The Quest for Labor Organization: The Brooklyn Metal Trades Council
The Formation of the Brooklyn Metal Trades Council
AFL Unions and the Brooklyn Navy Yard
The Hoover Years
The New Deal Years
The CIO Enters the Navy Yards
The BMTC in Action in the BNY, 1935-1941The Formation of the Brooklyn Metal Trades Council
Unions have been an integral part of federal labor relations since Jacksonian days. In the latter quarter of the nineteenth century the new metal technologies that produced the new American steel navy also led to the growth of new metal-trade unions. [On nineteenth-century federal labor history, see Spero, Government as Employer; Nesbitt, Labor Relations; Ziskind, Thousand Strikes.] These organizations, such as the machinists and the boilermakers, first organized themselves in the private sector, and their members eagerly took jobs with the government in the navy yards and the arsenals. The unions quickly recognized that federal labor relations were quite different from those in the commercial world and some of them who had significant numbers of members working at government sites instituted a policy of establishing locals solely of their government workers. The International Association of Machinists (IAM) took the lead in this respect, not only establishing federal locals, such as Lodge 556 in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, but also establishing District 44 in 1904, a collection of all federal IAM locals, to coordinate their dealings with the US government. [Machinists' Monthly Journal, May 1904. By the 1930s District 44 had members in the navy yards, arsenals, Panama Canal Zone, Bureau of Engraving, General Printing Office, Coast Guard, the lighthouse service, and in river and harbor works. MMJ, May 1934; Spero, Government as Employer. For background on the machinists see: Mark Perlman, The Machinists (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961). For a description of the machinists' multiple skills, see Richard Boyden, “The San Francisco Machinists from Depression to Cold War, 1930-1950” (Ph.D. diss., U. of California, Berkeley, 1988).]The metal-trade unions had grown sufficiently large by the end of the first decade of the twentieth century that the AFL decided they needed their own department, like that previously established for the Building Trades, and in 1908 established the Metal Trades Department (MTD), which commenced holding annual conventions the following year. The Federation also established Metal Trades Councils in metropolitan regions to act as a local negotiator with businesses employing multiple metal trades. Initially, MTCs encompassed whatever navy yards and arsenals may lay within their jurisdictions. [The MTD was initially composed of the IAM, Molders, Blacksmiths, Patternmakers, Boilermakers, Stove Mounters, Metal Polishers, Foundry Employees, IBEW, Steamfitters, and the Steam Engineers. They elected a machinist president, and a molder as first vice-president. MMJ, August 1908; September 1908. Proceedings of the First Annual Convention of the Metal Trades Department, 1909.]
At first, jurisdictional issues stymied MTD organizing in the navy yards. Many existing unions were not in the metal trades and the clerical workers at that time did not have any unions. However, the yard workers had seen the need for organization and about 1910 began forming their own cross-trade associations, such as the National League of Government Employees, encompassing any military station employing civilian labor. And a short time later the records tell of the existence in the BNY of a group called the Affiliated Trades of the New York Navy Yard. The AFL saw these as “dual” organizations and refused to charter them but there was little else they could do about them as it was not possible to get recognition agreements from the federal government. Recognizing that some sort of greater organization was necessary, the MTD revised its constitution in 1915 to allow Metal Trades Councils to be established in federal work sites that could admit all unions no matter the trade or occupation. By the following year the navy yard MTCs, including the one at Brooklyn, had effectively displaced the rival groups. A loose confederation, the Brooklyn Metal Trades Council (BMTC) had a president and executive board, and proceeded to set itself up as the voice of organized labor in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. [The navy yard files contain a letter from Branch #11 of the National League of Government Employees, dated January 1913, addressed to the Naval Constructor, concerning grievances of the drillers and tappers. Its masthead lists its officers identified solely by place of employment. In June 1913 there is a memo to the Commandant from the Affiliated Trades of the New York Navy Yard, whose masthead lists twenty-five trades: machinists; boilermakers; plumbers; molders; sheet metal workers; ship fitters; electricians; blacksmiths; carpenters and joiners; sailmaker; pattern makers; coppersmiths; painters; acetylene welders; tool dressers; die sinkers; riggers; boat builders; cranemen; coremakers; laborers; clerks and draughtsmen; drillers; chippers and caulkers. RG181; NA-NY; MTD Seventh Annual Proceedings, 1915. MTD Eighth Annual Proceedings, 1916; Spero, Government as Employer.]Before the entry of the United States into World War I the most important accomplishment of the trade unions working in the federal sector was the agitation against scientific management they led in Congress, whick culminated in the legal ban of the use of time studies and bonus payments in the War and Navy Departments in 1915. Organized labor considered these two labor practices as essential to establishing Taylorism, as had been attempted at the Watertown arsenal, and saw the elimination of their use a great victory. [MMJ, April 1915; Boilermakers' Journal, March 1916; Aitken, Watertown Arsenal; Black, Charleston Navy Yard; Arnold S. Lott, A Long Line of Ships: Mare Island's Century of Naval Activity in California (Annapolis: U.S. Naval Institute, 1954).] Top
