The International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental and Reinforcing Iron Workers is a
union in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...
and
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by to ...
, which represents, trains and protects primarily
construction worker
A construction worker is a worker employed in the physical construction of the built environment and its infrastructure.
Definition
By some definitions, workers may be engaged in manual labour as unskilled or semi-skilled workers; they may be sk ...
s, as well as
shipbuilding
Shipbuilding is the construction of ships and other floating vessels. It normally takes place in a specialized facility known as a shipyard. Shipbuilders, also called shipwrights, follow a specialized occupation that traces its roots to bef ...
and
metal fabrication
Metal fabrication is the creation of metal structures by cutting, bending and assembling processes. It is a value-added process involving the creation of machines, parts, and structures from various raw materials.
Typically, a fabrication sh ...
employees.
Origins
The union was formed on February 4, 1896 at a meeting in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...
with 16 delegates from the local unions in
Boston, Massachusetts,
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is the second-largest city in the U.S. state of New York (behind only New York City) and the seat of Erie County. It is at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of the Niagara River, and is across the Canadian border from Sou ...
,
Chicago, Illinois
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordinates =
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, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name ...
,
Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S ...
,
New York City, New York
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
,
Detroit, Michigan
Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at ...
,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Since ...
and Pittsburgh. Those locals, and others established later, often protected their own autonomy jealously, rejecting at least one national contract with the
American Bridge Company
The American Bridge Company is a heavy/civil construction firm that specializes in building and renovating bridges and other large, complex structures. Founded in 1900, the company is headquartered in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pitt ...
because it would have reduced their power. The internal divisions also led the union, which had affiliated with the
American Federation of Labor
The American Federation of Labor (A.F. of L.) was a national federation of labor unions in the United States that continues today as the AFL-CIO. It was founded in Columbus, Ohio, in 1886 by an alliance of craft unions eager to provide mutua ...
shortly after its formation, to disaffiliate in 1901, only to reaffiliate two years later. It was one of the charter members of the AFL's Building Trades Department, which was created in 1908.
History of iron work
Iron work is a skilled craft that dates back to the late 19th century and is a result of the rapid rise in the use of modern steel in iron bridges and skyscrapers. It was and is also an exceptionally dangerous job; hundreds of iron workers fell to their death every year in the late years of the nineteenth century. As one saying among Iron Workers of the day put it, "We're killed, but we seldom ever die."
Battles with employers
A number of employers tried to destroy the
craft unions
Craft unionism refers to a model of trade unionism in which workers are organised based on the particular craft or trade in which they work. It contrasts with industrial unionism, in which all workers in the same industry are organized into the sa ...
that made up the AFL in the first decade of the twentieth century by insisting on maintaining an "open shop", i.e. hiring without reference to union membership. For craft unions, such as the Iron Workers, who maintained union wages and working conditions by controlling the supply of labor, the open shop meant that the employer was free to set any wage standards it chose and to discriminate against union members in hiring.
The Iron Workers had successfully repelled the open shop demands of American Bridge Company (or "Ambridge"), an arm of the
United States Steel Corporation
United States Steel Corporation, more commonly known as U.S. Steel, is an American integrated steel producer headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with production operations primarily in the United States of America and in several countries ...
, in 1903. In 1905, after the union's
collective bargaining agreement
A collective agreement, collective labour agreement (CLA) or collective bargaining agreement (CBA) is a written contract negotiated through collective bargaining for employees by one or more trade unions with the management of a company (or with an ...
with Ambridge had expired, Ambridge and the other members of the National Erectors Association began refusing to hire union members and hired
labor spies
Labor spying in the United States had involved people recruited or employed for the purpose of gathering intelligence, committing sabotage, sowing dissent, or engaging in other similar activities, in the context of an employer/labor organization ...
to infiltrate the union. When the Iron Workers struck in response, the employers obtained
injunction
An injunction is a legal and equitable remedy in the form of a special court order that compels a party to do or refrain from specific acts. ("The court of appeals ... has exclusive jurisdiction to enjoin, set aside, suspend (in whole or in p ...
s and local ordinances that barred picketing or limited it to an ineffective display. Open shop demands still exist today. Non-union iron-working companies are in competition to take over union jobs, but the non-union hourly wage is based on the union rate.
