| New England Joint Board History |
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Who We Are!!! The New England Joint Board was formed November 1, 2002 from the merger of three UNITE joint boards representing 12,000 members in 100 Local Unions throughout the six New England States. These Locals and the members they represent merged to increase our power in three areas: |
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1) negotiating
and enforcing fair contracts with our employers, The very name of our International union UNITE! makes clear our fundamental belief that the power of working people comes from our UNITY in supporting our friends and opposing our foes, in the interest of liberty and justice for all. We are called an "International" union because we represent workers in Canada and the United States. But we also have a 100 year tradition of representing immigrants from many foreign countries, and of supporting the just aspirations of workers in all countries. HISTORY The three Joint Boards that merged to form the New England Joint Board were each affiliated with different International unions that played great parts in the history of America and Canada. All three unions mainly represented manufacturing workers in the "needle trades" industries, producing men's and women's clothing, shoes and hats, carpets and other "soft goods" for homes and cars, and making or finishing all kinds of woven and knit textiles (fabrics). We also represented significant numbers of service workers, especially in distribution and laundries, as well as workers in all kinds of manufacturing. Today, UNITE ( For a detailed chronology of UNITE history, click here.) still represents many manufacturing workers, but a growing number of members are now employed in distribution, retail stores and industrial laundries or uniform suppliers. 1)The ILGWU in
New England The ILGWU in New
England*
Though some ILGWU Locals were formed in New England before 1910, major
organizing began here, as in the rest of the country, during the Great
Depression and the Presidency of Franklin Roosevelt. The union followed up the victory at Malden Mills with a series of 37 strikes from 1934 to 1938. These included a hard-fought strike victory, led by Southern New England District Council Manager Bill Ross, at the 1,100-member D. Schneierson and Bros. underwear factory in Fall River.
In these
years, Suffolk and Revere Knitting Mills were organized in Massachusetts,
along with Lowell and Lebanon Knitting Mills in Providence, Rhode
Island and dozens of garment factories from Maine to New Haven.
his
position as head of the national Writers' Guild to take a job as New
England Organizer for the ILGWU - for a salary of $15 in vouchers per
week, about half what he had earned for the Writers' Guild. When he succeeded in organizing Hub Clothing
in Boston, Roberts got a raise to $25 per week. "We built
a rough, tough organizing staff," Roberts says."I unionized a plant with a strike in Waltham, the largest dress
company in New England. I
got beat up by thugs on this strike. They worked me over, three guys with brass knuckles. While I was in the hospital with a concussion of the brain,
the women beat anybody who came near the plant like they might go
in." Once they had persuaded the whole cutting room
to walk out, the strike was won. Things were
not always so difficult. Organizing grew much easier as time went on and union strength increased. Roberts tells the story of the Boston garment factory he organized
around 1950 by writing a single leaflet inviting workers to the union
office. Every one of the workers showed up at the union hall the following day, and every one signed
a card in support of the union.That was the whole campaign. Ralph Roberts
eventually became Manager of the Southeastern Massachusetts district
of the ILGWU, building it up from 5,000 to 15,000 members before it
was broken into separate districts for Fall River and New Bedford. Another former
Manager of the Southern New England Joint Board, Nick Roussos,
also continues to live in Fall River. Roussos had been an ILGWU Organizer and Business Agent, as
well as Massachusetts Labor Commissioner Nick
Roussos, before taking on the new role. During his tenure, thousands of ILGWU members turned out twice
to vote out a long-time Republican Congress member and elect Congressman
Barney Frank. Union members
also found ways to enjoy themselves. Ralph Roberts still remembers the trip to Europe he arranged
for members for Southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island. One planeload flew to Paris and one to Rome.Eventually, both met up in Milan."The only one that didn't get on the plane
was me," Roberts says."I
kept telling the members, "check your passport and make sure it's
in order.' But when I came to give my passport, it had
expired. So I had to stay back here." Luckily for him, the union had a good relationship with Congressman
John McCormick, who was then Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. McCormick ordered the Passport Office in New
York to open up Saturday night to give Roberts a new passport. "The guy that came in and opened the place
issuing me a passport was made as hell," he remembers.
