The story
In 1865, Seth M. Milliken and William Deering founded Deering Milliken Company, a small woolen fabrics distributor in Portland, Maine. In 1868, Milliken moved the company headquarters to New York City, at that time the heart of the American textile industry. In 1884, the company invested in a new facility in Pacolet, South Carolina, and from that investment the manufacturing operations grew. Milliken & Company headquarters moved to Spartanburg, South Carolina in 1958 and included a dedicated research center on campus. Today, the company operates in a number of diverse disciplines, including specialty chemicals, performance and protective textiles, floor coverings, specialty fabrics, healthcare, and business consulting services. In 2018, Sage Automotive Interiors was carved out of Milliken & Company and became a separate entity.
From 1956 until 1980 Milliken & Company (then operating as Deering Milliken) was involved in one of the ugliest and most drawn-out affairs in the history of labor relations. In 1956 company president Roger Milliken closed the Darlington SC mill in response to the workers' vote to approve the Textile Workers Union of America to represent them after Milliken had imposed several changes to working conditions that were unfavorable to the workers. The case was argued all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court which ruled against Milliken in 1965. In 1980 after 15 more years of delay Milliken & Company paid $5 million to the 439 Darlington workers who were still alive and the families of the 114 workers who died without getting paid.
In the 1980s the company grew to a peak of 25,000 employees. As the nation embraced free trade Milliken could not compete with lower cost imported goods and most of their mills were closed or sold, and the company downsized to 7,000 employees. The company acquired several small businesses in healthcare and specialty chemicals to diversify away from traditional textile manufacturing.
From Wikipedia’s article on Milliken & Company, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5