Los Angeles Times bombing
Between the years of 1908 and 1911, 87 to 150
bomb
A bomb is an explosive weapon that uses the exothermic reaction of an explosive material to provide an extremely sudden and violent release of energy. Detonations inflict damage principally through ground- and atmosphere-transmitted mechan ...
ings took place at work sites, including some bombs set up by union members. The
most famous one, and the only one to cause any loss of life, killed twenty employees of the
Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the ...
on October 1, 1910. ''Times'' publisher
Harrison Gray Otis was a staunch opponent of labor unions, and the main supporter for the open shop movement in
Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world ...
. Authorities arrested James B. McNamara and Ortie McManigal in Detroit, carrying dynamite in a suitcase. Both men were in positions of importance in the Ironworkers Union.
[Adamic, Louis. '' Dynamite: The Story of Class Violence in America''. New York: Viking Press, 1931.] McManigal confessed to a number of dynamite bombings, and named the Secretary-Treasurer of the union, John J. McNamara, as the man who directed the bombings. James and Jim McNamara were brothers, and John gave James $1,000 per month from the union's treasury to finance the bombings.
[
The union hired famed attorney ]Clarence Darrow
Clarence Seward Darrow (; April 18, 1857 – March 13, 1938) was an American lawyer who became famous in the early 20th century for his involvement in the Leopold and Loeb murder trial and the Scopes "Monkey" Trial. He was a leading member of t ...
to defend the McNamaras. Darrow, however, concluded that the brothers faced a strong chance of receiving the death penalty for the crime. Darrow therefore made a clumsy attempt, in broad daylight in downtown Los Angeles, to bribe one of the jurors. As it turned out, it was a trap and Darrow was arrested. Now more desperate than ever, he persuaded the McNamaras to plead guilty on the basis of an unwritten plea bargain that would have freed John. Once they pleaded guilty, however, the authorities denied that they had any deal at all. John McNamara served nearly ten years, while his brother spent his remaining years in prison.
Their guilty pleas effectively defeated the campaign of Job Harriman
Job Harriman (January 15, 1861 – October 26, 1925) was an ordained minister who later became an agnostic and a socialist. In 1900, he ran for vice president of the United States along with Eugene Debs on the ticket of the Socialist Party of ...
, then running for mayor of Los Angeles as a socialist
Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the ...
, and nearly destroyed Darrow's career and reputation. The federal government then indicted dozens of other Iron Worker officers for conspiring to transport dynamite as part of this campaign; the International's current President, Frank M. Ryan, and one of its future Presidents, Paul "Paddy" Morrin, were convicted along with several other defendants on December 31, 1912, after a trial in which Herbert Hockin, the International Secretary-Treasurer, testified against them.
John J. McNamara later returned to the union after his release from state prison. He was expelled from the union in 1928, however, for submitting false audit reports on behalf of his local union.
In 2006, Journalist Robert Fitch[Robert Fitch (2006) Solidarity for Sale: How Corruption Destroyed the Labor Movement and Undermined America's Promise. Bublic Affairs Books] described the Ironworkers Union bombings as perhaps the largest domestic terrorism
Domestic terrorism or homegrown terrorism is a form of terrorism in which victims "within a country are targeted by a perpetrator with the same citizenship" as the victims.Gary M. Jackson, ''Predicting Malicious Behavior: Tools and Techniques ...
campaign in American history, and further notes the ''Los Angeles Times'' bombing and subsequent trials as marked a precipitous decline in labor union power in the Los Angeles area.
Battles with the AFL, employers and the IWW
The Iron Workers soon found themselves at war with the AFL and, in particular, the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America. The Carpenters claimed that pile-driving work, which was done primarily by Iron Workers in many areas, belonged to them and convinced the Building Trades Department to go along with them. When the Iron Workers refused to relinquish this work the AFL suspended it from membership in 1917. Other unions, such as the Lathers, then claimed that work that had historically been done by iron workers belonged to them instead. Unable to call on the support of other AFL unions in its fights with employers, the Iron Workers relented the following year and ceded pile driving work, with the exception of work related to bridge building, to the Carpenters.
These fissures contributed to an extent to the failure of the Iron Workers' New York City strike, called in 1921 to resist the American Plan, the open shop movement that reversed much of the labor movement's gains, particularly in construction, of the previous decade. When the strike failed, the union sued the employers, also without success. The union survived, but in a much weaker state.
