James L. Monaghan, first grand master of the SMAA.
The first trade union of American railway switchmen was a local organization founded in the city of Chicago during the tumultuous labor struggles of 1877. In June of that year James Cullerton, a switchman for the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway, sent word to the various rail yards of the city asking for three delegates from each to be dispatched to an organizational meeting.[1] A total of 15 delegates showed up for the meeting, which launched a short-lived organization called the Switchmen's Brotherhood.[1] This was supplanted by a new organization on August 18 of the same year called the Switchmen's Union, with Cullerton again playing a leading role.[1] This organization continued in existence at least through 1881, failing to expand outside of Chicago but nevertheless providing a nucleus for development of a future union.[2]
Cullerton's pioneering effort finally saw growth in 1884 with increased local membership and activity in Chicago and expansion of the concept to other local organizations in railroad cities in the Midwest.[2]
These autonomous local Switchmen's Unions began to feel the need for a national organization and a call was issued for a founding convention, to be held February 22, 1886, in Chicago.[2] A well-attended organizational convention lasting 8 days followed, with the body electing officers, establishing a monthly magazine, and carrying on extensive discussions in secret session.[3]
A follow-up convention was scheduled to begin September 20, 1886, in Kansas City, Missouri.[3] This gathering was known as the First Annual Convention of the SMAA and was attended by delegates from 25 lodges affiliated with the organization.[4] The main business of the gathering was consumed in the writing of a constitution and bylaws for the governance of the organization.[4]James L. Monaghan, a graduate of the Philadelphia school system who had studied law for two years, was elected the first Grand Master of the organization.[4] Monaghan would be elected to the Illinois State Legislature in November 1888, to be succeeded as head of the SMAA by Minneapolis resident Frank Sweeney.[4]
The Second Annual Convention of the SMAA was gaveled to order September 19, 1887, in Indianapolis.[4] The gathering was noteworthy for its elevation of another mainstay of the SMAA to prominence when it elected 26-year old Chicago native William A. Simsrott as Grand Secretary and Treasurer of the organization.[5] Together with Sweeney, Vice Grand Master John Downey, and Switchman's Magazine editor John A. Hall, these would comprise the top leaders of the SMAA during its comparatively brief existence.
Chicago, Burlington & Quincy strike of 1888
Throughout the 19th and much of the 20th Century, railway workers were divided into innumerable subdivisions based upon craft, with the engineers participating in the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers (B of LE), the firemen who broke and shoveled coal to fuel the trains part of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen (B of LF), the conductors part of the Order of Railway Conductors (ORC), the brake operators part of the Brotherhood of Railroad Brakemen (BRB), and so forth. The SMAA was part of this myriad of organizations — a diffusion of decision-making authority and range of competing institutional interests which made unity of action during strikes extremely difficult.
In January 1888, disaffected engineers of the B of LE and firemen of the B of LF who were part of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy (CB&Q) system of lines came together to discuss joint action against their employer — which they perceived as abusive — with respect to wages, job security (requiring cause for termination), job classification, and work conditions.[6] A negotiating committee was appointed, which presented the unions' case to railway officials, who declined to make any substantive changes.[7]
Heads of the two organizations, Grand Chief Peter M. Arthur of the B of LE and Grand Master Frank P. Sargent of the B of LF were called in and together with a reorganized negotiating team further meetings were conducted with the railway still unwilling to increase wages or to alter working conditions.[7] Final appeals to the General Manager and President of the railway were similarly unproductive.[8] A strike was called.
At 4 pm on February 27, 1888, all locomotives of the CB&Q system were delivered to their terminal points and all engineers and firemen of the railway walked off the job and a protracted strike was begun.[9] Shortly after the beginning of the strike, the CB&Q began to move its cars via other parallel railways.[10] A meeting was held in Chicago on March 5 between the two striking organizations, at which it was agreed that the engineers and firemen of these parallel lines should notify their employers that while they would continue to perform all of their other duties, they would henceforth no longer handle CB&Q cars on the trains which they operated.[10]
Strikebreakers were hired by the railway in order to keep the line open, many of whom had little railway experience, making the already dangerous job of coupling and uncoupling cars performed by switchmen in the yards and on the sidings even more deadly.[11] Consequently, the strike against the CB&Q was joined on March 23 by the members of the SMAA.[12] The railway brakemen remained on the job, however, helping to operate the trains of the CB&Q while the three brotherhoods of the running trades were on strike, although the level ill feeling on the part of striking engineers, firemen, and switchmen towards the brakemen was said to be comparatively small.[13]
The strike was ultimately lost by the unions, lending to a general sense of unease with the efficacy of the diffused craft form of labor organization.
Federation efforts
Members of the SMAA, Lodge No. 116 (Kensington, Illinois) during a holiday celebration in the early 1890s.
During the summer and fall of 1888, following the loss of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy strike, officials of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and the Switchmen's Mutual Aid Association began discussions intended to bring about a broad and permanent federation of the brotherhoods of the rolling crafts — engineers, firemen, switchmen, brakemen, and conductors.[14] Articles of confederation were adopted between the two groups.[14]
In February 1889, officers of the extremely pro-federation B of LF, including Grand Master Frank Sargent and Grand Secretary-Treasurer and magazine editor Eugene V. Debs met in Philadelphia to explore an even broader labor alliance, engaging in discussions with representatives of the venerable Knights of Labor (KoL) and the fledgling American Federation of Labor (AF of L) with a view to uniting workers in the railroad industry with the wider population of organized. American workers.[15] Little more than a bland and impotent circular calling for greater labor union emerged from this Philadelphia session.[16]
It was not long until Sargent and Debs' work bore fruit, however, when on June 6, 1898, a new railway federation was established in Chicago called the Supreme Council of the United Orders of Railway Employees.[16] Charter brotherhoods in this organization included the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, the Brotherhood of Railway Brakemen, and the Switchmens' Mutual Aid Association.[16] The two leading brotherhoods, organizations of the comparatively highly paid railway conductors and engineers, chose to stand aside from this new organizing effort.
The Supreme Council was a top-down organization, which centralized the authority of the executive officers of the railway brotherhoods and to thus make possible countervailing power against the centralized railroad systems, united in their own associations, the American Railway Association (ARA) and the General Managers' Association (GMA), established in 1885 and 1886, respectively.[16]
The United Transportation Union (UTU) was a broad-based, transportation labor union that represented about 70,000 active and retired railroad, bus, mass transit, and airline workers in the United States. The UTU was headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio. On August 11, 2014, it merged with the Sheet Metal Workers' International Association (SMWIA) to form the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers, known by the acronym SMART.
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.
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 Southwest railroad strike of 1886 was a labor union strike involving more than 200,000 workers. Beginning on March 1, 1886, railroad workers in five states struck against the Union Pacific and Missouri Pacific railroads, owned by Jay Gould. At least ten people were killed. The unravelling of the strike within two months led directly to the collapse of the Knights of Labor and the formation of the American Federation of Labor.
The Buffalo switchmen's strike was a two-week strike in August 1892 by railroad workers employed by three railroads in Buffalo, New York. The strike collapsed after two weeks when 8,000 state militia entered the town and other unions refused to support the workers.
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.
Charles Elliott Perkins was an American businessman and president of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad. He was so well respected that historian Richard Overton wrote, "From the time that Charles Elliott Perkins became vice president of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy [1876] ... until he resigned as president in 1901, he was the Burlington."
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.
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.
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.
Charles Luna was president of the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen (BRT) from 1963 until 1969. He became the first president of the United Transportation Union, when that organization was formed by merging the BRT and three other railroad unions in 1969.
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.
A switchman or pointsman is a rail transport worker whose original job was to operate various railway switches or points on a railroad. It also refers to a person who assists in moving cars in a railway yard or terminal.
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 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 Brakemen's Brotherhood was an early American railroad brotherhood established in 1873. The group was a secret society organizing railroad brakemen into a fraternal benefit society and trade union. The organization was largely destroyed in the aftermath of the failed Great Railroad Strike of 1877, although it continued to maintain an existence nationwide through the 1880s.
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.
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