Founded in 1833, the Brown and Sharpe Company began repairing clocks, watches and other small precision mechanical items. By 1898, the company was manufacturing tools used in machinery and employed 1500 workers. Nearly three quarters of Brown and Sharpe workers enlisted to fight in WWI in 1917. Following the war, sales and the work force dropped as a result of the Great Depression. In 1941, Brown and Sharpe workers finally unionized through the American Machinists Union.
The years between 1941 and 1951 were marked by an uneasy peace as financial losses began to mount and finally workers organized their first strike. Brown and Sharpe reduced its work week in order to save jobs, but had to lay off 700 employees by 1970. In both 1975 and 1979 strikes were organized to no avail. One of the longest strikes in American labor history began in 1981 and legal actions lasted 15 years. Eventually, the union lost. After multiple layoffs, the company could not pull itself out of its massive debt and was forced to put itself up for sale. A company in Sweden, Hexagon A.B., purchased Brown and Sharpe in 2000.
Any qualified person doing scholarly research is permitted to use material housed in the Special Collections Unit.
Terms governing use and reproduction: Photocopying and scanning of materials is a fee based service available in the repository and is allowed at the discretion of the Archivist when in compliance to the Unit's policy on copyright and publication.
Research Collection of the Brown and Sharpe Labor Strikes, Mss. Gr. 219, University of Rhode Island.
The documents were donated to Special Collections by Carl Gersuny, Professor Emeritus of Sociology. They consist mostly of articles and notes about the strike in 1981. However, copies of newspaper articles from as far back as 1915 are also contained within.
Materials in Series I, II, IV are arranged alphabetically by subject file; Series III is arranged in chronological order.
Professor Gersuny donated his research materials to Special Collections in July 2009.
These materials were originally collected and stored by Professor Carl Gersuny.
Of interest is a large “Brown and Sharpe” scrapbook contained within the Records of Rhode Island Public Transportation and Labor Unions.
Copies of secondary materials on Constain Dumba, letters from Tillinghast to Van Buren in 1833 regarding workman’s reform, information about the origins of Brown and Sharpe; Newspaper articles about the 1915 Brown and Sharpe Strike.
Information that was collected about the 1980s Strike, Brown and Sharpe being sold to Access to print in low income and middle-income communities Hexagon, the Landrum Griffin Suit, SCABS, Brown and Sharpe Timeline, materials used by Gersuny in his classes, Waterman vs Brown and Sharpe, Police Records 1982-1983.
This series contains Court Cases from 1984-1997 of Brown and Sharpe vs the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, to the National Labor Relations Board and the Supreme Court.
This series consists of research materials with historical and background information and statistics on the Brown and Sharpe Labor Strikes.