Encyclopedia Dubuque
"Encyclopedia Dubuque is the online authority for all things Dubuque, written by the people who know the city best.”
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Affiliated with the Local History Network of the State Historical Society of Iowa, and the Iowa Museum Association.
LABOR MOVEMENT
This entry is being edited.
LABOR MOVEMENT. The rise of the organized labor movement in Dubuque began with the rise of industrialization in the 1850s. Dubuque's first union belonged to the typographers during that decade. (1) A meeting of all the "mechanics and laborers" of the city was called for July 28, 1864 at the DUBUQUE COUNTY COURTHOUSE for "the purpose of forming an association to protect themselves against the infringements of capital against labor." (2) An early union, the KNIGHTS OF LABOR, was founded in 1869 in Philadelphia. By 1888 the Knights had 30,000 members in Iowa. (3) Its rallying cry, "An injury to one is the concern of all," appealed to workers without regard to skill, race, or gender. (4)
Dubuque was the largest manufacturing city in Iowa during the 1880s. A profile of the city's working-class population in the mid-1880s indicates that a typical worker was employed ten hours daily with wage rates determined by age, job, and sex. Women and children, involved in low-paying factory, retail and service occupations, earned the least. Wages earned by women average one-third to one-half those of men. Boys received less than women and girls made less than boys. Common male occupations included blacksmiths, carpenters, machinists, railway workers, and teamsters. Unskilled male workers earned from $1.00 to $1.50 daily as compared to bricklayers who earned from $3.75 to $4.00. Common laborers rented homes while between one-third and one-half of the tradesmen owned their own homes. (5)
Prior to 1885, trade unions in Dubuque existed among printers, cigarmakers, locomotive firemen and engineers, tailors and bricklayers. Membership varied from twenty to forty. These groups protected their independence, decided work rules and wage scales, avoided politics, and held regular meetings. (6)
The lowest paying jobs belonged to women and children who worked in service and retail jobs. Men earned one-third more than women. Women received more than boys who earned more than girls. AFRICAN AMERICANS were left with work as cooks, servants or porters. Close supervision in the workplace meant little rest time, but many opportunities to be injured or die. Bad ventilation, explosions, fires, and unsafe machinery were common. Faced with such working conditions, workers attempted to band together.
Attempts to organize and bargain for wages and working conditions required courage. Opposition to organized labor came from company management that resisted even recognizing union spokespersons. Union organizers were dismissed. Lockouts and strikebreakers were employed; labor organizers often found public officials tending to side with management.
One of the first major breakthroughs in labor organizing in Dubuque came in the 1880s when the Knights of Labor organized building tradesmen and women garment workers at the H. B. GLOVER COMPANY and railroad workers on the Chicago and Northwestern.
In 1887 efforts of Dubuque manufacturers to lobby the Iowa Legislature to block passage of Iowa's first factory inspection acts led the Knights to organize a political party. The Labor Reform Party successfully elected Dubuque's first "labor" MAYOR, captured control of the city council and carried all other citywide offices. The January 1, 1887 of the Industrial Leader encouraged readers to follow independent political action. In February, a full slate of labor candidates was assembled for the municipal election. The Labor Reform Party declared the intention:
to have laws made and executed in the interest
of justice, of morality, and of productive labor;
so that the workers, who produce all the wealth,
may not sink into deeper poverty, while the idle
drones, who produce none, revel in increased
opulence. (7)
Party planks addressed extravagance in the budget, inequitable taxes, rising debt, the contract labor system of performing street work, and monopolistic practices of 'corrupt rings and political tricksters.' (8)
The results of the election were surprising. The Republican and Democratic strategy of portraying themselves and better for the general public failed. The entire Knights of Labor ticket were elected. Christian Anton VOELKER was elected mayor and John STAFFORD became the city recorder. (9)
The new council took controversial positions. In May the entire police force was discharged amid charges that it had been used to harass workers. Half of the new force was former officers and the other half all Knights. The subcontracting of labor was street work was abolished and replaced with day labor and the council gave a 40% increase in the daily wage for city work from $1.25 to $1.75 which was higher than wages paid to private sector labor. (10) The council also rejected the offer of the county supervisors to have county jail prisoners to city work. The council responded by claiming the use of such labor depressed wages, offered unfair competition, and was nothing other than involuntary servitude. (11)