In the late
1940s, Boston Joint Board Manager Phil Kramer was the highest-ranking
ILG'er in New England. In
1948, he had the opportunity to meet and endorse a young Naval veteran,
John F. Kennedy, in his first run for Congress.[ From the
1950s through the 1970s, the Boston Joint Board, headed first by Kramer,
and later by Milton Kaplan, Nathan Sandler and Warren Pepicelli, was
a negotiating and financial powerhouse. The union represented workers at a number of large clothing
"jobbers," such as Collegetown and Summit Sportswear. These jobbers designed clothing, owned their own labels, and
sold to retailers and at scores of contracting shops. They also maintained offices in New York City. Most of the actual cutting and sewing, though, took place in small
sewing "contractors." The owners of these contractor shops were more like glorified foremen
than independent businessmen. They didn't own the fabric or designs they worked with, usually didn't
own the factory space and sometimes even rented the machinery. But they were the direct employers for most garment workers.ILGWU Chairwomen often informally co-managed these businesses.Thanks to a special exemption from Congress,
the ILGWU was allowed to negotiate contracts with the big jobbers
requiring them to place all their work in contracting shops organized
by the ILGWU, and even to pay into benefit Funds for the contractors'
employees. Without the exemption, the contractor employees
would have had no benefits, since contractors never had enough money. As late as the mid-1980s, the ILGWU still represented more than 20,000 members in New England, in garment factories from Brewer, Maine to New Haven, Connecticut, helping to bring a middle-class lifestyle to our mostly immigrant and female membership.
Beginning
in the late 1960s through the 1990s, though, large clothing manufacturers
and then large retailers like Macy's and Filene's began importing
more and more apparel items from Asia and Latin America. For 40 years, the union fought political battles to limit imports.We succeeded in slowing down the flood, prolonging
the life of American apparel manufacturing for an extra decade or
two. In the end, however, the profits Corporate America earned through
hiring overseas workers at 20 cents per hour, then selling their products
to affluent Americans, gave them the means to dominate the political
scene as well. Today, global corporations have wrested control
of our democracy through unlimited spending, and gained the right
to replace their American workforce almost at will. Today, 90
percent of the women's and children's clothing sold in this country
is imported, and sweatshop conditions prevail in much of the remaining
industry.
Organizing the Distribution Sector Around 1960,
the ILGWU won an historic organizing victory at the Zayre discount
stores' distribution center along the Massachusetts Turnpike in Framingham,
Mass. (now the location of TJX corporate headquarters). The opportunity for growth in this new service
sector allowed the ILGWU to build strength even in an era of manufacturing
decline. Local 313's first
President, Gerry Kiley,
was a no-nonsense booster of both the ILGWU and of Zayres Corp., and
was instrumental in winning first union contracts in related distribution
centers, such as Ames, Hit or Miss and TJ Maxx. The New England
Joint Board now represents thousands of distribution workers at TJ
Maxx, Marshall's, A.J.Wright, Home Goods, Brylane / Chadwick's, Liz
Claiborne and other locations.
Mergers and the Campaign for the
Future
UNITE and
the Hotel Employees / Restaurant Employees International Union,(HERE), have now proposed to merge forces in
the U.S. and Canada, contingent on approval by both union's Conventions
in July 2004. Hotels, restaurants and casinos, of course, like distribution centers and laundries, cannot
be moved overseas. With an aggressive organizing, servicing and
political program, UNITE HERE should be able to look forward to a
future of continued strength in manufacturing and of growth in the
service sector for years to come. * Material for this history comes largely from Harry Crone's History of the Northeast Department and from personal interviews with Ron Alman, Ralph Roberts and Nick Roussos.
