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.
With the rapid growth and consolidation of large railroad systems after 1870, union organizations sprang up, covering the entire nation. By 1901, 17 major railway brotherhood were in operation; they generally worked amicably with management, which recognize their usefulness. [1] Key unions included the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers (BLE), the Order of Railway Conductors, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, and the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen. [2] Their main goal was building insurance and medical packages for their members, and negotiating bureaucratic work rules that favored their membership, such as seniority and grievance procedures. [3] They were not members of the AFL, and fought off more radical rivals such as the Knights of Labor in the 1880s and the American Railroad Union in the 1890s. They consolidated their power in 1916, after threatening a national strike, by securing the Adamson Act, a federal law that provided 10 hours' pay for an eight-hour day. [4] [5]
At the end World War I, the brotherhoods promoted the "Plumb Plan" for the nationalization of the railroads, and conducted a national strike in 1919. [6] Both efforts failed, and the brotherhoods were largely stagnant in the 1920s. They generally were independent politically, but supported the third-party campaign of Robert M. La Follette in 1924.
The Republican Party was dominant in Washington and it was generally hostile to the brotherhoods until it moderated its position around 1926. [7]
The Great Railroad Strike of 1922, a nationwide railroad shop workers' strike, began on July 1. The immediate cause of the strike was the Railroad Labor Board's announcement that hourly wages would be cut by seven cents on July 1, which prompted a shop workers' vote on whether or not to strike. The operators' union did not join in the strike, and the railroads employed strikebreakers to fill three-fourths of the roughly 400,000 vacated positions, increasing hostilities between the railroads and the striking workers. On September 1, a federal judge issued a sweeping injunction against striking, assembling, picketing, colloquially known as the "Daugherty injunction".
Unions bitterly resented the injunction; a few sympathy strikes shut down some railroads completely. The strike eventually died out as many shopmen made deals with the railroads on the local level. The often unpalatable concessions—coupled with memories of the violence and tension during the strike—soured relations between the railroads and the shopmen for years.
Union | Date organized | Comments |
---|---|---|
Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers | 1863 | Journal: Locomotive Engineers' Journal |
Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen | 1873 | Now part of United Transportation Union. Journal: Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen's Magazine. |
Order of Railroad Conductors | 1868 | Journal: The Railroad Conductor |
Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen | 1883 | Journal: The Railroad Trainman |
Order of Railroad Telegraphers | 1886 | Journal: The Railroad Telegrapher |
Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes | 1887 | Journal: |
American Federation of Railroad Workers | Journal: The Railroad Worker | |
Railroad Yardmasters of America | 1918 | |
Brotherhood of Railway Employees | 1901 | Journal: Railway Employees' Journal |
Order of Railway Expressment | Journal: The Railway Expressman | |
Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters | 1924 | |
Train Dispatchers Association | Journal: The Train Dispatcher | |
The nature and power of organized labor in the United States is the outcome of historical tensions among counter-acting forces involving workplace rights, wages, working hours, political expression, labor laws, and other working conditions. Organized unions and their umbrella labor federations such as the AFL–CIO and citywide federations have competed, evolved, merged, and split against a backdrop of changing values and priorities, and periodic federal government intervention.
The American Railway Union (ARU) was briefly among the largest labor unions of its time and one of the first industrial unions in the United States. Launched at a meeting held in Chicago in February 1893, the ARU won an early victory in a strike on the Great Northern Railroad in the summer of 1894. This successful strike was followed by the bitter 1894 Pullman Strike in which government troops and the power of the judiciary were enlisted against the ARU, ending with the jailing of the union's leadership for six months in 1895 and effectively crushing the organization. The group's blacklisted and dispirited remnants finally disbanded the organization via amalgamation into the Social Democracy of America (SDA) at its founding convention in June 1897.
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 same union, regardless of differences in skill.
The Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen was a North American railroad fraternal benefit society and trade union in the 19th and 20th centuries. The organization began in 1873 as the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, a mutual benefit society for workers employed as firemen for steam locomotives, before expanding its name in 1907 in acknowledgement that many of its members had been promoted to the job of railroad engineer. Gradually taking on the functions of a trade union over time, in 1969 the B of LF&E merged with three other railway labor organizations to form the United Transportation Union.
