The United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, often simply the United Brotherhood of Carpenters (UBC), was formed in 1881 by Peter J. McGuire and

Gustav Luebkert Peter J. McGuire (July 6, 1852 – February 18, 1906) was an American labor leader of the nineteenth century. He co-founded the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America in 1881 along with Gustav Luebkert and became one of the leading ...

. It has become one of the largest

trade 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 (s ...

s 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 territo ...

, and through chapters, and

local Local may refer to: Geography and transportation * Local (train), a train serving local traffic demand * Local, Missouri, a community in the United States * Local government, a form of public administration, usually the lowest tier of administra ...

s, there is international cooperation that poises the brotherhood for a global role. For example, the

North American North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Ca ...

Chapter has over 520,000 members throughout the continent.

Early years

The union was created on August 12, 1881, by Peter J. McGuire and

. The two men organized groups for

collective bargaining Collective bargaining is a process of negotiation between employers and a group of employees aimed at agreements to regulate working salaries, working conditions, benefits, and other aspects of workers' compensation and rights for workers. The i ...

, and started a newspaper called ''The Carpenter'' to facilitate their idea of a national union. The Brotherhood held its first convention in Chicago in August 1881. The cornerstone of local and regional affiliations in support of common goals was laid out to show ways to maximize the unions bargaining potential. The immediate common goals were wage and hour demands, and death and sickness benefits. The union grew from its 1881 membership of 2000, to 50,000 by 1890, and 100,000 by 1900. While Peter N. McGuire was a socialist, the union itself was non-political, refusing to endorse any political party or philosophy. It was not, on the other hand, apolitical: it supported legislation establishing 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 1 ...

. The union also struck to obtain the eight-hour day, calling a strike of its affiliates for May 1, 1886. The strike itself was ineffective and provoked a repressive response, particularly in Chicago, where police shot and killed two strikers two days later, leading to the

Haymarket Riot The Haymarket affair, also known as the Haymarket massacre, the Haymarket riot, the Haymarket Square riot, or the Haymarket Incident, was the aftermath of a bombing that took place at a labor demonstration on May 4, 1886, at Haymarket Square (C ...

the following day. Even so, the strike gave the Brotherhood added visibility that led to increased membership. The union struck again in 1890, with similarly uneven results, but now facing the stiffened resistance of newly formed employers associations. The Brotherhood admitted both black and white carpenters on an equal footing when it was first formed; one of the union's vice-presidents in its early years was L.E. Rames, an African-American carpenter from

Charleston, South Carolina Charleston is the largest city in the U.S. state of South Carolina, the county seat of Charleston County, and the principal city in the Charleston–North Charleston metropolitan area. The city lies just south of the geographical midpoint ...

. In the

South South is one of the cardinal directions or compass points. The direction is the opposite of north and is perpendicular to both east and west. Etymology The word ''south'' comes from Old English ''sūþ'', from earlier Proto-Germanic ''*sunþa ...

, however, the union often isolated black carpenters in segregated locals as a concession to the opposition of white carpenters and contractors. Local unions also often excluded black workers on a de facto basis. The union formally dissolved its segregated locals in 1963. The union also faced fierce pressures from outside to exclude black carpenters: in 1919 supervisors from the Great Southern Lumber Company, the mayor of

Bogalusa, Louisiana Bogalusa is a city in Washington Parish, Louisiana, United States. The population was 12,232 at the 2010 census. In th2020 censusthe city, town, place equivalent reported a population of 10,659. It is the principal city of the Bogalusa Micropolit ...

, and local businessmen affiliated with the

Ku Klux Klan The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Cath ...

, attacked and killed four union organizers who had attempted to organize black and white lumber mill workers. None of the attackers were convicted of any crimes.

Expansion and conflict

McGuire was forced out of office in 1901 by Frank Duffy and others after a scandal concerning his inability to account for all of the funds received by the union. Many rank and file members of the time suspected that McGuire was framed by elements within the growing bureaucracy of the Carpenters' Union, with whom McGuire had fought several political battles over their attempts to gain more power over rank and file/local union control. McGuire's successors took a more aggressive stance toward other unions whose members were performing work that the Carpenters union either considered its own members' right to perform or saw as a threat to their craft traditions. The union waged jurisdictional strikes to claim work that other unions, such as the

Machinists A machinist is a tradesperson or trained professional who not only operates machine tools, but also has the knowledge of tooling and materials required to create set ups on machine tools such as milling machines, grinders, lathes, and drilling m ...

