In 1996, ALCOA (The Aluminum Company of America) donated an extensive collection of materials to the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania (MSS 282). Complementing this collection, the company suggested an oral history project with former and current ALCOA employees to record their work experiences, and their perspectives on the development of the company. The project evolved as a collaborative effort between the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania and ALCOA. Twenty six interviewees, identified by the ALCOA Foundation and through company and community contacts, agreed to participate. Between 1998 and summer 1999, oral history consultant Alex Bennett conducted the interviews, which were recorded on audio cassette tapes, transcribed, edited, and indexed. All interviewees were male, many had spent most of their careers at ALCOA, and many worked in management or supervisory positions during the final stages of their careers at the company. The interviews, while broadly conceptualized, were not life history interviews. Rather, they covered specific topics related to the company history: research and development, market research and advertising, manufacturing, labor, work, the community, and government and environmental issues. The questions sets were individually crafted for each interviewee. The collection includes, for example, an interview with George Anderson, an industrial engineer who reflected on his experiences working for the company in Suriname in the 1950s; an interview Dick Downey, a long time employee of ALCOA who worked on advertisement and promotion of the ALCOA Wear Ever subsidiary and who highlighted, among other topics, the evolution of the aluminum can; and Frank Kramer, an employment and personnel manager at the company, who addressed labor management relations and conflicts at the company, and also race relations at the Tennessee plant. The collection also includes interviews with two of the company CEOs: with Alain Belda, who became president of ALCOA in 1999, and with Paul ONeill, who was ALCOA chairman and CEO from 1987 to 1999 and who oversaw the restructuring of the company in the 1980s and 1990s.
From the description of ALCOA Oral History Project 1998-1999 [manuscript, audio cassettes (Historical Society of W Pennsylvania). WorldCat record id: 664126028
