Metal and Machinery Workers Industrial Union
Merged into | Mechanics Educational Society of America |
---|---|
Founded | 1907 |
Dissolved | 1950 |
Location | |
Key people | Frank Cedervall |
Affiliations | Industrial Workers of the World, Congress of Industrial Organizations |
Website | Link |
The Metal and Machinery Workers Industrial Union No. 440 (MMWIU) was a
Origins
The earliest recorded local of the MMWIU was in
Cleveland branch
The IWW had organized in
Inevitably, then, the national MMWIU's fates would be bound up with the fate of its Cleveland membership, which boasted a presence at the
Decline
With the passing of the
Frank Cedervall, a proponent of signing the pledge for tactical reasons, then advocated that the MMWIU should disaffiliate from the IWW, as the Lumber Workers Industrial Union had as a result of the E-P split in 1924. He succeeded in leading the 1500-member Cleveland local out of the IWW, to found an independent, single-local MMWIU. This move would tear the IWW-affiliated MMWIU apart and lead to it quickly going defunct, due to the inability of its remaining membership to sustain it.
The Cedervall-led MMWIU would not stay independent long, as it would briefly affiliate with the CIO and rename itself to the Metal and Machinery Workers of America, before merging in 1954 with the Mechanics Educational Society of America, an independent union which itself had been under serious attack by the CIO before eventually affiliating with the CIO itself later that year.[5]
Attempted revival
In 1974, the Chicago branch of the IWW started up a Metal and Machinery Workers Organizing Committee, which launched failed organizing drives at several small metal shops in the city.[4] The committee persisted, however, and ran an organizing drive at Mid-American Machinery in Virden, Illinois. With a majority of worker at Mid-American signing up as members of the union, management instated a lock-out, lawsuits against the union, and firing of several union members. Despite legal as well as direct action tactics (such as picketing equipment sales auctions and a three-month strike in 1978), the campaign dragged on until 1980, when the National Labor Relations Board forced management to negotiate with the union. By this point no union members were left at the shop, as all had either been fired or had moved on to other work, and the campaign failed.[4]
Since then, there have been no significant recorded MMWIU campaigns and the union lies defunct. The Industrial Workers of the World still lists an industrial classification metal and machinery workers under its Department of Manufacture and General Production, which keeps the possibility open for new MMWIU branches being chartered.[6] The union's papers are for the most part archived at the Walter P. Reuther Library in Detroit.
Footnotes
- ^ "IWW Locals". IWW History Project. University of Washington. Retrieved 20 May 2016.
- ^ Wortman, Roy Theodore (1971). The IWW in Ohio, 1905-1950 (Dissertation). Ohio State University.
- ^ a b c "INDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF THE WORLD (IWW)". Encyclopedia of Cleveland History. Cleveland: Case Western Reserve University. Retrieved 20 May 2016.
- ^ a b c "A Time-line of the Industrial Workers of the World". Marxists Internet Archive. Retrieved 20 May 2016.
- ^ "MECHANICS EDUCATIONAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA". Encyclopedia of Cleveland History. Cleveland: Case Western Reserve University. Retrieved 20 May 2016.
- ^ "Department 400 - Manufacture and General Production". Industrial Workers of the World. Retrieved 22 May 2016.
Further reading
- Minutes of the Third Annual Convention of Metal and Machinery Workers Industrial Union No. 440, IWW. n.c. [Chicago]: Industrial Workers of the World, [1921].