Sheet Metal Workers Sheet or Sheets may refer to: * Bed sheet, a rectangular piece of cloth used as bedding * Sheet of paper, a flat, very thin piece of paper * Sheet metal, a flat thin piece of metal * Sheet (sailing), a line, cable or chain used to control the c ...

and Electrical Workers claimed as theirs. The Carpenters used its size to win many of these disputes. After the death of president

James Kirby James Kirby ( – October 8, 1915) was an American labor leader and president of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America from 1913 to 1915."The Late James Kirby" (Oct 1915) ''The Bricklayer, Mason and Plasterer'', Volumes 18-1 ...

in 1915, it frequently disaffiliated from the AFL's Building Trades Department to protest those decisions it lost. In the decade that followed, the union fought off employers' efforts to impose the

open shop An open shop is a place of employment at which one is not required to join or financially support a union ( closed shop) as a condition of hiring or continued employment. Open shop vs closed shop The major difference between an open and closed ...

, which would have made it very difficult for the union to maintain the standards and membership it had won. While the open shop drive may have stalled the Carpenters' growth during the decade, it did not cause the severe membership losses and wage cuts that other unions suffered. In some areas, the union not only prospered, but elected its own leaders to public office. The head of the most powerful Carpenters local in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

and the head of the San Francisco Building Trades Council,

P.H. McCarthy Patrick Henry McCarthy (March 17, 1863 – July 1, 1933), generally known as P. H. McCarthy and sometimes, more jocularly, as "Pinhead", was an influential labor leader in San Francisco and the 29th Mayor of the City from 1910 to 1912. Born i ...

was elected mayor of San Francisco in 1909, while unionists riding the wave of

populist Populism refers to a range of political stances that emphasize the idea of "the people" and often juxtapose this group against " the elite". It is frequently associated with anti-establishment and anti-political sentiment. The term develope ...

enthusiasm won office in many other communities. The union won wage and union protections similar to the Davis-Bacon Act during World War I. The Carpenters fought these same open shop battles a second time, after the end of World War I, when employers tried to impose their "American Plan" in the centers of union strength, such as San Francisco and Chicago. While the employers were successful in some areas, the Carpenters came out of the 1920s with improved wages and relatively slight losses in membership.

Depression and change

The union lost more than half of its members in the first years of the

Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagion ...

as construction dwindled to almost nothing. The Union at first opposed unemployment insurance, consistent with the conservative politics of the AFL and the deep-seated opposition of its President

William Hutcheson William Hutcheson (February 6, 1874 – October 20, 1953) was the leader of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America from 1915 until 1952. A conservative craft unionist, he opposed the organization of workers in mass production ...

to governmental intervention of any sort in labor and employment matters. The union eventually dropped its opposition to unemployment insurance by 1934. The union also opposed

industrial unionism Industrial unionism is a trade union organizing method through which all workers in the same industry are organized into the same union, regardless of skill or trade, thus giving workers in one industry, or in all industries, more leverage in ...

, claiming the right to represent any workers who might perform framing or other traditional carpenters' duties in industrial settings. While the union made concessions to those unions, such as the

United Mine Workers of America The United Mine Workers of America (UMW or UMWA) is a North American labor union best known for representing coal miners. Today, the Union also represents health care workers, truck drivers, manufacturing workers and public employees in the Unite ...

, that had already established themselves as industrial unions, it opposed any support for organizing workers in mass production industries or permitting such organizations to affiliate with the AFL unless they first surrendered their skilled trade members. This dispute came to a head at the AFL's convention in

Atlantic City Atlantic City, often known by its initials A.C., is a coastal resort city in Atlantic County, New Jersey, United States. The city is known for its casinos, boardwalk, and beaches. In 2020, the city had a population of 38,497.

in 1935, when Hutcheson interrupted a speech by a representative of the committee that was attempting to organize tire factory workers with a point of order. John L. Lewis, President of the Mine Workers, responded that Hutcheson's point of order was "small potatoes," to which Hutcheson replied "I was raised on small potatoes, that is why I am so small." Lewis left the podium and, after some more words, knocked Hutcheson down, then relit his cigar and returned to the rostrum. Lewis and a number of other unions left the AFL two years later to form the

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 ...

. While the Carpenters disdained industrial unionism, they were willing to accept mass production workers into their own union, albeit as second-class members. The Carpenters had fought with the Wood Workers union chartered by the AFL for decades, claiming that any workers who planed wood products that were subsequently used in construction, such as doors, sashes, mouldings and the like, were performing carpenters' work and must be brought within its union. While the Carpenters had never made similar claims on work performed by sawmill workers, much less tried to organize them, the union successfully insisted that the AFL assign the newly created Sawmill and Timber Workers’ Union to it in 1935. That forced marriage was not successful, as most of these workers soon bolted to form the International Woodworkers of America and to join the CIO several years later after a

recognition strike Strike action, also called labor strike, labour strike, or simply strike, is a work stoppage caused by the mass refusal of employees to Labor (economics), work. A strike usually takes place in response to grievance (labour), employee grievance ...