AFL Unions and the Brooklyn Navy Yard
The two most important unions in the navy yards, in terms of numbers and work jurisdiction, were the machinists and the boilermakers. The International Association of Machinists' history of intervention in the federal sector reaches back to its own beginnings in the 1880s. In 1899 it and the AFL lobbied successfully for overtime pay due workers in the Washington Navy Yard for extra hours worked during the Spanish-American war, and they also fought early attempts by the navy yards and arsenals to institute their own version of the gag rule. In 1901 the union boasted that it had played a role in convincing Congress to extend paid vacation leave to federal trades workers, awarding them fourteen days per year. An officer of the IAM in Washington noted that the legislation was “to private employers of labor throughout the country a splendid example of liberal treatment of employees, which we believe will aid the movement toward better trade conditions.” [MMJ, April 1899; June 1899; March 1901; April 1901. In 1916 annual leave for naval workers was increased to 30 days. MMJ, September 1916.]The Machinists early on recognized the stakes involved for its members in the U.S. program to build modern steel warships and lobbied to have them built in navy yards, under “strict union conditions.” In the ten years before 1902, the government favored commercial yards. They had completed 139 naval vessels, while navy yards had built only four. The machinists argued that working conditions in the private shipyards compared poorly to those owned by the government. While navy yard workers worked an eight-hour day for pay similar to that received by private-sector workers for ten hours, this was offset by lower costs for navy yards in other areas, such as lower repair bills, and the fact that the government did not have to charge itself taxes, interest, depreciation, insurance, or pay out dividends and supervisory charges. Plus, government workers did not go out on strike. In 1902 the machinists launched a campaign for the government construction of navy ships arguing that public conditions were more “humane” and the costs cheaper than those of private shipyards. As one article put it, most of the objection to public construction came from places “where exploitation is the alpha and omega of existence. . . . [G]overnment -built ships would mean all that is good that labor is striving for.” [MMJ, February 1902; May 1902.]
The agitation for public construction was successful and in March 1903 the Brooklyn Navy Yard laid the keel was laid for the first government-built modern battleship, the Connecticut. In celebrating its launch in September 1904, the machinists' journal called it a “harbinger of the days of peace to come,” and that its construction had proved that navy-yard ships could be built as well, more cheaply, and more quickly than in private yards, specifically, Newport News, which had built the Connecticut's sister ship, the Louisiana, at the same time. This move was a major commitment on the part of the government and the Navy in order to build the battleship at the Brooklyn yard had first to construct a building way, acquire the necessary cranes and shop equipment, and hire and train a workforce for the ship, as well as organize its own managerial staff. [MMJ, November 1904.] Five more battleships followed the Connecticut down the Brooklyn's building ways, keeping the Yard busy into the early 1920s. [MMJ, November 1908; January 1911; April 1911.]
The International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Ship Builders and Helpers of America was the other major union in the navy yards. As their full name shows, they held jurisdiction over the hull construction trades such as the shipfitters, riveters, and welders as well as the boilermaking trade. This union appears to have started later in the navy yards; their union journal reported their organizers at work building Lodge 23 during the first world war. This union too lobbied diligently for the government to build its own warships. “As long as we must have battleships let us see to it that no private interests are enriched thereby.” They claimed that the agitation for public construction since the end of the Spanish-American war had prompted private contractors to reduce their prices significantly saving taxpayers $65 million on battleships and cruisers. They congratulated the Brooklyn Navy Yard for completing the Arizona on schedule on an eight-hour day, while private yards still worked nine or more, and at $1 million less than the lowest private bid. [Boilemakers' Journal, November 1916; March 1917; June 1916; November 1916.]
During the 1920s the IAM urged that all defense work be given to government plants. In times of peace government shops, the union argued, could make goods for other agencies of the government, helping the employment rate by keeping arsenal and naval workers constantly at work. Government production would also prove a check on private prices. In June 1922 the union's leaders presented a plan to the House naval affairs committee that would allow for publicly-owned manufacturers to bid against private companies for government peace-time orders, as a way to help relieve unemployment and stabilize government production. [MMJ, June 1922.]
