AMALGAMATED MEAT CUTTERS AND BUTCHERS LOCAL 431

Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butchers Local 431. Chartered by the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in 1897 to consolidate seven local unions in Chicago, the national union was strongly committed to craft unionism. Its 56 departments each represented a different worker in the meatpacking industry. Workers in a given craft in a city had their own council, executive board, business agent and contract. The union was so divided internally that some members would continue working while others in the same city were on strike.

The union led one of the most notable strikes of the early 20th century in the United States. On July 12, 1904, 18,000 union members in Chicago walked off the job to win higher wages. They were joined by most of the other unions in the city. The union had actually reached agreement on an 18.5 cents-an-hour minimum wage for unskilled workers on July 6, but the Employers' Association of Chicago broke an agreement to not discriminate against union members.

AFL President Samuel Gompers begged the union not to strike, but the Amalgamated walked out. Gompers subsequently refused to support the strike as did two AFL unions— the Stationary Firemen and the Stationary Engineers. The city's ice-houses stayed in operation, and most meat remained frozen and unspoiled.

The Employers' Association helped break the strike by hiring thousands of unemployed African American workers. On August 18, 1904, when several black cattle herders chased stray stock outside the city's main stockyards, angry union members surrounded them and pelted the men with stones. Roughly 150 policemen formed a cordon to protect the strikebreakers and angry union members replied with rocks and gunfire. More than 4,000 union members rioted.

The strike ended in defeat for the union on September 6, 1904. The international union itself would have been broken if not for the intervention of social reformer Jane Addams. She met with company president J. Ogden Armour and convinced him to offer the union a contract. Upton Sinclair's landmark novel, The Jungle, depicted the 1904 strike.

The union also conducted a major strike from late 1921 through February 1922. This too as considered a failure. Two black strikebreakers were lynched.

Over time, the Amalgamated absorbed several other unions, including the International Fur and Leather Workers Union (1955), National Agriculture Workers Union (1960), and the United Packinghouse Workers of America (1968). In 1979, the AMCBW merged with the Retail Clerks International Union to form the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW).

The 1957 through 1968 Dubuque City Directory listed 111 W. 6th.

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Source:

"Amalgamated Meat Cutters," Wikipedia, Online: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amalgamated_Meat_Cutters