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User:Solstrsyn/Independent Union of All Workers

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Independent Union of All Workers
Most locals merged into
SuccessorLocal P-9, UFCW
FoundedNovember 1933 (1933-11)
DissolvedEarly 1937
HeadquartersAustin, MN
Location
Key people
  • Frank Ellis
PublicationThe Unionist (weekly)

The Independent Union of All Workers (IUAW) (1933–1937) was an independent labor union in the upper Midwest United States. It originated in the Hormel meatpacking plant in Austin, Minnesota, with help from former Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) organizer Frank Ellis.

For three days in November 1933, non-unionized workers in the Hormel hog kill took over the plant in the first sit-down strike of the 1930s.[a] Many of the plant workers were young socialist radicals. After workers won the strike, Hormel agreed to recognize their newly-formed union, the IUAW. The union's goal was to organize all wage-earners in the area.[1]

The IAUW was inspired by the IWW's "One Big Union" principle. They emphasized solidarity, shop floor organization, union democracy, internal life, and culture. They unionized colleagues in every Austin establishment, then throughout the region in over a dozen communities.[2] They relied on direct action, like slowdowns, stoppages, and workplace protests, to gain leverage on work rules, production speed, and compensation.[3]

(culture, farmers, women)

In 1937, the IUAW was thrown into crisis and voted to dissolve itself. Most of its locals joined with existing Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) organizing committees. This reorganization broke most of the direct ties between former IUAW branches and resulted in several small branches dissolving.[4] However, the former IUAW members carried on the "dynamics, strategies, and values" of the IUAW in their new unions for many years.[3]

The original local at the Hormel plant, best known as Local P-9, and existing today as United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 9, took on Hormel and the UFCW leadership in a 1985 strike lasting over a year. The strike was defeated when Democratic–Farmer–Labor Governor Rudy Perpich called in the National Guard to break up picket lines.

Origins (1915–1932)

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Hormel Foods has long dominated rural Austin's economy with its pork and beef processing. It was founded in 1891 by George A. Hormel, a respected figure within the community and a perfectionist who ran most aspects of the enterprise himself. Eventually, the company grew too large for George himself to solve disputes with labor. In 1915, the Amalgamated Meat Cutters (AMC), a division of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), organized the plant; however, says Larry Englemann, the effort "languished for more than six years without achieving much."[5]

The AMC called a strike nationwide in 1921 to maintain high World War I–era wages. However, the Austin local was given permission to skip the strike, perhaps due to the local's weakness and the ability of such a strike to disrupt Austin's only significant industry. Additionally, George Hormel agreed to match any raise made by the Big Six packers.[5] The nationwide strike was "thoroughly defeated,"[6] and the Austin local disappeared in mid-1922. "The lesson learned from the experience, it seems, was that under Hormel's management, workers could receive the benefits of unionization without any of its obligations," writes Englemann.[5]

(In 1929 economy collapsed. Renewal of class struggle and unionism.)

Formation (1933)

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By 1933, Hormel employed 2,700 of Austin's 17,000 residents. This gave new company head Jay Catherwood Hormel, George's son, great influence over the local economy and politics. While Jay called himself a "benevolent dictator," says Englemann, workers more often called the arrangement "sheer tyranny."[5]

Growth (1934–1936)

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class=notpageimage|
Extent of IUAW organization.
Legend
  Austin, MN
  IUAW local union
  IUAW collaborators

Peter Rachleff writes,

From its base in the Hormel plant, the IUAW spread throughout Austin and into other communities. Many of the rank-and-file packinghouse workers – out of the hog kill, the beef kill, the loading dock, and the sausage department – put in long hours as volunteer union organizers. In Austin, the union reached its goal of 100 percent unionization. It included "units" of truckers and warehouse workers, barbers and beauticians, waiters, waitresses, and bartenders, construction tradesmen and laborers, WPA laborers, automobile mechanics and service station attendants, laundry and dry cleaning workers, retail clerks and municipal employees. From beauty shops with three employees, to the local Montgomery Wards, every retail and service esta</ref>blishment in Austin came under contract with the IUAW.[7]

The IUAW attempted to organize "wall-to-wall," usually starting with the largest concentration of industrial workers in town and then using their collective power – as organizers, picketers, consumers, and voters – to organize others. Their efforts – expressed in organizing drives, strikes, strike support, local politics, and various cultural activities – threatened entrenched power throughout the region.[8]

