UA History

Predecessors of the United Association

In September of 1884, leaders of five New York area locals called a conference in New York to form the trade's first national organization, the National Association of Plumbers, Steam Fitters and Gas Fitters.  This national trade assembly was intended to operate within the Knights of Labor. Locals from Chicago, Milwaukee and other areas signed on, quickly raising membership to 19 locals with 2,000 members.  Still, there was much resistance to affiliation with the Knights.  Many objected to the fact that the Knights had begin as a secret society.  Some saw the Knights' efforts to organize unskilled immigrants as threats to their jobs.  There was also conflict concerning locals which the Knights had chartered separately from the new National Associations. These conflicts climaxed at the Second National Association convention in 1886.  The union decided to withdraw from the Knights of Labor and re-name itself the International Association of Journeymen Plumbers, Steam Fitters and Gas Fitters.  During the following year, when 17 more locals affiliated, it appeared that the International Association might grow into a string international union.
It wasn't that easy.  There were still some locals who were loyal to the Knights.  Two locals from New York and Brooklyn withdrew and were chartered by the Knights as a new United Progressive Plumbers, Steam and Gas Fitters, National Trade Assembly 85. The two unions held a joint convention in Chicago later in 1886 in an effort to resolve their differences.  It was the largest pipe trades convention ever held, but it failed to bring the two groups together. Following this convention, both groups began to decline.  The National Trade Assembly, strong only in the New York area, went on strike in an effort to have a voice in an effective apprenticeship system to maintain a high level of craft skills.  The strike dragged on for months, and with its limited resources exhausted, the union lost.  Subsequently, the pipe trades groups in the New York area began splitting up. The International Union fared no better.  In Milwaukee, in a tough dispute with an employer's group, it had organized four cooperative contracting shops.  The employer's group fought back by trying to shut off the cooperatives' supplies and customers.  The cooperatives retaliated by cutting prices, which soon plunged the underfunded International Association deeply into debt.  Efforts to get the Association membership to make special contributions and to sell stock in the cooperatives failed.  The International Association was on its last legs.
Next... the founding of the United Association...