2)HISTORY
OF ACWA AND ACTWU IN NEW ENGLAND The Amalgamated Clothing Workers of
America was founded in 1914, breaking away from the then anti-immigrant United
Garment Workers Union.ACWA's first
President, Sidney Hillman, a Jewish immigrant from Lithuania, served as
President until his death in 1946. A powerful and progressive figure in American history, Hillman eventually became a
trusted advisor to President Franklin Roosevelt, a founder of the Congress of
Industrial Organizations (CIO), Chairman of the CIO's Political Action
Committee, and a world-renowned spokesman for workers' rights. Among other
firsts, ACWA established America's first Unemployment Insurance system through
bargaining with employers in 1922, and the world's first labor union bank, the
Amalgamated Bank of New York. Union
members from ACWA, ILGWU and most other unions played key roles in electing
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1932, during the disastrous Depression
that followed the greed-driven "bubble economy" of the 1920s. By 1944, Hillman was
so close to President Roosevelt that Roosevelt reportedly would not agree to
Harry Truman as his Vice Presidential running mate until his staff "cleared it
with Sidney." The Republican
Presidential campaign loudly denounced the Roosevelt-Hillman connection, but
Roosevelt and Truman won an overwhelming victory. Hillman was
founder and leader of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in 1935,
once again breaking away from the conservative American Federation of Labor (AF
of L). He led the Textile Workers
Organizing Committee until it elected its first independent President in 1939
to become the Textile Workers' Union of America (TWUA).TWUA finally merged with ACWA in 1976,
enabling victory by the combined union (ACTWU) in the historic strike against
the J.P. Stevens textile corporation. Following
Hillman's death in 1948, ACWA continued to produce outstanding leaders,
including Presidents Jacob Potofsky, Murray Finley and later Jack Sheinkman. Some insight into the
leadership provided in the 1970s and 80s by Murray Finley can be gathered from
the following comments by Ed Clark. Ed
recently retired as UNITE Executive Vice President, after serving for many
years as Manager of the New England Regional Joint Board of ACTWU and then
UNITE. "Nearly all major clothing manufacturers in the U.S. at this
time,"Clark recalls," belonged to the
Clothing Manufacturers of America (CMA), which negotiated labor contracts with
ACTWU. Finley was a very aggressive
negotiator. He had a photographic
memory. He very seldom used notes. He never used a calculator. He was always able to interpret within a few
minutes the exact impact of a proposal from the employers. He was very tough at the table. I would have to say he was the best
negotiator I've ever observed. "ACTWU at the time was quite decentralized. Each Joint Board had representation at the
negotiations. We were essentially
Murray's committee, and in many cases we were a tough committee to work
with. More than half the negotiations
took place within our own caucuses. "Murray
would not leave the table if there was another penny or another benefit to be
gained. He also had the ability of
wearing down the other side. He was an
extremely confident person. I remember
one set of negotiations where he took the employers' proposal and said "we want
to caucus. We'd like to think about
this, and we'd like to stay in this room." I believe it was at the Summit Hotel in New York City. So the employers went away and sat in another
room. Murray disappeared. He came back four or five hours later to our
caucus. We were all pretty beat up and
tired. The employers were all beat up
and tired. We said "Where the hell were
you, Murray?" Murray said, "I went
upstairs to my room. I ordered some
food, took a shower, changed my clothes, and here I am." So he was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and
ready to deal with us, and ready to deal with the other side." Jack
Sheinkman, who succeeded Finley as ACTWU President from 1987 to 1995, played
key roles in garnering support for the JP Stevens organizing drive, then in
fostering the mergers that formed ACTWU and later UNITE. He is still fondly remembered by New England
members at the JP Stevens (now Westpoint Stevens) plant in Biddeford,
Maine. As President, Sheinkman led the
labor movement in opposing President Reagan's aid to right-wing dictatorships
in Central America during the 1980s. Jack displayed great personal courage in visiting unions in El Salvador
and Nicaragua at a time when labor leaders were subject to assassination by
right-wing death squads. Prior to
its 1976 merger with the Textile Workers' Union of America, ACWA had already
organized more than 400,000 men's and boys' clothing workers throughout the
U.S. and Canada, including 18,000 in New England. ACTWU in
New England In the year