Their militant reputation – and their success – caught the imaginations of thousands of other workers, first in Austin and nearby communities like Albert Lea, and then across Minnesota and into North and South Dakota, Iowa, and Wisconsin. The IUAW sent teams of rank-and-file volunteer organizers into other communities, organized mass meetings featuring the kind of soapbox speaking that had been practiced by the IWW, and then offered practical support from picket lines to food pantries. In some communities they published newspapers, ran candidates for school board and city council, and promoted the vision of a society and culture in which workers were leaders.[3]

Roger Horowitz writes,

The IUAW systematically extended its presence and influence in the town of Austin as well. Leftists started a weekly paper – aptly titled The Unionist – in 1935 to counter the pronouncements of Austin's elite. "It was the first time the revered and sanctimonious judgement of the Austin Herald and the Main Street element had been challenged," [hog kill worker Frank Schultz] later wrote. "To that group, the advent of The Unionist was a revolution in itself." Edited by Svend Godfredson and distributed free to IUAW members, the paper served as an influential link with thousands of workers and was the union's voice on problems at work and in the town. Much to their displeasure, Austin businessmen found anti-union deeds prominently criticized, along with the actions of overly uncompromising Hormel supervisors.[9]

Wilson J. Warren writes,

The CIO’s Packinghouse Workers’ Organizing Committee grew out of three major organizing efforts in Austin, Minnesota, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and Chicago. Austin, the small-town headquarters of Hormel, experienced one of the most successful independent union movements of the 1930s. The Independent Union of All Workers (IUAW), formed in 1933, grew out of the sense of isolation, frustration, and poverty that workers in this small city perceived during the depths of the Great Depression. Jay Hormel, son of founder George A. Hormel, also exerted heavy paternalist pressure on workers. A core group of militants, particularly Joe Ollman, a Trotskyist hog splitter, and Frank Ellis, a foreman in the hog-casings department and former Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) member, guided the IUAW’s growth. The IUAW garnered support once Hormel mandated a paycheck deduction policy for pensions, life insurance, and the Community IUAWChest in July 1933. Success in a November 1933 strike, partly due to Minnesota’s Farm-Labor party Governor Floyd Olson’s support for binding arbitration, spurred the IUAW’s ability to gain affiliates in several communities in southern Minnesota, eastern South Dakota, North Dakota, and much of Iowa. Before narrowly agreeing to join the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) movement in 1937, the IUAW had consolidated its power in the Hormel plant, published a weekly paper, organized a variety of cultural activities, and organized workers in several other Austin businesses.[10]

With varying degrees of success, the IUAW established "local unions" in Austin, Albert Lea, Faribault, Thief River Falls, Bemidji, Owatonna, Mankato, and South St. Paul, Minnesota; Mitchell and Madison, South Dakota; Fargo, North Dakota; Alma, Wisconsin; and Waterloo, Mason City, Algona, Ottumwa, Fort Dodge, and Estherville, Iowa. They also supported union campaigns in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota; Madison, Wisconsin; Cedar Rapids and Sioux City, Iowa; Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Omaha, Nebraska; Kansas City, Missouri; and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.[11]

Dissolution (1937)

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Between 1937 and 1943, IUAW locals joined existing CIO unions – like the Packinghouse Workers Organizing Committee (PWOC), later the United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA); the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC), later the United Steelworkers (USW); the United Mine Workers (UMW); the United Automobile Workers (UAW) – and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), an AFL union.[3]

Legacy

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See also: Hormel strike

A Hormel union leader was elected mayor of Austin in 1942.[12]

Strike of 1985–86.

See also

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Notes

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  1. ^ Quote from rachleff... Predates...
  1. ^ Rachleff 1993, pp. 27–31.
  2. ^ Rachleff 1993, pp. 32–34.
  3. ^ a b c d Rachleff 2007.
  4. ^ Rachleff 1993, p. 41.
  5. ^ a b c d Englemann 1974.
  6. ^ Halpern, Rick (2005). "Packinghouse Unions". Encyclopedia of Chicago. Chi. Hist. Mus. Archived from the original on 9 January 2019.
  7. ^ Rachleff 1993, p. 32.
  8. ^ Rachleff 1993, p. 28.
  9. ^ Horowitz 1997, p. 49.
  10. ^ Warren 2007.
  11. ^ Rachleff 1993, p. 34; Rachleff 1996, p. 53.
  12. ^ Horowitz 1997, p. 37.

Bibliography

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Categories

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