Despite the huge reductions in the shipbuilding forces accompanying the signing of the 1922 naval treaties, the IAM put itself solidly in favor of disarmament, stating that the rush for profits by armament manufacturers had in the past “contributed no little part to causing wars.” This claim was a constant theme in metal-trade unions' arguing for the assignment of defense work to government industrial plants. In 1936 the machinists said that government manufacture was not as expensive as private-manufacturing advocates had charged and that in fact it was private munition makers who were plundering the country under the guise of defense, as Senator Nye's investigation of the corruption of the arms makers in the last war had recently revealed. Also testifying for the economy of using navy yards the boilermakers published an article that year summarizing a report written by an official of the Interstate Commerce Commission that showed that though the navy yards paid higher wages and handed out generous vacation time the cost of recently privately-built cruisers had averaged just under fifteen million dollars per ship while the navy yards had produced theirs for an average of $14.1 million each. [MMJ, February 1922; April 1936; BJ, April 1936.] Top
The Hoover Years
The metal-trade unions spent much of the early 1930s lobbying for work to be assigned to the navy yards and for their wages to be upheld. At the Metal Trades Department convention in October 1930 the IAM called upon Congress to provide employment by authorizing the modernization of three battleships, to provide a year-round 44-hour week [then given only in the summer], and for the Navy to build up to the limits allowed the U.S. under the London naval disarmament treaty. The union said that the latter point was important not only as a means of stimulating employment but as a means of maintaining peace, in that an appropriately-sized navy would guarantee that trade avenues remained open, upon which the American standard of living depended on “in large part.” The Boilermakers applauded the executive's decision a short time earlier to ask the legislature for money for the battleship modernization program. They felt it was the responsibility of the government to keep its own employees working in bad times, in fact it was their “imperative duty” to do so especially given that they saw the Navy as “callous” and “absolutely unconcerned” about the fate of its civilian workers in the face of cutbacks in all the navy yards. [MMJ, November 1930; BJ, July 1930.]The MTD unions called upon the federal government to set the example for the private sector by taking action to reduce unemployment. Over production coupled with a lack of matching aggregate purchasing power due to poor wages had brought on the Depression, they said. As a remedy they urged all employers to adopt the five-day week with no reduction in pay, and for the government to halt immigration. At the 1930 MTD convention the organization even went so far as to call for a five-hour day. At the AFL convention that immediately followed, the Boilermakers brought up the new issue of the possible downward reclassification of navy yard workers that the Secretary of the Navy had just announced. The union thought such an action “strange” given the president's appeal for wages not to be reduced and the convention ordered AFL president William Green to send out telegrams of protest to the government. [BJ, November 1930; December 1930.]
Officials of the boilermakers, the president of District 44, N.P. Alifas, and John Frey, secretary-treasurer of the MTD, had all been initially critical of the Navy Department's decision to continue the 1929 wage schedule into 1930 but when a year later it was announced that it would be extended into 1931 they agreed it was the appropriate thing to do, and they felt relieved when the same announcement was later made for 1932. But Alifas, as well as the rest of organized labor, remained angered over the Department's now-obvious policy of attempting to trim its budget through reducing the proportion of first-class workers in the navy yards, an indirect wage reduction. [BJ, September 1930; August 1931; MMJ, January 1931; August 1931; MTD, Proceedings, 1931.]
Union persuasion upon the government did produce some limited success in the latter half of the Hoover administration. After sitting on it for three years, Congress passed the permanent Saturday half-holiday bill in the spring of 1931, and District 44 gave itself kudos for its passage. Hoover also signed the battleship modernization bill and Congress appropriated funds for eleven destroyers, most of which were assigned to navy yards. On the other hand, the Navy Department refused to consider the classification issue. Senator LaFollette introduced legislation that would stabilize grade proportions as they were as of 1 January 1929 but it became clear that both it and the appropriations bills could not be passed in the same session and the Senator withdrew his bill. The IAM said the appropriations saved 5000 jobs. [MMJ, April 1931; June 1931. BJ, May 1931, also gives a history of the legislation behind the 44-hour week bill.]
The issue of employment itself easily trumped work-site difficulties during the early years of the Depression and the unions lobbied strenuously over creating and maintaining jobs. In its Fall 1931 convention the MTD passed a host of resolutions: a five-day week for government employees; sick leave for the trades; the prohibition of enlisted men performing ship repairs in port; the rescinding the ratings reduction policy, and the efficiency rating system; for the government's full utilization of the navy yards and arsenals in bringing the country up to full London treaty compliance; and, approval of the fifteen-cruisers bill. In the AFL convention that followed that organization called for more public works, a five-day week without wage reductions, and if that proved inadequate, for a six-hour day. The boilermakers continued to keep the reclassification issue alive in their journal accusing the Navy of not having “maintained clean hands through these times of unemployment.” [MMJ, September 1931; November 1931; BJ, June 1931; December 1931.]