of the merger that created ACTWU, 1976, another young Socialist, Ed Clark was hired as the union's Organizing Director for New England. Ed had served previously as an Educational
Director and Business Agent for the ILGWU. With the U.S. still the world's manufacturing leader, the clothing and textile union was a powerhouse and a progressive force in the six-state region. There were many large clothing plants in New
England. More than 2,500 members, for example, assembled men's better suits at the Cliftex Corporation in New
Bedford. Children's wear manufacturer Healthtex also employed more than 2,000 members in Maine and Rhode Island. > In 1985,
when the national union agreed to extend the old contract for four months, and
continue negotiations, members all over New England (and only in New England)
chose instead to walk out.Ed and the
rank-and-file New England leaders were eventually able to negotiate somewhat
better terms than the national pattern, one company at a time - on "language"
but not on wages and benefits. In the
early 90s, members at one of the best-paying New England plants, Grieco
Brothers (now Southwick) in Lawrence, Massachusetts walked out again, as the
company asked for give-backs. "Everyone stayed out," Ed
recalls. "During the entire seven-week
strike, fewer than forty people crossed the picket line. It was a very public test of wills between
the company and the union. The whole
community was involved on one side or the other." The strike
was eventually settled, but the shutdown may have contributed to a decline in
the company's business. In any event, employment at the company never returned to its former level, and fell by half
over the next few years as global competition hit home. Grieco's plant manager during the strike was
Tony Sapienza, now President of the highly successful Riverside Manufacturing
Company in New Bedford, where labor-management relations are generally very
good. The two keys
to ACTWU's New England success were the focus on developing strong
rank-and-file leaders and the concentration on organizing. Leadership
development programs included a number of week-long training seminars,
organized by then Education Director Bronwen Zwirner, where members learned
public speaking, along with courses in politics, economics and
negotiations. At the end of these sessions, several students would be chosen by the other members to give graduation
speeches, which many people still remember. Althea
Leach, the chief steward at the Van Baalan textile plant in Maine, later
converted to a Nautica distribution center, was a rank-and-file leader who
showed what could be done. Althea took
care of all grievances and also organized the shop politically. Union staff were scarcely needed. Militant
union members at Hathaway Shirt, also in Maine, also showed leadership in
keeping their plant open and providing good jobs for ten years after management
began trying to close it down. With guidance from innovative staff representative Mike Cavanaugh and Local
President Neena Quirion, UNITE members organized the community, the state and
the national union to arrange new ownership, and eventually worker ownership to
keep the plant running. Neena was elected President of the Central Maine Central Labor Council, where she
continues to do an outstanding job. ACWA and
ACTWU in New England also followed a militant organizing strategy. "From my very first day as the Organizing
Director to the day I retired from the union," Clark remembers, "I in some way
participated in every organizing campaign." So did the staff, and in many cases the clerical workers as well as the
members. Richmark Curtain, in Massachusetts, was one organizing victory. As Ed recalls the first-contract negotiations: "These were almost all workers from
El Salvador. It was one of the easiest contracts I ever negotiated, because these people were very conscious
politically. One of the most difficult things to get through in most negotiations is a closed shop provision. We put that on the table as our first
demand. A young woman from El Salvador, who was on the negotiating committee, insisted that she would speak to the
issue, not me. She told the company management that this was a very important issue because we were a very unified
group, and we all want to pay for what we get. None of us wants a free ride. And if you don't agree to a closed shop, there will be no
agreement. These were practically the first words spoken at negotiations. The rest of it was somewhat easy." In its political activity as well, union members displayed independent
leadership. In the 1980s, as civil wars were going on in Central America, the New England Regional Joint Board set up sister union
relationships with unions in El
Salvador and Nicaragua and sent rank and file delegations, not
accompanied by staff, to both countries, to meet with rank and file workers. In 1995, ACTWU merged with the ILGWU to form UNITE and begin a major new organizing struggle, which still continues.