When the Knights swept into office, Dubuque's total indebtedness exceeded $800,000--the highest of any city in Iowa. Working on their pledge to begin a more equitable system of taxation, the council instituted a 20% increase in city tax assessments. As a result, the indebtedness dropped about 15% allowing community projects that had been stopped to pay for debt service. (12)
During the time the Knights held public office, the goods and services produced in the city increased 20%; the local transportation system improved with two new railway lines, a new ferry company, a high bridge across the MISSISSIPPI RIVER; and a new fire alarm system was installed. (13)
Despite the achievements, political power for the Knights was soon ended. The local press and the Board of Trade attacked the new political party which was split by potential offers to join with one of the two major political parties. Within the Knights, arguments developed between those who believed in getting elected and those who felt lobbying was more effective. (14)
The fall election of 1887 brought Democrats back into power while the labor vote declined by 45%. In 1888 the Knights did not offer a separate ticket of candidates. The Citizen's Party of half Republicans and half Democrats won nearly all the city offices and most of the council seats. The Knights were never again to play an important role in local politics and they left independent politics in 1890. (15)
The unexpected death of John Stafford, weakened patronage of the cooperatives, and election defeats all conspired to further weaken the Knights locally. In one of its last efforts, the Knights led the efforts in forming the DUBUQUE TRADES AND LABOR CONGRESS, a citywide labor organization in July 1888. (16)
Union organizing efforts from 1890 to 1910 focused on the building trades. Painters, iron workers, bricklayers, carpenters, sheet metal workers, and plumbers organized independent locals for each trade. Together these locals formed the Building Trades Council. The Teamsters became one of Iowa's strongest unions through help they received from the building trades.
By 1910 the estimated fifty unions operating in Dubuque made the city Iowa's labor movement stronghold. The local unions gained additional strength when they joined to form the Dubuque Trades and Labor Congress. The largest unions were those of the coopers, retail clerks, cigar makers, brewery workers, machinists, iron molders, and street railway employees. Despite several organizing campaigns, mill workers at the sash, door and blind factories of FARLEY AND LOETSCHER MANUFACTURING COMPANY and Carr, Ryder, and Adams remained unorganized until the mid-1930s.
Through WORLD WAR I, the role of organized labor in the business climate of Dubuque was controversial. Powerful unions were charged with obtaining wages too high for Dubuque manufacturers to compete economically with other major Iowa employers or to attract new industry. The HARMONY MOVEMENT, according to labor leaders, sought to weaken efforts to unionize companies. Labor advocates charged that some local businessmen conspired to keep new industries out of Dubuque to maintain a large pool of potential labor.
Hard times for organized labor came during the 1920s. The" open shop" concept in which there was no recognition of organized labor was, it was claimed, renamed the "American Plan" to hide its anti-union nature. The machinists at KLAUER MANUFACTURING COMPANY and A.Y.MCDONALD MANUFACTURING COMPANY lost strikes.
The GREAT DEPRESSION led to the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt as President of the United States and the start of the New Deal. Of all of these programs, the one which affected organized labor the most was the National Recovery Administration, called by its initials, the N. R. A. This agency allowed businessmen to fix prices and allocate production quotas through codes of competition. Included in the law was the famous section, Section 7(a), which provided that every code of fair competition must provide employees the right to form and join unions of their own choosing in order to bargain collectively with their employers. Section 7(a) served as a spark for the labor movement. Immediately, workers across the nation again began to form unions. (17)
In 1933 the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen organized at the DUBUQUE PACKING COMPANY. Bell Telephone workers were organized later in the decade by the Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO). A bitter strike against ROSHEK'S DEPARTMENT STORE led to renewed strength in the Teamster's Union. The Upholsters campaigned to organize FLEXSTEEL INDUSTRIES, INC. and the farm equipment workers. In 1948 the United Auto Workers were successful at the JOHN DEERE DUBUQUE WORKS.
Recent years have witnessed fewer strikes and increased labor-management cooperation as the threat to American jobs is seen from foreign competition. Cooperation between labor and management led to the development of the DUBUQUE AREA LABOR-MANAGEMENT COUNCIL. Leadership of organized labor through these changing times has been provided by such leaders as Hugh D. CLARK, John GROGAN and Mel MAAS.