The unions were obviously upset with the Economy Act [legislating wage cuts and cancelling vacations and promotions for all federal workers] and warned their members about it as soon as they heard that a draft had been introduced in Congress in the spring of 1932. The IAM and the AFL screamed about the law after its passage on 30 June and the Federation's executive committee pledged to take the matter to congress when it reconvened in December, arguing that furloughs should be instituted in the place of pay cuts. [BJ, January 1932; MMJ, June 1932; BJ, October 1932.]
Sometimes lobbying paid off. In the midst of their November 1932 convention the MTD got word that workers at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and other yards were being discharged outright instead of being furloughed, which was the usual policy. The MTD sent a telegram to Hoover asking that the next set of discharges at Brooklyn be cancelled and that the yard's work be spread around. They asked that this policy be extended to the other navy yards, and that if navy yards had to reduce their payrolls that the workers be placed on furlough and not discharged. "Spreading work" by rotating jobs among a site's workers was one of many anti-unemployment measures put forth by social and political leaders during the Hoover years and the machinists in the BNY had already by this time proposed job rotation as a means of keeping as many of its workers off the dole as possible. The MTD's message was heard and the next day, the convention received the good news from the Brooklyn MTC that the Yard had cancelled the layoffs. Shortly thereafter the Navy Department approved job rotation throughout its shore establishments as a way to conserve jobs. The convention also passed what was by then becoming the usual set of resolutions, such as calling for a treaty navy, the maximum use of arsenals and navy yards, a five-day week with no reduction in pay, sick leave for the trades, and an end to the balanced-force concept. The organization still railed against the shop committee system and argued that now that Congress had passed the Norris-LaGuardia anti-injunction act the Navy could not discriminate against union committees. And to the pile of resolutions the MTD added one demanding the restoration of leave lost through the Economy Act. [MMJ, December 1932. Similar resolutions were passed by both organizations at their 1933 conventions. MMJ, November 1933; BJ, December 1933] Top
The New Deal Years
Although Franklin Roosevelt's immediate wage cut for federal employees upon assuming the Presidency deeply dismayed the AFL, overall they welcomed the change in administration. The boilermakers reprinted parts of a speech that the new ASN, Herbert Latrobe Roosevelt, made at a dinner celebrating the launch of the New Orleans at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in April 1933, in which he praised the workers as “devoted, conscientious, and patriotic,” and as exhibiting “loyalty and high efficiency.” Noting that 85 percent of a ship's cost ultimately went to labor and that material was procured from almost every state in the union the ASN said it was imperative to run navy yards at full speed and to bring the navy up to treaty strength. “We hear much about the proposed Federal program for the construction of public works for the relief of unemployment and surely naval vessels should be considered public works in this sense.” For American unions the enthusiam over the expectation of economic reinvigoration through the NRA, and its projected new naval growth, was so great that the MTD even condemned the BMTC for not wanting to march in the New York City NIRA parade in the spring of 1933 because of their anger about their pay cuts. [BJ, June 1933.]The unions' gratitude for a Democratic president did not prevent them however from vigorously opposing further pay cuts when Roosevelt proposed a second wage reduction for the navy and its civilian workers. After some prodding, the president made up the budget deficit the pay cuts were supposed to cover by releasing five-million dollars from the federal budget through an executive order, and Secretary of the Navy Swanson canceled the order. Not only was this lobbying important in itself but preventing further wage reductions by the government was important for the unions in their negotiating with the private sector. The boilermakers claimed that businesses made a concerted effort from 1931 through 1933 to force Congress to cut federal employees' salaries and wages, so as to lead the way for the private sector to slash their payrolls. [BJ, October 1933; November 1933.]
In response to the Economy Act the AFL established a general legislative committee, upon which Alifas sat as the representative of the MTD. The unions ultimately declared the effort a success as under its guidance Senator Thomas added amendments to the appropriations bill passed in March 1934 that began the revocation of the Economy Act. The bill set a schedule for restoring the fifteen per cent pay reductions in three stages and set the 1929 wage schedule as a minimum level below which wages could not be dropped if any wage boards were called in the future. The unions also took credit for the proviso in the Vinson naval-shipbuilding bill that alternated building ships between the navy yards and private yards. [MMJ, May 1934; BJ, April 1934.]
The MTD felt its relationship with the Navy Department problematical. There had been a great increase in the number of civilian jobs in the two years since Roosevelt took power and in general the unions had easy access to the ASN. It was enough for the MTD at its 1935 convention to rate its relations with the Navy Department as “good,” and those with Herbert Roosevelt as especially so. Nevertheless, the convention also went on record as “unalterably opposed” to its members participating in the shop committees. [MMJ, November 1935; BJ, December 1935.]
