworkers union now represents around 5,000 workers in Maine’s pulp and paper, sawmill and heavy equipment industries, plus some in municipal government, oil distribution and public service.

Today, Lugdon’s professional mission is guarding the interests of these remaining workers, as well as supporting and guiding those laid off amid the paper industry’s shedding of manpower.

The latter became almost his sole trade amid three shutdowns in 2014 in East Millinocket, Old Town and Bucksport. This wasn’t the job Lugdon envisioned when he became a full-time union representative in 1974. It’s arguable his 40th year indeed was his hardest.

“Millworkers have suffered in the pulp and paper industry and it’s not something you want to see your son or daughter go through,” Lugdon said. “That’s a sad thing, frankly.”

‘Those companies don’t care’

Despite the decline in membership, Lugdon and other Maine union officials contend their mission is more vital than ever. To that end, Lugdon’s voice has become angrier lately.

He talks about watching big industry and deep-pocket investment groups come into the state over the years only to strip Maine of its resources with no regard for local families trying to earn a living.

“It should be illegal to destroy assets,” Lugdon said. “Those companies don’t care.”

The recent bankruptcy sale of Great Northern Paper Co.’s assets to a California investment firm and Verso’s announcement Dec. 8 that it’s selling its Bucksport mill to a scrap metal and recycling company are prime examples of waste — in Lugdon’s opinion.

“Verso could start up tomorrow and make paper,” he said. “It’s a viable asset and could successfully operate if it’s not burdened with debt. There are interested parties who want to use it and Verso has decided to sell it to a salvager.”

Ludgon is not alone in this sentiment.

“Twenty years ago, unions fought against corporations who forced down pay, benefits and working conditions by moving production overseas. Now unions are expanding the fight to corporations who are literally destroying production in the U.S. and selling the machinery as scrap metal to other countries,” says Jack McKay, president of the Eastern Maine Labor Council in Brewer and director of Food AND Medicine.

McKay, who has worked with Lugdon for 15 years, said the steelworkers’ rep provides a needed voice for local workers.

“With the seemingly ever increasing power of hedge funds and corporations, and the very rich getting ridiculously richer, unions are needed now more than ever to help level the playing field,” McKay said. “[Duane] has shown great consistency in effectively standing up for working people not only while bargaining for better wages and working conditions, but also for giving a voice to working families in the political arena.”

Maine Department of Labor Commissioner Jeanne Paquette, who was sworn in on Sept. 7, 2012 and has only met Lugdon once, said through her spokeswoman Julie Rabinowitz that since the department plays state enforcer, she could not comment on his role or unions in general. She noted the department is doing all it can to help displaced millworkers.

Lugdon’s hobbies, when he has time for them, are fishing with his grandchildren, flying remote-controlled aircraft and camping with his wife of nearly 40 years, Diana.

“I guess in many respects my hobbies are my work,” he said. “It is difficult at times for me to remember that it is a ‘job’ because it is work that I truly enjoy so much. I am constantly striving to make positive differences in the lives of working people, but frankly in recent years the challenge has been to preserve jobs and ensure the future for Maine families. There are the disappointments like the Millinocket and East Millinocket stories and the successes at times when you can put people back to work like in Lincoln and Old Town.”

He points to Sappi Fine Paper’s Westbrook mill, which now makes paper for automobiles, and the Twin Rivers Paper Co. in Madawaska, making uncoated printing paper for pharmaceutical inserts, as mills that have diversified.

To get there, though, mills need to be open and stay open.

Shortly after the Verso announcement, the machinists union filed a lawsuit to block the sale. Lugdon and the steelworkers union joined the suit, as steelworkers make up more than half of the 500-plus workers at the closed Bucksport mill.

The suit alleges that merging with its major competitor and closing the Bucksport mill means Verso is trying to monopolize the market for coated paper, the kind used in magazines and catalogs.

Verso Paper Corp. reached a $1.4 billion settlement with federal antitrust regulators on the last day of 2014 to buy its larger competitor NewPage. The combined companies are going to control a good portion of the North American market for paper used primarily in magazines and catalogs and paper used for adhesive labels.

Rumors abounded, too, that an entity existed to restart the Bucksport mill and have it avoid being sold for scrap.

Mills do reopen. Lugdon said he and other union members worked to line up investors when Old Town Fuel & Fiber closed in August, furloughing nearly 200 employees,

“We beat the bushes to find anybody to buy these assets and employ our workers,” Lugdon said. “We found Expera Specialty Solutions.”

Expera, a Wisconsin firm that makes specialty papers, purchased the pulp-making mill for $10.5 million in December, creating Expera Old Town LLC to operate the facility, which since has rehired all 180 local workers that were let go.

Yet these efforts are not always successful. When they fail, good jobs leave Maine.

Lugdon says the closure and bankruptcy of Great Northern Paper was “devastating to workers, their families, the community and the entire region,” but the union isn’t giving up.

“We want to see jobs in the East Millinocket region return,” Lugdon said. “We’re trying to find companies to go to East Millinocket to employ people.”

Even if successful in East Millinocket, however, Lugdon knows times have changed. Growing up in a mill town, he says, it was understood that graduating seniors would go to work at the plant — just like he did. Expectations are now much different.

“In 1974, the entire graduating class of the high school in East Millinocket went to work at the mill after school,” says Lugdon. “Those days are gone.”

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