The Glass Bottle Blowers' Association (GBBA) was a labor union representing workers involved in making blown glass in the United States and Canada. The union was formed in 1891.
Origins
Early glassmakers' unions In 1842, craftsmen in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, formed a glass blowers' union that represented workers throughout the region. John Samuels was elected the first president. Several other local glass blowers' unions joined the nascent national union, which adopted the name Glass Blowers' League. The union represented workers who made soda-lime glass (or "green glass"). The new national union slowly disintegrated over the following quarter century, but glass blowers met again in 1866 and affirmed their affiliation to the Glass Blowers' League and its 1842 constitution. The reinvigorated union also changed its name to the Druggists' Ware Glass Blowers' League. Membership was largely centered in the states of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, then the center of the glass industry in the U.S. The glass blowers faced a major challenge in the 1880s from a new union, the American Flint Glass Workers' Union of North America (AFGWU). Flint glass, commonly known as "crystal", was made in closed pots to protect the glass from impurities (unlike green glass), and generally the flint glass workforce was more highly skilled. The AFGWU formed in Pittsburgh in 1878, and within four short years had locals throughout West Virginia and Ohio and was spreading east. Feeling threatened by the new union, the Glass Blowers waged several bitter jurisdictional strikes against the AFGWU in the 1880s and 1890s. The union's jurisdictional fight was an important one. Highly skilled workers like glass blowers made up 15 percent of the entire workforce. While 45 percent of American workers made just enough money in the 1880s to be at or above the poverty line ($500 a year), another 30 percent made less than that. A shocking 10 percent of all full-time workers made so little money they were considered absolutely destitute. Glass blowers, however, made 60 to 100 percent more than the average worker, and were considered the "cream" of the working class.
Joining the Knights of Labor The union was also confronting a diversifying glass industry. Newer glassworks tended to be better capitalized, and paid workers better. Distinct differences between glassworks in the east and west emerged, and the union created an eastern and western division in 1884 to accommodate these industry changes. The eastern division of the Druggists' Ware Glass Blowers' League dissolved in 1886 and joined District 149 of the Knights of Labor (KOL), while the western division dissolved in 1889 and joined KOL District 143. An independent union of glass blowers, the "Western Green League", formed in western Pennsylvania around 1880 but merged with the Knights of Labor in 1886 as well. Child labor and apprenticeships were major issues for the union in the 1880s as well. One in four workers in the green glass industry was a child. Apprenticeships in the green glass factories lasted four years. But the apprentice system was operated by the employers, who took on large numbers of apprentices in order to flood the market with skilled workers and thus put a downward pressure on wages. After the merger with the Knights of Labor in 1886, the glass workers' union struck to win control over the apprenticeship system. The eastern District 149 demanded one apprentice for every 15 workers, but the western District 143 accepted two. The strike lasted into 1887, and the eastern District 149 glass blowers—angry over the employer-friendly stand taken by the western district—disaffiliated from the KOL. Employers instituted a lockout against the eastern workers. At an employer-union conference in 1887, a compromise was reached. The union not only won agreement on the apprentice issue but also an industry-wide agreement setting uniform wages and work rules. The agreement even listed the physical movements all workers would be expected to do.
Forming the Glass Bottle Blowers' Association In 1891, after four years of labor unrest, the two KOL glass blowers' divisions merged to become the United Green Glass Workers' Association of the United States and Canada. The glass blowers disaffiliated from the KOL in 1895 and formed a new, independent union, the Glass Bottle Blowers' Association (GBBA) of the United States and Canada. Denis A. Hayes was elected the new union's president in 1896, a position he held for the next three decades. The GBBA affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in 1899.
History of the modern union
Affiliations and jurisdiction The GBBA struck the glass blowing industry in a lengthy strike from April 8, 1899, to July 1, 1900, that led to the unionization of all but two glass plants. By 1900, the GBBA had 61 local unions and 4,300 members. The GBBA, with the consent of the American Flint Glass Workers' Union (AFGWU), affiliated the Prescription Glass Blowers' department of the AFGWU. In 1906, one scholar of trade union activity noted that the GBBA tended to hold regional or national strikes, and only rarely struck individual employers. Disputes with the AFGWU did not end, however. Mechanization tended to eliminate the skill differences between flint glass and green glass workers, and the two unions clashed repeatedly over who should represent glass industry workers. Bottle and fruit jar manufacturing had long been "green glass work", but now the two unions enter into a bitter dispute over who should represent workers in this section of the industry. When the American Federation of Labor (AFL) ruled in favor of the GBBA, the AFGWU disaffiliated from the AFL on January 30, 1903. As an independent union, the AFGWU tried to organize these workers but lacked the support and protection which the national trade union center gave the GBBA. The AFGWU reaffiliated with the AFL October 21, 1912, after renouncing its claims to bottle and fruit jar workers.
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