As was shown in the sections about efficiency ratings and shop committees, the MTD never was able to find a satisfactory way of impressing upon the Navy those concerns that spoke to the heart of a union’s relationship with the employer of its members. In convention after convention up to the declaration of war by the United States, the metal trades railed against the indignities their members were forced to endure in the navy yards. The shop committees, efficiency ratings, abolition of the second- and third-class rates of pay, grievance boards and/or civil service board of appeals, full use of navy yards and arsenals: resolution after resolution was passed at MTD conventions either against–for the first three items–or for--for the last two, these contentious issues. [MMJ, December 1938; November 1939; March 1941.] But as will shortly be seen, whatever their problems with the Navy, no matter how embittering they may be, theirs was still a loyal dissent. Top
The CIO Enters the Navy Yards
It was at the AFL convention immediately following the MTD's in 1935 that John L. Lewis launched the CIO with a punch to the head of the Carpenters' Bill Hutchinson, opening the way for new competitors to emerge to contest MTD hegemony in the navy yards. John Frey railed against the formation of the rival organization in an editorial printed in union periodicals in the summer of 1936, claiming that the new organization would only lower working standards by dragging the crafts down to the wage level of the less skilled. To him, mixing craft and industrial unionism was like mixing oil and water. Change in the structure of the labor movement was not looked down upon by the AFL, but change was evolutionary, not quick and radical. The Building Trades Department and the Metal Trades Department had both developed out of the AFL as the need arose. If some new type of organization was that badly needed for mass production Labor could work it out within itself. And finally, he said splitting Labor was dangerous, especially as in the case of the CIO it had opened the door to official communist penetration of the labor movement. [BJ, November 1935; August 1936.]But the new federation’s competition could not be ignored. The Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of America, in existence since 1933, joined the CIO in 1936 and announced plans to invade the AFL’s turf in the navy yards. In response, the MTD announced at its 1936 convention it would begin its own organizing campaign in the private shipyards in early 1937 to counteract the threat of dual unionism. The boilermakers' journal called the new union “bogus,” built like other alternative unions on the concept of low initiation fees and cheap dues. As most of the new union's goals were identical to those of the trades, it was the lure of the low cost of belonging to the CIO and the union’s making promises it could never hope to make good on that the MTD feared might attract all the new workers who had no previous union experience who were then entering the navy yards. The trades' record was clear; they had a long record of accomplishments for federal employees, helping them to obtain such benefits as pensions, vacation and sick leave, holiday pay, and a 40-hour week, all of which had set standards for the private sector. The duty of navy yard workers was to “render patriotic service to the Government which is also their employer.” To align with a foreign interest which the communist-penetrated CIO represented was wrong and would constitute treason in wartime. [BJ, January 1937; April 1937; July 1937.]
Patriotism, good working conditions, and a concern about war-profiteering: these were the guiding standards of the unions involved in defense work, so editorialized the Machinists. Metal Trade Councils believed in a united effort for strength and for intelligent cooperation. They represented employees who had been hired based on their moral fitness and patriotism. The MTCs operated on the principle that “promoting the interests of the federal government receives the same attention as advancing the common welfare of government employees.” The trades were primarily interested in the promotion of an adequate national defense, holding to the “principle that the government is entitled to maximum protection at minimum cost to taxpayers, consistent with equitable treatment of its public servants.” To achieve this goal it was necessary not only to prohibit war profiteering, but to ensure that defense work be performed only by citizens of proven loyalty, who had decent wages and working conditions. Poor workmanship done on the “cheap” jeopardized the country's safety. “Naval defense should be provided for without profiteering or collusion, the need for a defensive navy not to be confused with the need for continuing profits.” [MMJ, January 1938.]
The Metal Trade Councils said that in the private sector they had negotiated local joint agreements superior to anything any one union could have developed, and without preventing any individual craft from bargaining over its own particular issues. The MTC system responded to the demands of employers that they need only bargain with one group and gave the lie to the CIO claim that they had the monopoly on unitary bargaining with a large employer. “All of the benefits that can accrue to an industrial type organization are contained in the Metal Trades agreements, and in addition thereto, special rules are provided which could not and have never been attempted in an industrial type of organization.” For navy yard workers it had to be obvious that even if some of them did not hold union membership that it was the AFL that had established their working conditions. Workers in the know would not renounce the organizations that had brought them so much for the untried experiments of new organizations. [BJ, April 1940.]