The Textile Workers' Union of America (TWUA) was founded in 1939 in Philadelphia. Emil Rieve, formerly President of the Hosiery Workers union, was the first President. Fall River's Mariano Bishop, an immigrant from the Azores, was the principal Organizer. TWUA was the successor to the Textile Workers' Organizing Committee (TWOC), set up by Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America President Sidney Hillman and by the C.I.O in 1937. Prior to formation of TWOC and the TWUA, the United Textile Workers (UTW) had virtually bankrupted itself in leading and tragically losing the largest strike in American history, in 1934 uprising of 400,000 textile workers in all regions of the country. TWUA took pride in being a "rank and file union," made up of powerful Local Unions, but with relatively weak central control. Each large Local had its own treasury, negotiated its own contracts and in days when expensive legal advice was not yet part of the picture and global corporations were not yet the norm -- largely ran its own affairs. Smaller Locals, though, depended on the national union to provide for their needs. During TWUA's formative years, during the Great Depression, President Roosevelt and the Congress made union organizing easier by passing the National Labor Relations Act in 1935 and the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1937. The TWUA eventually organized the majority of New England workers, as well as 70,000 Southern members by the end of World War II (1945). Wages and conditions for textile workers were enormously improved. As in other industries, the dream of a middle-class lifestyle for working men and women moved toward reality. In addition to textile weavers, spinners and finishers, TWUA in New England organized many other manufacturing plants, from Batesville Casket in New Hampshire to the Ensign-Bickford explosive fuse factory in Connecticut, and the General Dynamics machine gun plant in Maine. The TWUA was famous for its internal democracy and for fierce internal battles, as well as its organizing energy. In 1952, for example, Vice President George Baldanzi ran against President Rieve in a convention that was, according to Textile Labor, one of the most raucous gatherings in TWUA history: "There were boos and cheers; whistles, cymbals, horns and gongs. During the rival demonstrations, the vast, vaulted ceiling of Cleveland's Public Auditorium all but bulged under the pressure of the din." Baldanzi was defeated, and unfortunately chose to take a group of defectors with him back to the old UTW, seriously weakening the movement. In the years following World War II, Fall River was the largest producer of cotton goods in the world, and New England was a major producer of wool goods as well. Seemingly every town in New England had its own mill, including huge complexes along the Merrimack River in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, as well as in Biddeford-Saco, Maine, Willimantic, Connecticut and other areas. Cranston Knitting Mills, in Webster, Massachusetts, still a New England Joint Board employer, was established in 1812. Most of the mills elsewhere in New England date back to the "Industrial Revolution" in the late 1860s, immediately following the Civil War. You can still read the founding dates, carved in stone, high in the front of many mills. Following World War II, however, the textile industry became the first to set a new American pattern, with factories in the unionized and developed Northeast closing as work shifted to the economically more backward, low-wage and largely non-union South. The giant JP Stevens textile company was one of the leaders in the trend, closing all of its unionized plants in New England in 1948. The flight from the Northeast to the South, as we now know, was the beginning of a long history of manufacturing businesses running away toward more impoverished areas now mostly overseas. In 1955, a young WWII Navy veteran, Bruce MacFadyen, was elected President of his TWUA Local at the Hartford Rayon Company, then employing 1,100 union members. "Mac" went on to play a major role in the future of the New England union, later serving as a Business Agent, Manager and Vice President of TWUA, then as Vice President of the merged Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers' Union (ACTWU), and finally of UNITE. MacFadyen's policy was always to leave as much control as possible in the hands of Local union leaders. Local Stewards and Presidents handled first-and second-stage grievances, played major roles in negotiating contracts and Locals managed their own treasuries. New England Joint Board Vice President Al da Costa, Business Agents Jerry Bouvier and Al Scafuri now reflect the strong Local leadership developed by MacFadyen's system. TWUA in New England was historically organized into more than a dozen regional Joint Boards. There was no New England-wide authority. As the industry moved south over the years, Joint Boards merged to retain their power. Through a combination of good management and good luck, MacFadyen's organization eventually became the unified Greater Northeast Joint Board for the Textile Workers. At MacFadyen's initiative, one of his Business Agents, Richard Rust, was appointed to lead the Textile Workers' Pension Fund, winning recognition by workers and management alike as one of the