Documenting Labor Inside and Out
Organizing
Other useful reports made by a local to its parent union discuss
organizing activities, such as the 1949 report from the manager of the Capital
District Joint Board to the Textile Workers Union of America pictured at the right.
Reports such as this not only provide information on organizing and strike activities
in the area, but also the general employment situation (the report notes several plant
shut-downs) in the region or industry.
Reports from the parent union to the local can be equally informative. For example, a letter from a contracts analyst at the American Newspaper Guild to the president of the Tri-City Newspaper Guild included in the records of The Newspaper Guild, Albany, New York, Local 34, candidly assessed the prospects for American Newspaper Guild organizing in Schenectady.
The organizing activities of labor organizations can also be
documented by the flyers they distribute among the workers they seek to organize.
Sometimes, organizing activities have to be conducted in secret in order to avoid
repercussions from management. As a result, organizing materials distributed
among workers may not be saved. This is unfortunate, as flyers and other distributed
materials document the approach used by the union to encourage workers to organize and a
hint as to the atmosphere in which it sought to organize workers.
Two flyers used by organizers of the Textile Workers
Union of America (TWUA) at the American Felt Company in Newburgh, New York, are
shown on the left. The TWUA organizers sought to remind Newburgh workers
that the benefits achieved through union-negotiated contracts at other American Felt
Company plants would only partially apply to them. To receive the full benefit, workers
in Newburgh needed to organize as well. The announcement for a 1967 meeting
of workers who had signed TWUA membership cards suggests the clandestine nature of TWUA's
organizing activities.
|