The union also fought the Industrial Workers of the World
The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), members of which are commonly termed "Wobblies", is an international labor union that was founded in Chicago in 1905. The origin of the nickname "Wobblies" is uncertain. IWW ideology combines general ...
, which had won leadership in a number of its west coast locals in the era after World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...
. International President Morrin expelled some dissident locals and sued others to regain the locals' property. By 1928 the rebellion was over.
The Great Depression and the New Deal
The union lost roughly half of its members in the early 1930s. While the passage of the Davis–Bacon Act required payment of the prevailing wage on federal construction projects, the desperate shortage of work allowed some employers to force their employees to pay kickbacks to them to hold on to their jobs. A number of union members hopped freight cars to go in search for work. At the same time the union's old enemy, the Carpenters union, resumed its jurisdictional war with it.
Conditions improved somewhat with the advent of the New Deal and the Roosevelt administration's creation of the Works Progress Administration
The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, i ...
, a public works project that employed thousands of iron workers and other construction workers. The union was also spurred to organize, particularly in the inside fabricating shops, by the threat of competition from the newly created Congress of Industrial Organizations
The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) was a federation of unions that organized workers in industrial unions in the United States and Canada from 1935 to 1955. Originally created in 1935 as a committee within the American Federation of ...
. The union's membership grew slowly, reaching 40,000 by 1940.
World War II, the postwar boom and change
The union grew even more rapidly during World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
and the years afterward, reaching 100,000 members by 1948, when John H. Lyons succeeded Morrin as president of the union. His son, John H. Lyons, Jr., succeeded him in 1961.
The Taft-Hartley Act, passed in 1947, limited construction unions' rights to picket worksites at which non-union contractors were working by barring secondary boycott
Secondary may refer to: Science and nature
* Secondary emission, of particles
** Secondary electrons, electrons generated as ionization products
* The secondary winding, or the electrical or electronic circuit connected to the secondary winding ...
s. Even with those restrictions, however, the Iron Workers continued to grow in the expansive economy of the 1950s.
The union, like most other United States construction unions, had remained nearly all-white for most of its history. That began to change in the early 1960s, as the American civil rights movement
The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the United ...
began to challenge employment discrimination in the north, then picked up steam in the 1970s as the federal government began using the Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 () is a landmark civil rights and labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. It prohibits unequal application of voter registration requi ...
to knock down some of the barriers to African-American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ensl ...
workers' entry into the industry. Some local unions of the Iron Workers fought integration and affirmative action tenaciously, but usually unsuccessfully.
The union also found itself challenged by a change in the business climate in the 1970s, as non-union contractors invaded markets that had been solidly union for years with the support of the Business Roundtable
The Business Roundtable (BRT) is a nonprofit lobbyist association based in Washington, D.C. whose members are chief executive officers of major United States companies. Unlike the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, whose members are entire businesses, B ...
, made up of the heads of General Motors, General Electric, Exxon, U.S. Steel, DuPont and others. The Roundtable also attempted to weaken the Davis-Bacon Act and other legislation that protected construction workers. The Iron Workers and other building trades, caught off guard and used to organizing from the top down, lost large amounts of work to non-union contractors in the decades that followed.
Twenty-first century controversies
The union's International President, Jake West, pleaded guilty in 2002 to improper use of pension funds and making a false statement on a union report filed with the United States Department of Labor
The United States Department of Labor (DOL) is one of the executive departments of the U.S. federal government. It is responsible for the administration of federal laws governing occupational safety and health, wage and hour standards, unemploy ...
. Joseph Hunt succeeded him. A number of lower-level officers and the union's accounting firm likewise pleaded guilty to related embezzlement and disclosure charges. Fitch described West's guilty plea as part of a pattern of corruption in the Ironworkers, as he was one of "nine top officials" investigated or indicted for crimes between 1999 and 2002.[
]
Composition
According to the union's Department of Labor records since 2005, the union has reported several types of membership classifications, with the majority eligible to vote in the union, and (overall average for the period) 12% ineligible to vote. Throughout the period, "journeymen" have been the largest category (period average of 56%), followed by "lifetime honorary" members (period average 16%), followed by "apprentices" and "shopmen" (period average 9% each).agency fee An agency shop is a form of union security agreement where the employer may hire union or non-union workers, and employees need not join the union in order to remain employed.Pynes, Joan. ''Human Resources Management for Public and Nonprofit Organi ...
s, compared to about 67,000 "journeymen" (54%). Members classified as "apprentices," "probationary," "trainees," "retired shopmen" and "navy retirees" are ineligible to vote in the union.