The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) is a labor union founded in Marshall, Michigan, on 8 May 1863 as the Brotherhood of the Footboard. It was the first permanent trade organization for railroad workers in the US. A year later it was renamed the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers. The B of LE took its present name in 2004 when it became a division of the Rail Conference of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT).
The Great Railroad Strike of 1922, commonly known as the Railway Shopmen's Strike, was a nationwide strike of railroad workers in the United States. Launched on July 1, 1922, by seven of the sixteen railroad labor organizations in existence at the time, the strike continued into the month of August before collapsing. A sweeping judicial injunction by Judge James Herbert Wilkerson effectively brought the strike to an end on September 1, 1922.
The Railroad Labor Board (RLB) was an institution established in the United States of America by the Transportation Act of 1920. This nine-member panel was designed as means of settling wage disputes between railway companies and their employees. The Board's approval of wage reductions for railroad shopmen was instrumental in triggering the Great Railroad Strike of 1922. The Board was terminated on May 20, 1926 when President Calvin Coolidge signed a new Railway Labor Act into law.
Frank Pierce Sargent was an American trade union functionary and government official. Sargent is best remembered as the head of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen for a period of more than 17 years and as the United States Commissioner General of Immigration during the first years of the 20th Century.
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.
Railroad shopmen were employees of railroad companies charged with the construction, repair, and maintenance of the company's rolling stock. At the turn of the 20th century, approximately one-fifth of railroad employees worked as shopmen, a broad group which came to include machinists, carpenters, boilermakers, electricians, sheet metal workers, and other related trades.
The Brotherhood Railway Carmen of America, commonly known as the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen (BRC), was a fraternal benefit society and trade union established in the United States of America. The BRC united railroad employees involved in the repair and inspection of railroad cars to advance their common interests in the realm of hours of work, wages, and working conditions.
The Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen (BRT) was a labor organization for railroad employees founded in 1883. Originally called the Brotherhood of Railroad Brakemen, its purpose was to negotiate contracts with railroad management and to provide insurance for members.
Glenn Edward Plumb was an American lawyer who was famous for proposing a radical plan for cooperative railway ownership, the Plumb plan, in 1918. He founded the Plumb Plan League to support the proposal. Despite strong support from organized labor, including railroad workers, miners and farm workers, the plan was not adopted.
The Order of Railway Conductors of America (ORC) was a labor union that represented train conductors in the United States. It has its origins in the Conductors Union founded in 1868. Later it extended membership to brakemen. In 1969 the ORC merged with three other unions to form the United Transportation Union.
The Switchmen's Mutual Aid Association of North America (SMAA) was a 19th-century fraternal benefit society and trade union in the United States of America. Its members included the operators of railway track switches and those who coupled train cars in railway yards. Organized in 1886, the union came to its demise in July 1894 with rise of the American Railway Union and the smashing defeat it was delivered in the 1894 Pullman Strike. The organization was succeeded in October 1894 with the establishment of the Switchmen's Union of North America.
The International Association of Railway Employees (IARE) was a union for black railroad workers formed in 1934 at a time when the major railroad brotherhoods restricted membership to whites. Members included conductors, trainmen, engineers, shop mechanics, porters and maintenance-of-way employees. It joined the United Transportation Union in 1970.
The Burlington railroad strike of 1888 was a failed union strike which pitted the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, and the Switchmen's Mutual Aid Association (SMAA) against the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad (CB&Q) its extensive trackage in the Midwestern United States. It was led by the skilled engineers and firemen, who demanded higher wages, seniority rights, and grievance procedures. It was fought bitterly by management, which rejected the very notion of collective bargaining. There was much less violence than the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, but after 10 months the very expensive company operation to permanently replace all the strikers was successful and the strike was a total defeat for them.
The Illinois Central shopmen's strike of 1911 was a labor action in the United States of a number of railroad workers unions against the Illinois Central Railroad, beginning on September 30, 1911. The strike was marked by its violence in numerous locations. At least 12 men were killed in shootings across the country, and in March 1912, some 30 men were killed when a locomotive boiler exploded in San Antonio, Texas.
Joshua A. "Josh" Leach was an American locomotive worker and trade union functionary. He is best remembered as the founder of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen in 1873 and head of that organization from 1873 to 1876.