On July 1, 1975 collective bargaining was approved in Iowa for public school employees. Teachers in the DUBUQUE COMMUNITY SCHOOL DISTRICT voted to have the DUBUQUE EDUCATION ASSOCIATION, a representative of the National Education Association, represent them and the first negotiated agreement with the District was written.
One glaring exception to the labor-company cooperation was the history of the Dubuque Packing Company and the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 150-A. In 1980 "the Pack" was a major force in the economy of Dubuque, one of nine cities nationwide in which the company had plants. Workers "on the line" earned an average of $25,000 in annual wages plus an additional $11,000 in fringe benefits according to company estimates. This included an average of five weeks of vacation per year.
In 1980 the Dubuque Packing Company claimed to have lost $9.9 million primarily through its beef operations. Of the 115 men working in the beef kill, the youngest had 21 years of seniority resulting in a large number of benefits the company had to pay. The company wanted the production standard increased from 115.8 head of cattle per hour increased to 160. Union officials noted that with incentive pay, the workers were already slaughtering more than 115.8 but not 160. Union officials acknowledged that the company could build a one-story facility increasing efficiency over the five-story Dubuque plant were carcasses had to be moved from floor to floor. They also agreed that the company would probably gain from property tax concessions from any community near a new plant and that younger workers would cost less.
Blaming a changing market, high wages, and inefficient equipment, the company asked for wage and benefit concessions and closed parts of the Dubuque plant promising only to "maintain a presence" in Dubuque. The hog kill was closed in 1981 with a loss of 1,400 jobs when the company relocated the operations to Rochelle, Illinois. (See NLRB ruling below.)
In April 1982, officials of Dubuque Packing Company announced they would close the Dubuque plant on October 16th. This action had the potential of creating unemployment for 1,200 workers and possibly raising Dubuque's unemployment rate to 17.3 percent.
On May 12, 1982 United Food and Commercial Workers Local 150-A members voted to reject the company's latest 11-point benefit and concessions package. Mel MAAS stated the workers "had enough and decided the company was going to close the plant regardless." The concessions would have included a drop of base wages from $9.00 to $8.00, a loss of a week in vacation time, a limit on yearly vacations to three weeks, and an increase in worker payment of their medical insurance. (18)
Workers were angered by the closing. As early as 1974, Dubuque Pack had purchased new packing plants like one in Mankato it had leased since 1972. (19) Expansion in Mankato had included a new warehouse, installation of a rendering system and growth in the stockyards. (20) Union members in Dubuque considered such activities as threats used by the company to force wage concessions in Dubuque.
In the fall of 1982, the President and Chairman of Dubuque Packing Company Charles E. Stoltz sold the packing plant and its fleur-de-lis trademark for $30.5 million to a group which included Robert Henry WAHLERT. The packing plant resumed operations as FDL FOODS INC. The sale resulted in approximately five hundred employees being forced to accept lower wages or early retirement.
In 1984 a district court ruled that the company had to pay full retirement benefits to eligible employees. When the company was sold, officials indicated that they wanted to take away some of the employees health, medical, and insurance benefits. The court ruled that the company should comply with an arbitrator's decision in 1983 and pay the fees of the attorney representing the union.
In 1985 the headquarters was moved to Omaha, Nebraska to be more centrally located to its other plants, which were processing primarily beef at that time. The company again flourished and was later sold in a leverage buyout to BeefAmerica, a firm controlled by Eli Jacobs. Its gelatin operations were sold to the French company Sanofi. BeefAmerica went out of business in 1998 following a recall and a strike.
