U.S. Steel recognition strike of 1901

Last updated
U.S. Steel recognition strike of 1901
Cedar-rapids-evening-gazette-Jul-19-1901-p-1.png
DateAugust 10 – September 14, 1901
GoalsUnion recognition in all plants
Methods Striking
Resulted inUnsuccessful
                                                                      
Parties
Lead figures

T.J. Shaffer

Number
55,000 [1]

The U.S. Steel recognition strike of 1901 was an attempt by the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers (the AA) to reverse its declining fortunes and organize large numbers of new members. The strike failed.

Contents

Background

The AA had formed in 1876. It was a labor union of skilled iron and steel workers which was deeply committed to craft unionism. However, technological advances had reduced the number of skilled workers in both industries.

In 1892, the AA had lost a bitter strike at the Carnegie Steel Company's steel mill in Homestead, Pennsylvania. The Homestead strike, which culminated with a day-long gun battle on July 6 that left 12 dead and dozens wounded, led to a wave of de-unionization. From a high of more than 24,000 members in 1892, union membership had sunk to less than 8,000 by 1900.

Forces prompting the strike

The AA looked for growth in the tin industry, which still required skilled workers. By 1900, the union had organized 75 percent of the sheet metal mills and all but one of the tin mills in the country. [2]

But the AA seriously misjudged both the economics and the technology underlying the tin industry. The formation of the American Tin Plate Company, a monopoly trust, on December 14, 1898, brought a number of nonunion plants into the union facilities of the American Tinplate Company. Daniel G. Reid, primary owner of the tin plate trust, agreed to recognize the AA at the nonunion plants after a token strike in 1899. The formation in March 1900 of the American Sheet Steel Company, another trust, also brought a number of nonunion plants together with unionized facilities. But this time the company refused to recognize the AA in the nonunion plants. Instead, the American Sheet Steel Co. idled its union facilities while keeping its nonunion works running at full speed. [3]

The AA attempted to counteract the power of the trusts by amending its constitution. A clause was added which required every mill in a trust to strike if even one mill in the trust struck. [4]

Beginning of the crisis

The formation of the U.S. Steel trust in 1901 threatened the AA with ruin. U.S. Steel not only combined Elbert Gary and J.P. Morgan's Federal Steel with Andrew Carnegie's steel operations, it also incorporated the plants of the American Tin Plate Co. The AA was confronted with a crisis: It had to organize the plants of U.S. Steel before the corporation, with its comparatively limitless resources, could stop the union drives. But the executive committee of U.S. Steel was equally aware of the threat the AA posed, and the company's board of directors secretly adopted a resolution on June 17, 1901, opposing any unionization attempt. U.S. Steel's Tin Plate subsidiary reneged on promises to recognize the AA on the grounds that the union had not won contracts at every plant owned by the American Sheet Steel Co. Sheet Steel executives, meanwhile, not only refused to recognize the union at its nonunion plants but also began withdrawing recognition and refusing to bargain at its unionized plants. [5]

The strike

The AA tried to apply pressure on Sheet Steel by organizing U.S. Steel—the company which supplied Sheet Steel with most of its raw material. The AA settled on staging a recognition strike. U.S. Steel executives, worried about the impact of a strike during a high-demand time of the year and angered that Sheet Steel executives had provoked a strike with stridently anti-union actions, demanded a compromise. Subsequently, Sheet Steel officers agreed on July 13, 1901 to recognize the union at 18 of the company's 23 nonunion plants. But AA president T.J. Shaffer rejected the deal; after having demanded the unionization of every Sheet Steel plant, he would not be satisfied with anything less. A meeting between Morgan and Shaffer (accompanied by AA secretary John Williams) resulted in an additional wage agreement. But this wage agreement, which covered only the existing unionized plants, was rejected by the AA executive board. [6]

Logansport-daily-journal-Aug-16-1901-p-1.png

At a meeting on August 3, 1901, Morgan refused to renegotiate the wage agreement. It had been agreed to by Shaffer and Williams, and he considered it binding. The AA executive board ordered Shaffer to call a strike, to begin on August 10. The strike was crushed. At several plants, workers refused to turn out at all. Union members in Illinois and Pennsylvania turned out in small numbers. Unionized facilities at the National Steel and National Tube subsidiaries turned out almost to a man, but the overall effect on U.S. Steel was too weak. Strikebreakers were pouring into plants by the thousands, and shuttered works were reopening. Shaffer appealed to Samuel Gompers, asking for American Federation of Labor support and the calling of a national labor conference to make the strike the federation's main issue. Gompers refused. [7]

The strike against U.S. Steel ended on September 14, 1901. The AA settled for terms far worse than those offered in August. Only plants which had started and ended the strike were covered, which meant that the union lost recognition at 15 plants. The company even won a pledge from the union not to organize any plant not already unionized, and to reject any offer of affiliation from a unionized plant. [8]