best-run pension funds in the union. For many years, TWUA Local Presidents, Business Agents and Managers handled their own arbitrations, facing management directly on the other side of the table, and usually settling in a short time. (The same was true for the ILGWU and ACWA.) MacFadyen still remembers the day he walked into an arbitration hearing with the American Sugar Company in Norwich, CT, and was confronted for the first time with a Chicago lawyer, instead of a familiar employer. The union had no choice but to hire its own lawyer, and was fortunate to find Jerry Paun, a labor lawyer who had also represented prisoners at the Attica prison in New York. MacFadyen remembers Jerry at their first meeting as a "young guy with long hair, getting out of his Volkswagen van with his girlfriend." Jerry was put to work in the union office, along with other staff, and still represents the New England Joint Board today in grievances and arbitrations. In the 1970s, the TWUA launched its struggle to organize the runaway J.P. Stevens mills in the South a struggle portrayed in the Hollywood movie "Norma Rae," starring Sally Fields. UNITE's current President, Bruce Raynor, got his start as a TWUA Organizer in the J.P. Stevens campaign. In 1976, running short of funds needed to win the historic organizing struggle, the TWUA merged with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, created the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers' Union (ACTWU). TWUA President Sol Stetin (who attended the 2003 UNITE Convention in Las Vegas) voluntarily gave up his position to make the merger a reality. The final victory over J.P. Stevens was achieved in 1980. Bruce MacFadyen retired from UNITE in 1999, and was succeeded as Vice President by his second-in-command, now New England Joint Board Associate Manager, Al da Costa. The rank-and-file orientation of the TWUA lives on 4) The
textile industry in America The textile industry
was the first manufacturing industry in history. The first mills
were built in England in the 1700's. Their economic power helped
to build a great Empire. England tried to prevent any other country
from learning its secrets, but in 1790, Samuel Slater successfully memorized
the entire layout of a British spinning mill, and built a copy of it
in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. He became a millionaire. In 1810, Francis Cabot Lowell memorized the principal features of a British power loom well enough to produce his own version of it on his return to Boston. [1] Lowell and his associates then established an "integrated" mill in the Massachusetts city now named for his family, producing finished fabric from raw cotton. Building in part on their textile wealth, the Lowells and Cabots became so wealthy that a little poem of the day ran "Boston, the land of the bean and the cod, where the Lowells speak only to Cabots, and the Cabots speak only to God."
Textile workers quickly learned that collective action was the only way to win a fair share of the income from their wealthy bosses. Fall River spinners, most of them immigrants from England, struck citywide in 1870: "As one local mill owner characterized the 1870 strike, 'I think the question with the spinners was not on wages, but whether they or the manufacturers should rule.'" In 1878, Robert Howard, "a Lancashire Irishman," who had been blacklisted for union activities in England, and then emigrated to Fall River, became head of Fall River Spinners' Association. The Weavers' Protection Union was formed in a Fall River strike in 1889. In 1911, Lawrence, Massachusetts textile workers, with women in the forefront, shut down every major mill in the city for a period of months in the famous "Bread and Roses" strike, which is still commemorated in an annual festival in that city. Because they did not form a permanent union and negotiate written agreements, however, many of the short-term gains from the victory did not last. By the turn of the century, a single union, the United Textile Workers (UTW) represented textile workers throughout the northeastern United States, but had little organizing success in the South. A wave of organizing swept the northern states in the first years of Franklin Roosevelt's Presidency. UTW membership increased from 40,000 to more than 300,000 by the end of 1933. However, the union was nearly destroyed by a poorly-planned national strike in 1934. The strike lasted 3 weeks and involved more than 400,000 textile operatives from Maine to Mississippi. As part of the 1934 uprising, there were a number of violent confrontations in New England. Workers in Sayles, R.I. "broke through militia lines and attempted to burn the Sayles plant." Eight to ten thousand rock-throwing workers also fought gun-toting guardsmen at the Woonsocket Rayon Mill. Four of six New England states called out the National Guard to protect mill property. In the South, however, after a number of workers were shot, the unprepared unions were forced to back down, and the strike of '34 was over. To this day, manufacturing wages are lower in the South than in the North. * Hartford,
William F., Where is Our Responsibility? Unions and Economic Change in the New England Textile Industry,
1870-1960, University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, 1996 |
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