Interview with Scott Molloy

Interview with Scott Molloy

Gorham's later years were marked by increased conflict between employees and management. Scott Molloy, a professor of labor and industrial relations at the University of Rhode Island, grew up in Reservoir Triangle. In this interview excerpt, he recalls a particularly bitter strike in 1976.

October 25, 2011

Scott Molloy: It was a brutal strike. I can remember walking over there one day with about 25 bus drivers and their wives and kids. We crossed the pedestrian bridge on Adelaide Avenue over the railroad tracks and I can remember the steelworkers are there picketing and they look at us and we have our bus driver uniforms on which from a distance look like security cops. But then you had the wives and the kids and picket signs and they just went crazy and wild they were so excited that somebody gave a damn to come over to their picket line.

But that thing got real nasty. I remember one morning showing up. The whole contingent of Providence plain clothesmen were there, and they had these big truncheons you know like baseball bats or 2 x 4’s. Standing out there almost like a gauntlet to protect the scabs being brought in, and school buses that had the windows painted black so you couldn’t see who was in it.

You know, we held the fort but the problem was that we held the fort and meanwhile there was a whole new world to run away into and that’s what eventually happened to it. It just got overwhelmed by third world competition.

Sarah Yahm

Scott Molloy

Charles T Schmidt, Jr Labor Research Center, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI