Interviewer: Preetam Prakash

Affiliation: University of Arizona

Preetam had first met Matthew Shelley when he had travelled to Philadelphia, MS to speak with some instructors and other individuals involved in a workforce development program associated with East Mississippi Community College located on the Choctaw reservation. Matthew was working as an electrical instructor at the program at the time. Matthew grew up in Scott County, MS when it was still heavily rural and had begun working offshore for a drilling contractor in the 1970s after spending some time working road construction and a local saw mill after he graduated from high school. As he put it, he had been looking to “get rich quick” when he first went offshore and had also been searching for a way to avoid the constant travelling that was part of road construction. Matthew had started out working as a roustabout and eventually worked his way up to derrickman. He worked a seven and seven schedule during his time in the industry and had worked as an electrician during his time off for much of the period that he had been working offshore. Matthew related how the 1980s downturn had a significant impact on people from MS who had gone to work offshore by that point. Matthew left the industry in 1985 after an incident involving a blowout on a rig. He related how many in the area who had been laid off from working offshore during the 1980s had found other jobs and had not gone back to working offshore in the 1990s even when work became available. Matthew had gone to work as a commercial electrician and described the difficulties of adjusting to the longer hours and lower pay after working offshore. Matthew went back to work offshore in 1995, but quickly left once again due to the considerable changes in safety regulations during his time away.