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The Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) is a labor organization in the United States and Canada that represents employees in the public transit industry. Established in 1892 as the Amalgamated Association of Street Railway Employees of America, the union was centered primarily in the Eastern United States; today, ATU has over 200,000 members throughout the United States and Canada.
The Pullman Company, founded by George Pullman, was a manufacturer of railroad cars in the mid-to-late 19th century through the first half of the 20th century, during the boom of railroads in the United States. Through rapid late-19th century development of mass production and takeover of rivals, the company developed a virtual monopoly on production and ownership of sleeper cars. During a severe economic downturn, the 1894 Pullman Strike by company workers proved a transforming moment in American labor history. At the company's peak in the early 20th century, its cars accommodated 26 million people a year, and it in effect operated "the largest hotel in the world". Its production workers initially lived in a planned worker community named Pullman, Chicago.
Founded in 1925, The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) was the first labor organization led by African Americans to receive a charter in the American Federation of Labor (AFL). The BSCP gathered a membership of 18,000 passenger railway workers across Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Beginning after the American Civil War, the job of Pullman porter had become an important means of work in the black community in the United States. As a result of a decline in railway transportation in the 1960s, BSCP membership declined. It merged in 1978 with the Brotherhood of Railway and Airline Clerks (BRAC), now known as the Transportation Communications International Union.
Pullman porters were men hired to work on the railroads as porters on sleeping cars. Starting shortly after the American Civil War, George Pullman sought out former slaves to work on his sleeper cars. Their job was to carry passengers’ baggage, shine shoes, set up and maintain the sleeping berths, and serve passengers. Pullman porters served American railroads from the late 1860s until the Pullman Company ceased operations on December 31, 1968, though some sleeping-car porters continued working on cars operated by the railroads themselves and, beginning in 1971, Amtrak. The term "porter" has been superseded in modern American usage by "sleeping car attendant", with the former term being considered "somewhat derogatory".
The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) is a labor union that represents approximately 775,000 workers and retirees in the electrical industry in the United States, Canada, Guam, Panama, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands; in particular electricians, or inside wiremen, in the construction industry and lineworkers and other employees of public utilities. The union also represents some workers in the computer, telecommunications, and broadcasting industries, and other fields related to electrical work.
The Transportation Communications Union (TCU) is the successor to the union formerly known as the Brotherhood of Railway Clerks and includes within it many other organizations, including the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen of America and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, that have merged with it since 1969.
Stanley George Sinclair Grizzle, CM, O.Ont was a Canadian citizenship judge, soldier, political candidate and civil rights and labour union activist. Born in 1918 in Toronto to Jamaican immigrants, he was the oldest of seven children. He died in November 2016 at the age of 97, 6 days before his 98th birthday.
A porter is a railway employee. The role of a porter is to assist passengers at railway stations, and to handle the loading, unloading, and distribution of luggage and parcels. In the United States the term was formerly used for employees who attended to passengers aboard sleeping cars, a usage unknown to British or Commonwealth English where such staff are known as attendants or stewards, terms which are also common in translation in non-English speaking European train travel.
The railroad brotherhoods are labor unions of railroad workers in the United States. They first appeared in 1863 and they are still active. Until recent years they were largely independent of each other and of the American Federation of Labor.
Railway Labor Executives' Association (RLEA) was a federation of rail transport labor unions in the United States and Canada. It was founded in 1926 with the purpose of acting as a legislative lobbying and policy advisory body. At times, it played a prominent role in setting rail transport policy in the U.S., and was party to six U.S. Supreme Court cases. It disbanded in January 1997, with representation, collective bargaining, and legislative lobbying assumed by the newly formed Rail Division of the AFL–CIO Transportation Trades Department.
The Switchmen's Union of North America (SUNA) was a labor union formed in October 1894 that represented the track switch operators and people who coupled railway cars in railway yards in the United States and Canada. It became part of the United Transportation Union in 1969.
The Order of Sleeping Car Conductors (OSCC) was a labor union that represented white sleeping car conductors in the United States and Canada between 1918 and 1942, when it merged with the Order of Railway Conductors.
The United Brotherhood of Railway Employees (UBRE) was an industrial labor union established in Canada in 1898, and a separate union established in Oregon in 1901. The two combined in 1902. The union signed up lesser-skilled railway clerks and laborers, but had the ambition of representing all railway workers regardless of trade. The Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) was determined to break the UBRE and provoked a major strike in Vancouver in 1903. The CPR used strikebreakers, spies and secret police to break the strike. The crafts brotherhoods of engineers, conductors, firemen and brakemen would not support the UBRE. The strike failed, and the UBRE disintegrated over the next year.
The International Brotherhood of Stationary Firemen (IBSF) was an American trade union established in 1898 and affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. The union was established as a mechanism for advancing the collective interests of workers engaged in the operation of steam boilers. Originally limited to stationary firemen, in 1919 the AF of L expanded the organization's jurisdictional mandate to oilers and boiler room helpers, and the name was changed to International Brotherhood of Stationary Firemen and Oilers (IBSFO).
Aaron Roland Mosher was a Canadian labour leader and trade unionist. In 1908, he became founding president of the Canadian Brotherhood of Railway Employees, a position he held until 1952.
Willard Saxby Townsend was an African-American labour leader. He worked to improve the working conditions of African-American baggage handlers in railroad terminals, and was the first African-American to serve as Vice President of the Congress of Industrial Organizations. He was inducted into the National Railroad Hall of Fame.
Halena Wilson was an American activist, educator, and cooperative movement leader based in Chicago. She served as president of the Ladies Auxiliary to the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters from 1930 to 1956.
The Porter is a Canadian television drama series which premiered on CBC Television on 21 February 2022.
The United Transport Service Employees of America (UTSEA) was a labor union representing railroad workers, principally station porters, in the United States.
References
- ↑ "Canadian Brotherhood of Railway Employees". Oxford Reference.
- ↑ "Sleeping Car Porters in Canada". www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca. The Canadian Encyclopedia.
- ↑ Mathieu, Sarah-Jane (Saje) (2001). "North of the Colour Line: Sleeping Car Porters and the Battle against Jim Crow on Canadian Rails, 1880-1920". Labour / Le Travail. 47: 9–41. doi:10.2307/25149112. ISSN 0700-3862. JSTOR 25149112.
- ↑ "Early Chinese Worker Militancy in BC".
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