A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE UNITED BROTHERHOOD OF CARPENTERS AND JOINERS OF AMERICA
"In the present age there is no hope for workingmen outside of organization. Without a trades union, the workman meets the employer at a great disadvantage. The capitalist has the advantage of past accumulations; the laborer, unassisted by combinations, has not. Knowing this, the capitalist can wait while his men, without funds, have no alternative but to submit. But with organization the case is altered; and the more widespread the organization, the better. Then the workman is able to meet the employer on equal terms."
Peter J. McGuire, First General Secretary First Issue of the Carpenters, April 1881
"Prior to 1881, the condition of the journeymen carpenters was wretched in the extreme ... Wages were so far below the cost of a decent living that the most skillful carpenters were often reduces to the point of beggary."
Gabriel Edmonston, First General President October 1904
FORMATIVE YEARS
In August 1881, thirty-six carpenters from eleven cities met in a Chicago warehouse to form a national union. Four days of heated discussion produced a constitution, a structure, and a new organization with two thousand members - the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America. (renamed United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America in 1888.) The founding of the Brotherhood was a response to changing conditions in the construction industry in the second half of the 19th century. The...More >
FOUNDING OF A NATIONAL UNION
The Chicago convention was the brainchild of Peter J. McGuire, a 29 year old carpenter who was to become one of the great leaders of the 19th century. A product of the tenements of New York City's lower East Side, McGuire decided to devote his life to the cause of labor at an early age. As a working carpenter, a striker at a piano shop, and organizer of the organizer of the unemployed, a spokesman for the socialist Workingmen’s Party or a deputy commissioner for the Missouri State Bureau...More >
BEATING THE OPEN SHOP
During the twenty-one years of McGuire’s stewardship, the Brotherhood succeeded in setting union standards for carpenter on most construction sites in the United States. The struggle to achieve these goals was long and difficult. Building contractors used all the tools that employers have typically adopted to drive away unionism - strikebreakers, blacklisting, yellowdog contracts, violence, etc., long after the UBCJA had established a firm foothold...More >
DECLINE AND RECOVERY
The American Plan of the 1920s challenged the status of unions in the United States, but the Great Depression of the 1930s threatened the very existence of working people in this country. The stock market crash in 1929 was a signal to the world that the economy was in crisis. In the months that followed, unemployment rose at the astonishing rate of four thousand workers a week. As always, the construction industry served as an advance indicator of general economic conditions...More >
PROSPERITY, COMPLACENCY AND TROUBLE
Social unions took advantage of the favorable conditions to expand into new areas of collective bargaining. In 1950, for example, the New York District council of Carpenters negotiated a 3% payroll tax to support a Carpenters Welfare Fund. The idea of health and welfare funds became so attractive that the national office's Health and Welfare committee, appointed in 1954, urged all locals to set up programs as quickly as possible. Jointly-trusteed pensions fund soon followed, as well as other...More >
UBC MEETS THE CHALLENGE
UBC MEETS THE CHALLENGEInitially, many of the unions were taken by surprise by the non-union sector's developing economic clout. In the absence of a comprehensive counter-strategy, a number of locals and district councils adopted wage concessions in order to stay competitive with the non-union sector. Non-union employers effectively undercut that tactic by simply driving their own pay rates down further. At the same time, the ABC grew in political sophistication and became on of the linchpins of...More >