"We were saying to Gulf & Western," Carver remembers, "that you might have a legal right to shut it down or destroy it through disinvestment, but morally you don't. You've taken over a custodial role there; this is a community resource. It was vital when you took it over, and if you ever want to leave it, it ought to be just as vital as when you took it. In other words, you ought to leave the campground as clean as it was when you got there."
In May, after the union's own contract demands were summarily rejected, the workers struck the plant. Throughout the 13-week strike, community support for the unionized workers was building. Local businesses displayed silk-screened posters supporting the Morse workers, St. Mary's Orphanage donated food to the strikers, and Our Lady of the Assumption Church loaned its kitchen. And because the strike touched on issues of national significance, it received wide play in the media.
Eventually, Gulf & Western abandoned its demands for broad concessions, and a new contract was signed. The underlying problems, however, did not go away. The company continued to lose customers, some of which had switched to new suppliers during the lengthy strike. At the same time, the industry was heading into a recession. Moreover, roughly a year later, Gulf & Western announced in the national press its corporate objective to divest much of its manufacturing operation, particularly those companies in mature, capital-intensive industries. That objective, UE Local 277 soon learned, included Morse.
Over the ensuing months, the union and the corporation haggled over what qualifications would be used to assess potential buyers. The corporation, naturally, insisted on a buyer that would pay a fair price for its unwanted assets. The union insisted that the buyer have sufficient capital to operate the plant, keep the plant in New Bedford, have a long-term interest in the cutting-tool industry, and equally important, not demand wage concessions from the union as a condition of the purchase. Thus, when two buyers asked for wage cuts of 15%, the union members balked, and the offers were rejected.
It was the circumstances surrounding one of those offers, however, that convinced the union that Gulf & Western had been negotiating with something less than good faith. The offer had come from an outfit identified as Carlisle Capital Corp., about which Gulf & Western said it could provide no further details except the demand for wage concessions. Not content to leave it at that, Carver and Poineau began an independent investigation into the owner's identity, and their search ultimately led them to a small, single-family house in Cohasset, Mass. A man asked them in and, over the noise of children running around in the living room, identified himself as the treasurer of Carlisle Capital. They talked in a small room -- equipped with a telephone, an Apple computer, and a desktop copier -- that served as the corporate headquarters. No, he said, Carlisle was not buying Morse. Carlisle was only a business broker representing a group of investors. And those investors, Carver and Poineau were both shocked to learn, included none other than the president of Morse and several of his managers.
There were many in New Bedford who responded to this apparent lack of forth-rightness with some resentment, none more so than Brian Lawler, then mayor. It seems that even as they kept their own interests hidden behind the Carlisle front, Morse's president and top managers had been actively encouraging Lawler, without success, to influence the union to accept Carlisle's offer in the best interests of the entire city. "With that incident," says Lawler, who now owns and operates a New Bedford insurance agency, "Gulf & Western rightfully earned our distrust."
By this time, Gulf & Western was becoming anxious about the lack of progress in finding a buyer. Finally, at the end of April 1984, the company told the union that one way or the other, it would have done with Morse by the end of July, warning that the disposition might involve a buyer whose primary interest would be in liquidating it. Gulf & Western, in other words, was ready to play hardball. So, too, were Morse workers and the people of New Bedford. Within a matter of weeks, Mayor Lawler announced that, in view of Gulf & Western's intentions, the city was prepared to seize Morse Tool by right of eminent domain and sell it to a suitable buyer. It was a risky and controversial gambit. But it worked. The threat of an eminent-domain taking, and the years of litigation that might ensue, convinced Gulf & Western to back off from its July deadline. Then, in August, Jim Lambert showed up with an offer nobody wanted to refuse.
There have been many times since that summer in 1984 when Lambert, distraught by some new twist in the whole convoluted tale of Morse's recovery, has found it hard to recall whatever attracted him to the company in the first place. Eventually, he remembers that he saw then, and still sees today, a company that, even under poor management, maintained a sturdy reputation for a high-quality product made by dedicated and skilled machinists. "In cases like that," he says, "there are always a few pots of gold hanging around if you fix a few things."