District Councils
; Canada
:* Ontario
:
Eastern Canada
:
Western Canada
; United States
:
Chicago and Vicinity
:
Mid-Atlantic States
:
New England States
:* New York State
:* North Central States
:* Northern Ohio, Western Pennsylvania and Northern West Virginia
:
Southern Ohio and Vicinity
:
Pacific Northwest
:* Philadelphia and Vicinity
:
Regional (Florida)
:* Rocky Mountain Area
:
Southeastern States
:* St. Louis and Vicinity
:* Tennessee Valley and Vicinity
:
Texas and the Mid-South States
:
State of California and Vicinity
Presidents
:1896: Edward Ryan
Local unions
; Canada
;; Alberta
::
Local 720 – Edmonton
::
Local 725 – Calgary
::
Local 805 – Calgary
;; British Columbia
::
Local 97 – Burnaby
::* Local 643 – Victoria
::
Local 712 – Vancouver
;; Manitoba
::
Local 728 – Winnipeg
;; New Brunswick
::* Local 809 – St. John
::* Local 842 – St. John
;; Newfoundland
::
Local 764 – St. Johns
;; Nova Scotia
::
Local 752 – Halifax
;; Ontario
::
Local 700 – Windsor
::
Local 721 – Toronto
::
Local 736 – Hamilton
::* Local 759 – Thunder Bay
::
Local 765 – Ottawa
::
Local 786 – Sudbury
::* Local 834 – Toronto
;; Quebec
::
Local 711 – Montreal
;; Saskatchewan
::
Local 771 – Regina
::* Local 838 – Regina
; United States
;; Alabama
::
Local 92 – Birmingham
::* Local 477 – Sheffield
::* Local 798 – Mobile
;; Alaska
::
Local 751 – Anchorage
;; Arizona
::
Local 75 – Phoenix
::
Local 847 – Phoenix
;; Arkansas
::
Local 321 – Little Rock
;; California
::
Local 118 – Sacramento
::
Local 155 – Fresno
::
Local 229 – San Diego
::
Local 377 – San Francisco
::
Local 378 – Oakland
::
Local 416 – Los Angeles/Las Vegas
::
Local 433 – Los Angeles/Las Vegas
::* Local 509 – Los Angeles
::* Local 624 – Fresno
::* Local 790 – San Francisco/Oakland
::* Local 844 – Hercules
;; Colorado
::
Local 24 – Denver
;; Connecticut
::* Local 15 – Hartford
::* Local 424 – New Haven
::* Local 832 – Meriden
;; Delaware
::
Local 451 – Wilmington
;; District of Columbia
::
Local 5 – Washington
::
Local 201 – Washington
;; Florida
::
Local 272 – Miami
::
Local 397 – Tampa
::
Local 402 – West Palm Beach
::
Local 597 – Jacksonville
::* Local 698 – Miami
::
Local 808 – Orlando
::
Local 846 – Lakeland
;; Georgia
::
Local 387 – Atlanta
::* Local 709 – Savannah
;; Hawaii
::* Local 625 – Honolulu
::* Local 742 – Honolulu
::* Local 803 – Honolulu
;; Idaho
::
Local 732 – Pocatello
;; Illinois
::
Local 1 – Chicago
::* Local 46 – Springfield
::
Local 63 – Chicago
::* Local 111 – Rock Island
::* Local 112 – Peoria
::
Local 136 – Chicago
::* Local 380 – Champaign
::* Local 392 – East St. Louis
::* Local 393 – Aurora
::
Local 444 – Joliet
::* Local 473 – Chicago
::
Local 498 – Rockford
::* Local 590 – Aurora
;; Indiana
::
Local 22 – Indianapolis
::* Local 103 – Evansville
::
Local 147 – Ft. Wayne
::
Local 292 – South Bend
::
Local 395 – Hammond
::* Local 585 – Vincennes
::* Local 726 – Ft. Wayne
;; Iowa
::* Local 67 – Des Moines
::
Local 89 – Cedar Rapids
::* Local 493 – Des Moines
::* Local 577 – Burlington
;; Kentucky
::* Local 70 – Louisville
::
Local 769 – Ashland
::* Local 782 – Paducah
;; Louisiana
::
