One Day Stronger: How One Union Local Saved a Mill and Changed an Industry--and What It Means for American Manufacturing

by Thomas M. Nelson

Overview

Appleton Coated, a historic paper mill in Wisconsin's Fox River Valley, was set to be sold for scrap, devastating a community, until union workers teamed with a local official to stop the sale and save hundreds of jobs.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781733914185
Publisher:	Rivertowns Books
Publication date:	03/09/2021
Pages:	306
Sales rank:	688,864
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.69(d)

About the Author

Thomas M. Nelson has been County Executive of Outagamie County, Wisconsin since 2011. He served three terms in the state assembly, including one as majority leader, one of the youngest in state history. He developed his passion for public service from his parents, who founded a Lutheran mission church in Combined Locks, in the shadow of Appleton Coated. Nelson holds degrees from Carleton College (BA) and the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (MPA). He lives in Appleton, Wisconsin, with his wife, Maria, and their two children, Mary and George, and Lucy, a Yorkshire Terrier.

Table of Contents

Introduction: One Night in Kaukauna

PART ONE: INTO THE BREACH

1.On the Brink

2.Like Day into Night

3.Auctioning Off a Legacy

PART TWO: A TROUBLED HISTORY

4.Profits, People, and Planet: 150 Years of Papermaking in the Fox Valley

5.The Ghosts of Kimberly-NewPage

PART THREE: TURNING THE TIDE

6.The Voice of God

7.On Our Own

8.Foxconn for Kimberly-Clark

9.State of the Unions

10.A Labor Party for America?

11.In the Vanguard

Acknowledgments

Source Notes and Bibliography

Index

About the Author

Editorial Reviews

"The book presents an engrossing courtroom drama, an acerbic indictment of bank policy that's also fair to the difficulties that business managers face, and communitarian paeans to blue-collar America: "This was my childhood. This was the American Dream." The result is a compelling story of a struggle for economic survival that strives to get beyond ideological polarization and highlight ways that unions, businesses, and governments can help ordinary people. An inspiring saga of grassroots political cooperation."-Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"A captivating and comprehensive account."-BookLife Reviews

"One Day Stronger is a deeply reported business narrative about a paper mill in Nelson's area, saved from closure through its union's clever use of an obscure receivership statute. This is a riveting book about the state of corporate America today and one way out of the mess."-David Dayen, The American Prospect

"One Day Stronger is exactly the story American needs right now. It is not just an account of saving a plant, but of respecting the dignity of work, the value of tradition, and the possibility of change. May Appleton Coated be a model for the future of American manufacturing!"-Anne Marie Slaughter, CEO, New America

From the Publisher

02/08/2021

Former Wisconsin State Assemblyman and Outagamie County Executive Nelson delivers a captivating and comprehensive account detailing the plight of American manufacturing company Appleton Coated, a historic paper mill in Wisconsin’s Fox Valley region. Nelson critically examines the circumstances surrounding the sale of Appleton Coated to Industrial Assets Corporation, an industrial scrap dealer, in 2017 and the resulting battle that pitted mill workers and labor unions against large corporations and state politicians.

In the first third of the book, Nelson delves into the political events and corporate policies that caused the 127-year-old paper mill to be put on the auction block. A native of the Fox Valley region, Nelson has unique insight into the town of Combined Locks and the importance of the paper industry to the local economy. In the second part, Nelson skillfully takes readers through the rich 150-year history of paper manufacturing in the region, starting with land conflicts between First Peoples (Outagamie, Iroquois, and Mohican) and European settlers, moving through the roots of the labor movement, and on to the current state of the paper industry.

In the third and final part of the book, Nelson swings into high gear as he details his efforts and those of Appleton Coated CEO Doug Osterberg, CFO Marianne Sterr, and USW Local 2-144, the international labor union that represented Appleton Coated workers. At times, the book reads like a memoir; Nelson narrates courtroom testimony and private conversations related to the legal battle to save the mill. Nelson doesn’t shy away from opining that Governor Scott Walker took a “cynical approach to economic development” and that Republican legislators under Walker’s administration “afforded scant attention let alone resources to the paper workers.” Political biography fans and readers interested in labor movements will both enjoy Nelson’s account in which the underdog prevails.

Takeaway: This combined history and memoir will resonate with centrists, readers interested in labor movements, and political biography fans.

Great for fans of: Michelle Obama’s Becoming, Mona Hana-Attisha’s What the Eyes Don’t See.

Production grades Cover: A+ Design and typography: A Illustrations: N/A Editing: A Marketing copy: A+

BookLife Reviews

★ 2021-01-26
A fight to keep a Wisconsin paper mill open helps to rejuvenate labor politics in this impassioned nonfiction work.

Nelson was the county executive of Wisconsin’s Outagamie County in 2017 when the Appleton Coated paper mill was forced into receivership by its creditor PNC Bank—one of several mill shutdowns in the Fox River Valley paper-manufacturing region. Appleton Coated was the economic mainstay of the town of Combined Locks, providing it with 620 high-paying jobs and tax revenue, and its managers insisted it would be profitable after it weathered a rough patch of high wood-pulp prices and depressed markets and introduced new product lines. Nelson recounts that PNC claimed otherwise and that it used provisions in a loan agreement to take control of the mill and auction it to another company that planned to shutter and scrap it. Appleton Coated’s community rallied to its cause: Workers staged a “reverse strike” and kept the mill operating; the United Steelworkers Union local representing them filed an objection to the receivership sale in court and set about finding another buyer that would keep the mill up and running; and Nelson filed his own objection in court, citing the economic damage to the county that would result if the mill closed. A heated legal battle ensued, and the mill won a reprieve thanks to concessions from the union and government aid that Nelson pitched in. As a result, Appleton Coated duly made its way back to profitability in 2018. Over the course of this book, Nelson sets the mill’s story against a panorama of Wisconsin politics and economic issues, examining a rash of similar mill shutdowns and accusing Republican Gov. Scott Walker, who served from 2011 to 2019, and the state legislature’s Republican majority of being indifferent to the plight of the paper industry even as it gave electronics manufacturer FoxConn billions in subsidies for a new factory. Nelson’s narrative offers an incisive insider’s view of industrial policy, pairing lucid analysis of the economics and practicalities of running a paper mill with bread-and-butter local politics. It’s also a tribute to organized labor—“As for the workers….They were the only adults in the room, demonstrating remarkable leadership and grace under immense pressure”—that offers readers an extensive history of unions in the state of Wisconsin. Nelson lays out a case for labor-law and immigration reform (“one underappreciated consequence of using immigration as a source of cheap labor has been a transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top of our economy”), but his fiery prose is anything but wonkish. The book presents an engrossing courtroom drama, an acerbic indictment of bank policy that’s also fair to the difficulties that business managers face, and communitarian paeans to blue-collar America: “This was my childhood. This was the American Dream.” The result is a compelling story of a struggle for economic survival that strives to get beyond ideological polarization and highlight ways that unions, businesses, and governments can help ordinary people.

An inspiring saga of grassroots political cooperation.

Kirkus Reviews