In March 1903, the American Sheet Steel Co. merged with U.S. Steel, ensuring its future as a nonunion company.[ citation needed ]

Aftermath

In A History of American Labor, Joseph G. Rayback has written,

After the strike was lost, the Amalgamated charged Gompers with "lukewarmness" and Mitchell of the U.M.W. with failure to keep a promise to support steelworkers. Although Gompers and Mitchell were exonerated by a committee of the federation, the indictment made an impression. It served to focus attention upon Gompers' and Mitchell's association with industrialists in the National Civic Federation. The more aggressive labor leaders began to reveal a suspicion of the alliance; socialists became convinced that Gompers had sold out; even some middle-class reformers sympathetic to labor began to doubt. Such attitudes became the basis for Mitchell's removal as U.M.W. head in 1908 and for attacks upon Gompers by radical labor elements until his death in the mid-twenties. They served to retard the A.F.L.'s development for more than a generation. [9]

The AA never recovered from the U.S. Steel strike. It turned strongly conservative, hoping through submissiveness and cooperation to maintain its few remaining contracts.[ citation needed ]

U.S. Steel slowly dismantled AA unions in its plants. When the company merged its National Steel and American Steel Hoop subsidiaries into its Carnegie Steel arm in 1903, the union found itself servicing contracts with the now-nonexistent Steel Hoop company rather than Carnegie. In the depression of 1904, the Carnegie Company demanded significant wage cuts. The union balked and struck, but by December the strike had been broken and the union had lost almost all of its Western affiliates. U.S. Steel idled AA mills whenever possible, breaking the union through attrition. [10]

Local AA unions often assisted in their own destruction. To make up for lower wages, AA members often worked overtime at regular pay rates or violated restrictions on speed-ups—in violation of their own union contracts. AA locals agreed time and again to wage cuts, eliminating the positive wage differential union shops had over nonunion facilities. This discouraged non-members from joining the union. U.S. Steel drove down wages so much that independent, nonunion plants had to cut salaries in order to stay competitive. [11]

By 1909, membership in the AA had sunk to 6,300, and the union was finished as a force in the American labor movement. [12]

See also

Notes

  1. "Des Moines Daily News". newspaperarchive.com. Des Moines Daily News. July 31, 1901. Retrieved 2023-09-25.
  2. Brody, 1969, p. 60.
  3. Brody, 1969, pp. 60–61.
  4. Brody, 1969, p. 61.
  5. Brody, 1969, pp. 62–63; Dubofsky and Dulles, p. 174.
  6. Brody, 1969, pp. 63–66; Rayback, p. 218.
  7. Dubofsky and Dulles, p. 174; Brody, 1969, p. 66.
  8. Foner, pp. 374–75; Brody, 1969, pp. 66–67.
  9. Rayback, pp. 222–223.
  10. Rayback, p. 218; Brody, 1969, pp. 68–69.
  11. Brody, 1969, pp. 68–69.
  12. Foner, p. 218.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John L. Lewis</span> American miner and labor leader (1880–1969)

John Llewellyn Lewis was an American leader of organized labor who served as president of the United Mine Workers of America (UMW) from 1920 to 1960. A major player in the history of coal mining, he was the driving force behind the founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), which established the United Steel Workers of America and helped organize millions of other industrial workers in the 1930s, during the Great Depression. After resigning as head of the CIO in 1941, thus keeping his promise of resignation if President Franklin Delano Roosevelt won the 1940 election against Wendell Willkie, Lewis took the United Mine Workers out of the CIO in 1942 and in 1944 took the union into the American Federation of Labor (AFL).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Homestead strike</span> 1892 labor strike

The Homestead strike, also known as the Homestead steel strike, Homestead massacre, or Battle of Homestead, was an industrial lockout and strike that began on July 1, 1892, culminating in a battle in which strikers defeated private security agents on July 6, 1892. The governor responded by sending in the National Guard to protect strikebreakers. The dispute occurred at the Homestead Steel Works in the Pittsburgh-area town of Homestead, Pennsylvania, between the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers and the Carnegie Steel Company. The final result was a major defeat for the union strikers and a setback for their efforts to unionize steelworkers. The battle was a pivotal event in U.S. labor history.