It was all a rather heated rejoinder to the CIO incursions into the organizing battlegrounds, but in the case of the navy yards the large majority of trades workers did heed the call of the MTD and AFL. Given the inability to obtain formal recognition and collective bargaining rights this is probably not surprising. Without the ability to negotiate an exclusive contract there was not much a competitor could offer federal employees. Navy yard workers had an impressive list of grievances that the trades could not resolve, but the AFL's long track record in the navy yards and arsenals and equally long experience lobbying in Congress over the conditions of federal employment was also impressive and it was enough to stave off any serious competition from the insurgent labor federation. On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the IAM in 1938 Alifas gave a summary of District 44's achievements. Between 1911 and 1938 the federal district had grown from 2010 to 11,947 members, approximately three and six per cent of the IAM's total membership in those years. In 1900, federal machinists put in 8-hour days, 6-day weeks, had no paid leave, no worker compensation, no retirement benefits, low wages, a precarious employment situation as much government defense work was then allotted to private concerns, and nearly no grievance machinery. In the years since they had received fifteen days of paid leave per year, the summer Saturday half-holiday, a moderate workers’ compensation law giving benefits up to one year, anti-Taylor legislation, an increase in their vacation days to thirty days, an extension of their compensation package to hold them over until recovery or for life if permanently disabling, large raises and bonuses during the world war, a pension plan, the Dallenger fifty-fifty allocation of construction Act, the year-round Saturday half-holiday, the Thomas amendment with its wage floor, the fifty-fifty ration for shipbuilding carried over into Vinson-Trammel, in 1934, the near-complete restoration of vacation, sick leave in 1936, and the continuation of public-private allotment of navy ships in the upcoming naval appropriations bill. [MMJ, May 1938.] It was an impressive list. AFL support would also bolstered by renewed organizing and agitation in the navy yards in the following years.
TopThe BMTC in Action in the BNY, 1935-1941
In the private sector the AFL began a new surge in growth in the latter half of the 1930s that rivaled and even surpassed the growing numbers enrolled in the CIO. These years were also good ones in the navy yards, the year 1937 seeming to be a pivotal one for federal-employee organizing. In that year the Supreme Court validated the Wagner Act, which now leapfrogged the labor relations of the private sector ahead of those of the public sector, setting a goal for the government unions to aspire to. Roosevelt helped by publicly vindicating the right of government employees to join unions, although not for collective bargaining purposes (see below). In the navy yards, the shop committee system had finally gone down in flames in the Philadelphia experiment of that year, and there was now the competitive presence of the CIO, with at least two other of their unions in addition to the IUMSWA embarking on organizing drives of their own among the government-employed ship builders.For whatever combinations of these reasons, in the late 1930s the BMTC became more publicly active in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. For one, it began organizing outside of the core trades in the Yard. In an organizing flyer it explained that it was a democratic organization in that each local had an equal vote. It existed in part to seek to bring new construction and repair work to the Yard, and in part to improve working conditions. The Council considered the “outstanding evil which . . . must be corrected” to be the “elimination of the second and third class rates of pay, and especially those rates for helpers.” In addition it took a more overt role as grievance agent and committed itself to lobbying as strongly as it could. [“The Brooklyn Metal Trades Council,” n.d. Apparently, the BMTC wishing to circulate this document in the Yard had submitted a copy to Yard management in July 1938 for approval, which was granted. "Memo for File," Comdr. C.J. Osborne, August 1938; RG181; NA-NY.] In early 1938 it assisted the Yard's blacksmiths and their helpers in setting up their own local, then did the same for the sheetmetal workers. Beginning in this year and continuing into the following year there are meeting flyers in the files that trace the BMTC progress in organizing the Yard's laborers, riggers and their helpers into a local, to which a charter was granted in September 1939. [On the blacksmiths, see: Memo, from Velson, BMTC, to the Manager, requesting permission to post meeting notices, February 1938; April 1938; May 1938. On the sheetmetal workers, see: Letter, from Velson, to the Manager, requesting permission to post a meeting notice, May 1939; Memo, from Artole, Sheetmetal worker and temporary chairman of Sheetmetal workers, to Shop Superintendent, July 1939. For the laborers and riggers, see: Letter, from TB Richey, to Velson, BMTC, January 1938, giving permission to post a notice about an upcoming organizing meeting. And, various memos, from Velson, BMTC, to Manager, requesting permission to post meeting notices, March 1939; July 1939; September 1939. All in RG181; NA-NY.]