. Hutcheson ran the union without room for opposition to his administration; he revoked the charters of locals that opposed him or that he believed to be "communistic". He refused to permit the nomination of candidates to oppose him at the union's convention and named his own son, Maurice Hutcheson, First Vice-president in 1938. Maurice succeeded him on his retirement in 1952. Hutcheson was a vocal opponent of

Franklin Delano Roosevelt Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...

, whom he denounced as a "dictator" while campaigning for his opponent, Alf Landon, in 1936. Hutcheson's conservative politics and his conflict with the CIO may have played some part in the government's decision in 1940 to charge Hutcheson and other union leaders for criminal violations of the

Sherman Act The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 (, ) is a United States antitrust law which prescribes the rule of free competition among those engaged in commerce. It was passed by Congress and is named for Senator John Sherman, its principal author. T ...

in 1940. The government claimed that the union's traditional methods of protecting its members' work — jurisdictional strikes, resistance to work-displacing technology, and

featherbedding Featherbedding is the practice of hiring more workers than are needed to perform a given job, or to adopt work procedures which appear pointless, complex and time-consuming merely to employ additional workers. The term " make-work" is sometimes use ...

— were illegal restraints of trade. The

United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

upheld the district court's dismissal of the indictment in the first prosecution brought by the government in '' United States v. Hutcheson'', , ending any further prosecutions of the Carpenters. The Carpenters found themselves in an unusual alliance with a coalition of other craft unions in

Hollywood Hollywood usually refers to: * Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California * Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States Hollywood may also refer to: Places United States * Hollywood District (disambiguation) * Hollywoo ...

, the Conference of Studio Unions, led by Herbert Sorrell of the

International Union of Painters and Allied Trades The International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) is a union representing about 100,000 painters, glaziers, wall coverers, flooring installers, convention and trade show decorators, glassworkers, sign and display workers, asbestos wo ...

. After a long and drawn out strike caused by a divide and conquer strategy of the producers, CSU found itself forced out of Hollywood, leaving the

International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Moving Picture Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts of the United States, Its Territories and Canada, known as simply the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE or ...

as the primary representative of back lot crafts.

Challenge from non-union contractors

The Carpenters, like other building trades, had not faced serious employer opposition since the 1920s. This changed in the 1970s as 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, BR ...

, made up of the heads of

General Motors The General Motors Company (GM) is an American multinational automotive manufacturing company headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, United States. It is the largest automaker in the United States and was the largest in the world for 77 years bef ...

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable energy ...

Exxon ExxonMobil Corporation (commonly shortened to Exxon) is an American multinational oil and gas corporation headquartered in Irving, Texas. It is the largest direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, and was formed on November 30 ...

U.S. Steel 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 countrie ...

DuPont DuPont de Nemours, Inc., commonly shortened to DuPont, is an American multinational chemical company first formed in 1802 by French-American chemist and industrialist Éleuthère Irénée du Pont de Nemours. The company played a major role in ...

and others, undertook a program to reduce building costs by replacing unionized with non-union contractors. The Roundtable also attempted to weaken the Davis-Bacon Act and other legislation that protected construction workers. The 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.

Recent developments

The International Union of Wood, Wire and Metal Lathers merged into the Carpenters in 1979, followed in 1988 by the Tile, Marble, Terrazzo, Finishers', Shopworkers' and Granite Cutters' International Union. The Carpenters were formerly, like most other craft unions coming out of the AFL, a union that allowed its Locals substantial autonomy in bargaining and representing their members. The Carpenter's International began to consolidate Locals into a District Council system in 1988 and since the International Convention of 2000, a system of "Regional Councils" has been implemented, further reducing the number of districts and high ranking board members from 13 down to 10. While it may be debatable whether McCarron's vision is better or worse for the International Carpenters Union as a whole, they are one of only a very few International Unions in America whose membership has been maintained or grown while most other Unions have seen large declines in membership. Consolidation of Locals was to address the regionalization of the contracting industry. The contractor who only worked within the local area was quickly becoming a thing of the past, while non-Union contractors were free to move their crews - experienced with the company's methods of operation - from job to job, Union Contractors could not move their workers beyond the borders of the District's jurisdictional boundaries without replacing their crews with new carpenters from the jurisdictional district outside the Contractor's home Council. Union contractors rightfully claimed the situation was making them less competitive than the non-Union crews, and the 50% rule was adopted. Union contractors may now use crews with one local Carpenter for each Company Carpenter on jobs outside their Region. The consolidation greatly expanded the boundaries of a Regional Council's jurisdiction and left the consolidated areas with a larger Council better able to compete with the growing non-Union segment of specialized contractors. Because of the pervasive protectionism practiced by the Locals, free movement of workers within a Council was only possible after this authority was taken from the Locals and given to the Councils in the 1991 UBC Convention. Within this new system, working Carpenters slowly lost the right to vote for their Local's Business Agents and Organizers, thus consolidating all power into the Regional Council's officers and leaving Locals and rank and file members to vote on Delegate to the intermediary Regional Councils. As the union began reorganizing its system of District Councils to give more power to Regional Councils, it consolidated Locals into fewer Charters and deprived local members of the right to vote on contract ratification, giving into the hands of the Regional Council Delegates as the contracts also expanded covering greater areas than a single Local. However, all contracts are voted on by the rank and file members of the various locals belonging to the Northern California Carpenter's Regional Council. A Federal Court of Appeals first questioned, then approved 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, unemploym ...

