Mary Jane Gervais

Moving as a family across Maine, Mary Jane Gervais and her family were looking for work from Houlton down through Biddeford, eventually setting in Lewiston at the age of 12. She had started working at the Bates mill at the age of 16, and has been working on-and-off at Bates for a very long time. Mary Jane was laid off several times, as the need for workers ebbed and flowed with the textile mill, always coming back after a month or so to work in a different position or in a different department. Shes done both office work and telemarketing, as well as having done a lot of the work on the factory floors such as spooling, finishing, weaving, spending eleven years in the Yarn Department. She shares a lot of information about the type of work involved, as well as some cases of injuries on the job and raising a family alongside her husband doing alternate shifts at the Bates Mill.