Industrial unionism is a trade union organising 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 bargaining and in strike situations. De Leon believed that militarized Industrial unions would be the vehicle of class struggle.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">U.S. Steel</span> American steel-producing company

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 Central Europe. The company produces and sells steel products, including flat-rolled and tubular products for customers in industries across automotive, construction, consumer, electrical, industrial equipment, distribution, and energy. Operations also include iron ore and coke production facilities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Samuel Gompers</span> American labor union leader (1850–1924)

Samuel Gompers was a British-born American cigar maker, labor union leader and a key figure in American labor history. Gompers founded the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and served as the organization's president from 1886 to 1894, and from 1895 until his death in 1924. He promoted harmony among the different craft unions that comprised the AFL, trying to minimize jurisdictional battles. He promoted thorough organization and collective bargaining in order to secure shorter hours and higher wages, which he considered the essential first steps to emancipating labor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American Federation of Labor</span> Labor organization from 1886 to 1955

The American Federation of Labor was a national federation of labor unions in the United States that continues today as the AFL–CIO. It was founded in Columbus, Ohio, in 1886 by an alliance of craft unions eager to provide mutual support and disappointed in the Knights of Labor. Samuel Gompers was elected the full-time president at its founding convention and was re-elected every year except one until his death in 1924. He became the major spokesperson for the union movement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Labor history of the United States</span>

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philip Murray</span> Scottish-born American labor leader (1886–1952)

Philip Murray was a Scottish-born steelworker and an American labor leader. He was the first president of the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC), the first president of the United Steelworkers of America (USWA), and the longest-serving president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions</span> Former trade union of the United States

The Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada (FOTLU) was a federation of labor unions created on November 15, 1881, at Turner Hall in Pittsburgh. It changed its name to the American Federation of Labor (AFL) on December 8, 1886.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Labor unions in the United States</span>

Labor unions represent United States workers in many industries recognized under US labor law since the 1935 enactment of the National Labor Relations Act. Their activity today centers on collective bargaining over wages, benefits, and working conditions for their membership, and on representing their members in disputes with management over violations of contract provisions. Larger labor unions also typically engage in lobbying activities and electioneering at the state and federal level.

These are References for Labor unions in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1919 General Steel Strike</span> 1919–20 nationwide steelworkers strike in the United States

The Great Steel Strike of 1919 was an attempt by the American Federation of Labor to organize the leading company, United States Steel, in the American steel industry. The AFL formed a coalition of 24 unions, all of which had grown rapidly during World War I. In the lead role would be the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers (AA) with a five-member steering committee. The strike began on September 22, 1919, and finally collapsed on January 8, 1920. The opposition led by Elbert H. Gary, president of U.S. Steel had triumphed.

The Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC) was one of two precursor labor organizations to the United Steelworkers. It was formed by the CIO on June 7, 1936. It disbanded in 1942 to become the United Steel Workers of America. The Steel Labor was the official paper of SWOC.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers</span> Former American steelworkers union (1876–1942)

Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers (AA) was an American labor union formed in 1876 to represent iron and steel workers. It partnered with the Steel Workers Organizing Committee of the CIO, in November 1935. Both organizations disbanded May 22, 1942, to form a new organization, the United Steelworkers.

Before 1800 A.D., the iron and steel industry was located where raw material, power supply and running water were easily available. After 1950, the iron and steel industry began to be located on large areas of flat land near sea ports. The history of the modern steel industry began in the late 1850s. Since then, steel has become a staple of the world's industrial economy. This article is intended only to address the business, economic and social dimensions of the industry, since the bulk production of steel began as a result of Henry Bessemer's development of the Bessemer converter, in 1857. Previously, steel was very expensive to produce, and was only used in small, expensive items, such as knives, swords and armor.

Labor federation competition in the United States is a history of the labor movement, considering U.S. labor organizations and federations that have been regional, national, or international in scope, and that have united organizations of disparate groups of workers. Union philosophy and ideology changed from one period to another, conflicting at times. Government actions have controlled, or legislated against particular industrial actions or labor entities, resulting in the diminishing of one labor federation entity or the advance of another.

Cyrus S. Ching was a Canadian-American who became an American industrialist, federal civil servant, and noted labor union mediator. He was the first director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) and the Wage Stabilization Board.

The Lackawanna Steel Company was an American steel manufacturing company that existed as an independent company from 1840 to 1922, and as a subsidiary of the Bethlehem Steel company from 1922 to 1983. Founded by the Scranton family, it was once the second-largest steel company in the world. Scranton, Pennsylvania, developed around the company's original location. When the company moved to a suburb of Buffalo, New York, in 1902, it stimulated the founding of the city of Lackawanna.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Benjamin Franklin Fairless</span> American steel executive

Benjamin Franklin Fairless was an American steel company executive. He was president of a wide range of steel companies during a turbulent and formative period in the American steel industry. His roles included President of Central Alloy Steel from 1928 to 1930; First Vice President of Republic Steel from 1930 to 1935; President of the Carnegie-Illinois Steel Company from 1935 to 1938; and then President (1938–1955), and later Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the board of directors (1952–1955) of U.S. Steel, the largest steel corporation in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Strikes in the United States in the 1930s</span>

Strikes in the United States in the 1930s played a major role in reshaping the economy as it recovered from the Great Depression. Unions gained millions of members for unions in the American Federation of Labor (AFL)and the new Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). Energized by successful strikes in major industries with the help of New Deal agencies, the unions played a major role in Democratic Party efforts to reelect President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936, as well as 1940 and 1944.

References