In 1937 the BMTC began filing official grievances. In October the BMTC submitted a list of ten specific complaints. These ranged from an overtaxed latrine on a pier, to the allergy of the electricians to a new vermin-proofing material, to the need for more protected areas in which to eat lunch outside, and to problems with the paying of workers who were out on leave on pay day. The painters had a number of problems on the list. They said they were not being systematically rotated through work assignments in enclosed spaces, that their checking-out procedure took too long, that they wanted what they called “dirty money,” to replace work clothes that were ruined by specific jobs, that the percentage of first-class workers in the shop was too low, that one of their workers, Joseph Morone, had been suspended, and that spraying masks were not being sterilized at the end of each shift. [Memo, Engel, President, BMTC, n.d [management's reply is dated 15 October 1937.] [The letterhead for the BMTC memo lists the following information: Philip Engel, President; Michael Gallagher, Vice President; George Morrison, Treasurer; Irving Velson, Secretary, 85 Orange St.; Affiliated Trades: Boilermakers, Draftsmen, Electricians, Government Employees, Machinists, Molders, Painters, Patternmakers, Plumbers, Pipefitters, Sailmakers, Sheetmetal workers, Shipfitters; Affiliations: MTD, AFL; Central Trades and Labor Council of Greater NY, NY State Federation of Labor; RG181; NA-NY.]
The Manager agreed about the condition of the latrine but put off action saying that the problem would resolve itself when the newly commissioned Brooklyn, whose workforce used the facility, left to join the fleet. He admitted that the older vermin material was problematic, but insisted that the recently- introduced new material was not. There was no available open space for lunch, but plans were being drawn up for a new inside space, and, he said, the Disbursement office could not pay the men a day early if they were on leave on Friday. As for the painters, they were indeed rotated, and if they claimed they were not, they should present specific charges to their Master. He was a bit more conciliatory on the checking-out procedure. The painters had to go back to their shop before lunch as it was essential they wash before eating to prevent lead poisoning. The Manager recognized that this did take time away from their lunch break and said management would consider giving them more time for lunch. The shop did sterilize all painter masks every night. The other charges he dismissed. Any of the painters' normal work load done outside of enclosed spaces was not considered as “dirty work,” which would make the painters eligible for extra pay; the proportion of first-class painters was appropriate given the work; and Morone's suspension stood and was even considered a lenient punishment (see section on the painters).
But apparently the BMTC persisted on some of the issues, for two weeks later after having met with the group, the Manager, Captain Richey, wrote a memo for the files revising his first response. Workers on leave on Fridays would now receive their pay on Thursdays but not on work time as was the normal payroll procedure. He had received a list of painters who claimed not to have been rotated; the shop was now looking into giving the men extra time for lunch and further investigating the dirty-clothing issue; more painters would be raised to second-class; and after the next ratings a few more first-class positions would be created. In the interim the shop had discharged Marone and the Yard considered the matter settled. [Memo, Manager Richey, to BMTC, 15 October 1937; Memo for file, T.B. Richey, November 1937; RG181; NA-NY.]
When production temporarily stalled in the BNY in the spring of 1938 opening up the possibility of extensive layoffs, the BMTC revived the idea of rotating leaves without pay that the Yard had used earlier in the decade, proposing that this time the workers in the shops most affected take one day off per week. The Council had already polled the two shops hit hardest by the lack of work, the plumbing and sheetmetal shops, they had already suffered losses of 25 and 33 per cent respectively, and found that three-quarters of the workers favored the idea. Times were still very hard in New York and in order to get relief an unemployed navy yarder had first to use all his pension money [if not vested], turn in any insurance policy, and spend all his savings, “leaving him virtually a pauper.” The Council stated “that in times such as these the government should set an example and do everything possible to prevent men from starving and give men who want to work a job.” The Commandant forwarded the request to the Navy Department, recommending that if it were approved that leave be granted for not less than one week for one-fifth of an affected shop at a time, and that all supervisors, office forces, and those in key positions or holding special qualifications be exempted. Yard management was not eager to rotate jobs, having found its previous use to be less than efficient and so it preferred to rotate only in the smaller shops. In mid-April, the ASN granted the original request to furlough on a one-day-in-five basis in place of discharging workers if it was found necessary in any shop to do so. [Letter, Engel and Velson, BMTC, to the Manager; April 1938; Letter, Velson, to the Manager, April 1938; Letter, Commandant, to the ASN(SED), April 1938; Letter, ASN to Commandants, New York Navy Yard and Philadelphia Navy Yard, April; RG181; NA-NY.]
