An Open Discussion on What Happened to Greenfield?s Tool Industry

reenfield has a remarkable industrial heritage. It set worldwide standards in the manufacture of precision tools providing residents with high wages for most of the 20th century. This history has a beginning, middle, and sadly, an end. Today its industrial base is a shell of its former self. What happened? What can be done to re-kindle this proud tradition?
The Museum of Our Industrial Heritage will host a two-part panel discussion to explore these questions with a focus on labor/management relations. The morning session will feature several historians who have studied this subject in depth. They will trace the rise and fall of the metal tool industry here with an eye toward the changing nature of ownership and organized labor’s response to those changes. The afternoon session will feature the voices of Greenfield men and women who lived through parts of this history from a variety of perspectives. We will balance their varying experiences with our understanding of history to help create a larger picture of the great changes they bore witness to.
Our first panel is made up of three distinguished labor historians. Bruce Laurie taught the subject for forty years as Professor at UMass Amherst and writes and edits widely read books on work in America. Robert Forrant was a machinist and is now Professor of Regional Economic Development at UMass Lowell and writes on metalworking in the Valley. Tom Juravich directs the Labor Center at UMass Amherst and writes on the changing roles of unions in the workplace.
After we break for lunch, our second panel will bring the discussion closer to home. It will include people who have worked in the tool industry along with representatives from the United Electrical workers union.
This is a community event free and open to the public. The format will be short on presentation and long on open discussion. Participants of all ages and backgrounds are welcome and encouraged to share their questions and viewpoints on a subject that is vital to our economic future. You are responsible for your own food and drink and may come for all or part of the event, space permitting. The museum will feature a small exhibit on site along with restored film footage on Greenfield machine tool technology.