The Lumber Workers' Industrial Union (LWIU) was a

labor union A trade union (labor union in American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers intent on "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment", ch. I such as attaining better wages and benefits ( ...

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 primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

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 tot ...

which existed between 1917 and 1924. It organised workers in the

timber industry Lumber is wood that has been processed into dimensional lumber, including beams and planks or boards, a stage in the process of wood production Lumber and wood products, including timber for framing, plywood, and woodworking, are create ...

and was affiliated with 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 genera ...

(IWW).

History

Between 1915 and 1917, the

Agricultural Workers Organization The Agricultural Workers Organization (AWO), later known as the Agricultural Workers Industrial Union, was an organization of farm workers throughout the United States and Canada formed on April 15, 1915, in Kansas City. It was supported by, an ...

(AWO) of the IWW organized hundreds of thousands of migratory farm workers throughout the midwest and western United States. Building on the success of the AWO, the IWW's LWIU used similar tactics to organize

lumberjack Lumberjacks are mostly North American workers in the logging industry who perform the initial harvesting and transport of trees for ultimate processing into forest products. The term usually refers to loggers in the era (before 1945 in the Unite ...

s and other timber workers, both in the Deep South and the Pacific Northwest of the

and

, between 1917 and 1924. The IWW lumber strike of 1917 led to the

eight-hour day The eight-hour day movement (also known as the 40-hour week movement or the short-time movement) was a social movement to regulate the length of a working day, preventing excesses and abuses. An eight-hour work day has its origins in the 16 ...

and vastly improved working conditions in the Pacific Northwest. Even though mid-century historians would give credit to the US Government and "forward thinking lumber magnates" for agreeing to such reforms, an IWW strike forced these concessions. The LWIU briefly joined the One Big Union organization in Canada. But that organization differed structurally from the IWW. While the IWW organized on industrial lines, the OBU of Canada focused more on organizing workers geographically. The absence of an existing industrial union structure within the Canadian OBU caused the LWIU to pull out its 20,000 members. According to the 1922 publication ''Industrial Unionism in America'', "Their withdrawal was a staggering blow from which the O. B. U.

ever Ever may refer to: * Ever (artist), creator of street art, from Buenos Aires, Argentina * Ever, Kentucky * -ever, an English suffix added to interrogative words in forms like ''wherever'' * KT Tech EVER, a South Korean mobile phone manufacture ...

recovered." In 1924 the IWW was split by a division between centralizers and decentralizers. The modern IWW website describes an offshoot led by James Rowan of the LWIU, who invoked the E-P (Emergency Program.) "The E-Pers believed that the administration of the IWW was too strongly emphasizing 'Political Action' as opposed to Organizing on the Job. The E-P claimed to oppose 'centralism' in favor of 'decentralism', but the E-P sought to centralize power within individual Industrial Unions."An Alphabet Soup - the IWW Union Dictionary, IWW website, http://www.iww.org/culture/official/dictionary retrieved March 20, 2009.

Notes

Trade unions affiliated with the Industrial Workers of the World Defunct trade unions in the United States Timber industry trade unions Defunct trade unions in Canada Trade unions established in 1917 Timber industry in Canada {{NorthAm-trade-union-stub

History

See also

Notes