In December 1939, the BMTC handed over another group of grievances to management. The federation disagreed with a recent re-definition of “dirty work,” which brought with it a bonus of six extra cents an hour. Yard employees did not like the new shift staggering as it required working weekends and taking weekdays off. The foundry workers wanted their old lockers repaired or replaced; the sailmakers thought their trade jurisdiction had been invaded when a private contractor had installed certain rubber work on the Helena; and some workers in the pipe shop felt they were due overtime pay for working on Veterans' Day, which had fallen on a Saturday. [Letter, Velson, BMTC, to the Commandant, December 1939; RG181; NA-NY. ]
Yard management was willing to inspect the lockers for possible repair or replacement but they dismissed the rest of the Council's complaints. They would not amend the definition of dirty work, and staggered shifts were now policy. The sailmakers had not been qualified to do the specific work that the outside contractor had performed--lining pipes and propellor shafts with rubber whereas the only rubber work the sailmakers did to date was attaching cleats and mattings--but if the specific work was to be continued on other ships they would try to have the Sail Loft do it. As to the pipe shop, even though some workers had worked over forty hours on urgent work, it did not qualify them in this case for extra pay. [Reply, to Velson, December 1939; RG181; NA-NY. “Dirty work” was defined as cleaning fuel oil tanks, greasy submarine ballast tanks, scaling paint from double bottoms on board a ship, cleaning confined dirty bilges, spraying paint, and other work of this type. “Dirty Work - Extra compensation for,” Commandant's Order No. 46-38, May 1938; RG181; NA-NY.]
The trade unions took issue with the new job training programs being instituted in the navy yards at this time. They feared that the new specialized vocational training would create a legion of semi-skilled workers who would lack any power to control their working conditions. The MTD called the programs “ill-advised” and expressed doubt that in the midst of the Depression there was a shortage of skilled workers to take government jobs, and the IAM suggested that a large wage increase would likely ease the situation. Along the same lines, the BMTC protested management's plan to force those already enrolled in the apprentice school to sign a pledge guaranteeing a minium of four years service to the government or be terminated with prejudice from the school. [BJ, April 1939; MMJ, September 1940; Letter, from Commandant, to ASN(SED), March 1939; enclosure of Letter from Engel, Velson, BMTC, to Commandant Woodward, February 1939; RG181; NA-NY.]
As part of President Roosevelt's ongoing process of institutionalizing personnel policy in the executive agencies and most likely in reaction to the increasing numbers of complaints filed, the Navy Department did move in early January 1940 to codify a grievance policy. It called for timeliness in responding to grievants, for their access to those with the authority to resolve the matter, and for resolving issues in a “frank” and “reasonably prompt manner.” But as the ultimate resolution still remained in the Department's hands the unions continued to call for impartial grievance boards. [“Labor Relations,” Commandant's Order No. 12-40, supplement no. 1, to HDDO, and bulletin boards, January 1940; it copies Department letter of January 1940; NA-NY.]
Upon the outbreak of war in Europe MTD Secretary-Treasurer Calvin stated that unity was needed in America in order to protect its neutrality, and that the country had to be prepared for anything that may befall it. The U.S. needed a defensive system capable of protecting American lives and commerce and preventing invasion, and this necessitated a rapid expansion of the navy and merchant marine. To do this, the country needed harmonious labor relations so as to prevent work stoppages, and this in turn required representatives of business and labor to meet to work out standards that would eliminate profiteering, raiding, and wage discrepancies. Caught up in the fervor that followed the fall of France the IAM pledged its support to the president in May 1940 and received a note of thanks from Roosevelt. [BJ, October 1939; MMJ, June 1940.]
In January 1941, the presidents of the individual MTD unions met to discuss the emergency situation. They had pledged their collective loyalty in the previous world war and now they pledged themselves once again to the government saying they would do everything possible to speed up defense production. This process, they proposed, would be immeasurably aided by concluding more collective bargaining agreements in the metal trades. Zone conferences would be a good way to start, especially in shipbuilding. On their part, in order to help stabilize industrial relations the unions would agree to voluntary arbitration and to no work stoppages. As an editor for the boilermakers put it, these are “the methods of democracy applied to a national emergency.” In March 1941 the IAM's executive council formally proposed a labor-relations policy for defense industries. In return for a no-strike pledge from the MTD unions, grievance procedure would be set up in all businesses, in which the first step would be a labor-management conference. If that did not resolve matters then both parties would call in the U.S. Bureau of Conciliation, then, if necessary, appeal to the office of the Director General of the OPM, and finally if all else failed, proceed to arbitration. [MMJ, February 1941; BJ, February 1941; MMJ, April 1941.]
Representatives of fifteen unions and thirteen MTCs met in September 1941 at what would be the MTD's last peacetime convention. The resolutions they passed then show that even though great progress had been made in wages and benefits over the past decade, their memberships had increased sizably due to defense work, and they had made every effort to declare their loyalty, that many of the internal labor-relation problems navy yard and other government workers faced at the onset of the Depression still confronted them on the eve of Pearl Harbor. The delegates called for the government manufacture of war materials; for the government to create impartial grievance boards; for the establishment of seniority rights over efficiency ratings, and for the elimination of the lower job grades. Senator Warren Magnuson of Washington had recently introduced a bill on these two items and they warmly gave the legislation their approval. [MMJ, December 1941.]
The limits of union advocacy without formal recognition or congressional patronage had been clearly shown in these years.
John R Stobo © January 2004