UA History

The Beginnings

It is important to understand where the United Association came from, how it grew, and how it earned its leading position in the construction industry. The roots of today's UA can be traced to the early 1800's.  This was an era when craftsmen were paid poorly, toiled without much employer concern for their safety or health and worked "from sun up to sun down". Like their counterparts in other trades, pipe tradesmen in the early 1800's hungered for a better life - and knew they would have to work together to achieve it. These stirrings first surfaced in Philadelphia in 1827, following a strike of building tradesmen for a 10 hour day.  Philadelphia plumbers helped form the first effective city-wide wage earner's organization, the Mechanic's Union of Trade Associations.
Over the next 50 years, local pipe trades unions grew in number and strength.  The nation was expanding, moving west and becoming more urban and industrial.  Many locals survived and prospered.  Others failed, usually during slack periods or when strikes were undertaken and failed. By 1850, there were plumbers unions in Chicago, New York, and in other cities along the East Coast.  By the middle of the Civil War, there were gas fitters locals in St. Louis, Chicago and New York.  While most locals of this period were composed of plumbers, there were a few gas fitters and combination locals in the United States and Canada. Union growth and strength declined during the 1870's when the nation was battered by post-war depressions.  Then came the 1880's - the country's economy was booming, and the stage was set for the development of a national pipe trades union.
It had long been clear to many leaders of local unions that obtaining real economic and political strength depended on establishing a national organization.  They turned to the Knights of Labor - the first significant national labor union in the United States. A New York plumbers local which had just lost a strike for higher wages was one of the first locals in the pipe trades to join the Knights of Labor.  Other pipe trades locals soon followed. The next logical step was to organize the pipe trades locals and then operate as a group under the Knights' umbrella.  This could ensure that pipe trades' dues assessments to the Knights were used to benefit their craft - as well as to help locals assist one another in enforcing local strikes and in fighting employer boycotts.  Without their own national organization, the pipe trades locals were still weak.
Next... the struggle to unify nationally...