's failure to treat these Councils as "local unions" for purposes of the

Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act The Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 (also "LMRDA" or the Landrum–Griffin Act), is a US labor law that regulates labor unions' internal affairs and their officials' relationships with employers. Background After enactment ...

's requirements governing local union elections, the department has announced its intent to reconsider its existing regulations on this issue. The Carpenters disaffiliated from the AFL-CIO in 2001, citing complaints about the National Federation's failure to follow up on its program to organize the unorganized. Other observers attributed the Carpenters' departure to its unhappiness with jurisdictional awards and other restrictions on its ability to raid the jurisdictions of other unions, as well as the AFL-CIO's uncritical and exclusive support of the Democratic Party. Even after it left the federation, however, the Carpenters formed a temporary alliance, the New Unity Partnership in 2003 and the Change to Win Coalition with other unions — including

SEIU Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is a labor union representing almost 1.9 million workers in over 100 occupations in the United States and Canada. SEIU is focused on organizing workers in three sectors: healthcare (over half of members ...

UNITE HERE UNITE HERE is a labor union in the United States and Canada with roughly 300,000 active members. The union's members work predominantly in the hotel, food service, laundry, warehouse, and casino gaming industries. The union was formed in 2004 b ...

, and the

Laborers A laborer (or labourer) is a person who works in manual labor types in the construction industry workforce. Laborers are in a working class of wage-earners in which their only possession of significant material value is their labor. Industries e ...

— to force the AFL-CIO to consider basic structural changes in order to facilitate organizing. In the summer of 2009, the United Brotherhood of Carpenters disaffiliated from Change to Win after the other affiliates in the Change to Win Coalition demanded the Carpenters cease raiding other Union's membership and allow Carpenter members basic democratic rights.

Leadership

Presidents

:1881:

Gabriel Edmonston Gabriel Edmonston (March 29, 1839 – May 16, 1918) was an American labor unionist and carpenter. Born in Washington, D.C., Edmonston trained as a carpenter. During the American Civil War, he served in the Confederate Army, in the First Corps, ...

:1882: John D. Allen :1883: J. P. McGinley :1884: Joseph P. Billingsley :1886: William J. Shields :1888: D. P. Rowland :1890: W. H. Kliver :1892: Henry H. Trenor :1894: Charles B. Owens :1896: Harry Lloyd :1898: John Williams :1899: William Huber :1913:

:1915:

:1952: Maurice Hutcheson :1972: William Sidell :1980: William Konyha :1982: Patrick J. Campbell :1988: Sigurd Lucassen :1995: Douglas J. McCarron

General Secretary-Treasurers

From 1901 until 1995, the position was General Secretary. :1881: Peter J. McGuire :1901: Frank Duffy :1948: Albert E. Fischer :1957: Richard E. Livingston :1978: John S. Rodgers :1992: James Patterson :1996: Andris Silins :2019: Michael Capelli

References

Bibliography

*Brooks, Thomas R. ''Road to Dignity.'' New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981. *Erlich, Mark. ''With Our Hands: The Story of Carpenters in Massachusetts.'' Philadelphia, Pa.: Temple University Press, 1986. *Galenson, Walter. ''The United Brotherhood of Carpenters: The First Hundred Years.'' Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983. *Geoghegan, Thomas. ''Which Side Are You On?'' Rev. ed. New York: The New Press, 2004. *Johnson, Clyde. ''Organize or Die: Smash Boss Unionism - Build Union Power.'' Self-published, 1970. *Johnson, Clyde. ''Millmen 550—A History of the Militant Years (1961–1966) of Local 550, United Brotherhood of Carpenters.'' Self-published, 1990. *Kazin, Michael. ''Barons of Labor: The San Francisco Building Trades and Union Power in the Progressive Era.'' Champaign, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1987. *Schneirov, Richard and Suhrbur, Thomas J. ''Union Brotherhood, Union Town: The History of the Carpenters' Union of Chicago, 1863-1987.'' Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988.