Local 58 – New Orleans
::
Local 623 – Baton Rouge
;; Maine
::* Local 807 – Winslow
;; Maryland
::
Local 16 – Baltimore
::* Local 568 – Cumberland
;; Massachusetts
::* Local 7 – Boston
::* Local 501 – Boston
;; Michigan
::
Local 25 – Detroit
::* Local 340 – Battle Creek
::* Local 508 – Detroit
::* Local 831 – Wayne
;; Minnesota
::
Local 512 – Minneapolis/St. Paul
::* Local 535 – Minneapolis/St. Paul
;; Missouri
::* Local 10 – Kansas City
::
Local 396 – St. Louis
::* Local 518 – St. Louis
::* Local 520 – Kansas City
;; Mississippi
::* Local 469 – Jackson
;; Nebraska
::
Local 21 – Omaha
::* Local 553 – Omaha
;; New Hampshire
::* Local 745 – Portsmouth
;; New Jersey
::* Local 11 – Newark
::* Local 68 – Trenton
::
Local 350 – Atlantic City
::
Local 399 – Camden
;; New Mexico
::
Local 495 – Albuquerque
;; New York
::
Local 6 – Buffalo
::* Local 9 – Niagara Falls
::* Local 12 – Albany
::
Local 33 – Rochester
::
Local 40 – New York
::
Local 46L – New York
::
Local 60 – Syracuse
::* Local 197 – New York
::
Local 361 – Brooklyn
::
Local 417 – Newburgh
::* Local 440 – Utica
::* Local 470 – Jamestown
::* Local 576 – Buffalo
::
Local 580 – New York
::* Local 612 – Syracuse
::* Local 824 – Gouverneur
;; North Carolina
::* Local 812 – Asheville
;; Ohio
::
Local 17 – Cleveland
::
Local 44 – Cincinnati
::
Local 55 – Toledo
::
Local 172 – Columbus
::
Local 207 – Youngstown
::
Local 290 – Dayton
::
Local 372 – Cincinnati
::* Local 468 – Cleveland
::* Local 499 – Toledo
::
Local 522 – Cincinnati
::* Local 550 – Canton
;; Oklahoma
::
Local 48 – Oklahoma City
::
Local 584 – Tulsa
;; Oregon
::
Local 29 – Portland
::
Local 516 – Portland
;; Pennsylvania
::
Local 3 – Pittsburgh
::
Local 36 – Easton
::
Local 401 – Philadelphia
::
Local 404 – Harrisburg
::
Local 405 – Philadelphia
::
Local 420 – Reading
::
Local 489 – Scranton
::* Local 502 – Philadelphia
::* Local 521 – Scranton
::* Local 527 – Pittsburgh
;; Rhode Island
::
Local 37 – Providence
::* Local 523 – Pawtucket
;; South Carolina
::
Local 848 – Charleston
;; Tennessee
::
Local 167 – Memphis
::
Local 384 – Knoxville
::
Local 492 – Nashville
::* Local 526 – Chattanooga
::
Local 704 – Chattanooga
;; Texas
::
Local 66 – San Antonio
::
Local 84 – Houston
::
Local 135 – Galveston
::
Local 263 – Dallas/Ft. Worth
::
Local 482 – Austin
::* Local 536 – Dallas
;; Utah
::
Local 27 – Salt Lake City
;; Virginia
::* Local 28 – Richmond
::* Local 228 – Portsmouth
::* Local 79 – Norfolk
;; Washington
::
Local 14 – Spokane
::
Local 86 – Seattle
::* Local 506 – Seattle
;; West Virginia
::
Local 301 – Charleston
::
Local 549 – Wheeling
::
Local 787 – Parkersburg
;; Wisconsin
::
Local 8 – Milwaukee
::* Local 383 – Madison
::* Local 665 – Madison
::* Local 811 – Wausau
::* Local 825 – La Crosse
::* Local 849 – Luck
References
External links
*
Ironworker Management Progressive Action Cooperative Trust (IMPACT)
Ironworkers Labor-Management Trust official site.
Iron Workers' semi-official history of the union
{{Authority control
AFL–CIO
Canadian Labour Congress
Building and construction trade unions
Trade unions established in 1896
Ironworkers