America's unions received an important announcement on June 14, 1991 as a result of company actions taken at the packing company. The National Labor Relations Board, in a unanimous ruling, found that the Dubuque Packing Company had violated federal labor law by refusing to negotiate with union workers over the movement of the hog kill operations from Dubuque to Rochelle, Illinois. (21)
The U. S. Court of Appeals said that the case posed "hard questions--some of the most polarizing questions in contemporary labor law." It then referred the case back to the NLRB for clarification of the bargaining obligation issue. The ruling placed the burden of proof on the employers as to why they should be free of bargaining with their unions when they choose to relocate. (22)
Dave Baker, president of General Drivers and Helpers Union Local 421 said in January 1991 that he was contacted by employees of the DUBUQUE CASINO BELLE in November of 1991. Iowa's riverboat gambling law then required that employees had to be paid 25% more than the federal minimum wage. Iowa's minimum wage increased forty cents in January, 1992 but the federal minimum had remained the same. (23)
On April 13, 2010 the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) announced it had assumed responsibility for the underfunded pension plan covering nearly 1,300 former employees and retirees of the defunct Dubuque Packing Co. (24)
The PBGC stepped in because the Dubuque Packing Co. Supplemental Pension Plan faced abandonment as its board of administration prepared to disband. The board had remained as plan administrator after Dubuque Packing liquidated and dissolved in Chapter 7 bankruptcy. It was announced that retirees would continue to receive their monthly benefit payments without interruption, and other workers would receive their pensions when they were eligible to retire. (25)
The pension plan was 36 percent funded, with about $1.9 million in assets and nearly $5.2 million in benefit liabilities, according to PBGC estimates. The agency expected to cover the $3.3 million shortfall, and would take over the assets and use insurance funds to pay guaranteed benefits earned under the plan, which ended on March 31, 2010. The PBGC became trustee of the plan on April 8, 2010. (26)
The PBGC sent trusteeship notification letters to all plan participants. Under federal pension law, the maximum guaranteed pension at age 65 for participants in plans that terminated in 2010 was $54,000 per year. The maximum guaranteed amount was lower for those who retired earlier or elected survivor benefits. The PBGC expected that pension payments to retirees and beneficiaries under the Dubuque Packing plan will not be reduced by guarantee limits. (27)
In 2012 the DUBUQUE WORKERS' ACADEMY was offered by the University of Iowa, Dubuque Federation of Labor and the Iowa Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO
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Source:
1. "Labor Unions in Iowa," Iowa Pathways, Online: http://www.iptv.org/iowapathways/myPath.cfm?ounid=ob_000290
2. "Labor vs. Capital," Dubuque Democratic Herald, July 27, 1864, p. 4. Online: https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=A36e8EsbUSoC&dat=18640727&printsec=frontpage&hl=en
3. "Labor Unions in Iowa."
4. "Iowa's Role in Labor History," Chicago Regional Council of Carpenters, Online: http://www.carpentersunion.org/about/iowas-role-labor-history
5. Scharnau, Ralph. "Workers and Politics--The Knights of Labor in Dubuque, Iowa 1885-1890, Annals of Iowa. Des Moines: State Historical Society of Iowa, Volume 48, Number 7 (Winter of 1987), p. 355
6. Ibid., p. 356
7. Ibid. p. 365
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., p. 368
10. Ibid., p. 369
11. Ibid. p. 370
12. Ibid. p. 373
13. Ibid. p. 374
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid. p. 375
16. Ibid. p. 376
17. "Iowa's Role in Labor..."
18. "Dubuque Pack to Close," The Daily Reporter, May 12, 1982. Online: https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1907&dat=19820512&id=oWMrAAAAIBAJ&sjid=pdkEAAAAIBAJ&pg=2983,2256088&hl=en
19. "Dubuque Announces Purchase of Mankato Packing Plant," Jewell County Record, May 30, 1974. Online: https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1393&dat=19740530&id=aF1lAAAAIBAJ&sjid=8JMNAAAAIBAJ&pg=3290,3501346&hl=en
20. Ibid.
21. "Union Wins on Plant Moves," The Tuscaloosa News, June 16, 1991, Online: https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1817&dat=19910616&id=vDgdAAAAIBAJ&sjid=06UEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5893,3892826&hl=en
22. Ibid.
23. "Union Meets Boat Workers," The Daily Reporter, January 30, 1992, Online: https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1907&dat=19920130&id=bl4rAAAAIBAJ&sjid=4dkEAAAAIBAJ&pg=3699,2547628&hl=en
24. "PBGC Assumes Pension Plan of Dubuque Packing Co.," Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation," Online: http://www.pbgc.gov/news/press/releases/pr10-28.html
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid.