The International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental and Reinforcing Iron Workers is a union in the United States and Canada which represents, trains and protects primarily construction workers, as well as shipbuilding and metal fabrication employees.
Origins The union was formed on February 4, 1896, at a meeting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with 16 delegates from the local unions in Boston, Massachusetts, Buffalo, New York, Chicago, Illinois, Cleveland, Ohio, New York City, New York, Detroit, Michigan, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Pittsburgh. Those locals, and others established later, often protected their own autonomy jealously, rejecting at least one national contract with the American Bridge Company because it would have reduced their power. The internal divisions also led the union, which had affiliated with the American Federation of Labor shortly after its formation, to disaffiliate in 1901, only to reaffiliate two years later. It was one of the charter members of the AFL's Building Trades Department, which was created in 1908.
History of iron work Iron work is a skilled craft that dates back to the late 19th century and is a result of the rapid rise in the use of modern steel in iron bridges and skyscrapers. It was and is also an exceptionally dangerous job; hundreds of iron workers fell to their death every year in the late years of the nineteenth century. As one saying among Iron Workers of the day put it, "We're killed, but we seldom ever die."
Battles with employers A number of employers tried to destroy the craft unions that made up the AFL in the first decade of the twentieth century by insisting on maintaining an "open shop", i.e. hiring without reference to union membership. For craft unions, such as the Iron Workers, who maintained union wages and working conditions by controlling the supply of labor, the open shop meant that the employer was free to set any wage standards it chose and to discriminate against union members in hiring. The Iron Workers had successfully repelled the open shop demands of American Bridge Company (or "Ambridge"), an arm of the United States Steel Corporation, in 1903. In 1905, after the union's collective bargaining agreement with Ambridge had expired, Ambridge and the other members of the National Erectors Association began refusing to hire union members and hired labor spies to infiltrate the union. When the Iron Workers struck in response, the employers obtained injunctions and local ordinances that barred picketing or limited it to an ineffective display. Open shop demands still exist today. Non-union iron-working companies are in competition to take over union jobs, but the non-union hourly wage is based on the union rate.
Los Angeles Times bombing Between the years of 1908 and 1911, 87 to 150 bombings took place at work sites, including some bombs set up by union members. The most famous one, and the only one to cause any loss of life, killed twenty employees of the Los Angeles Times on October 1, 1910. Times publisher Harrison Gray Otis was a staunch opponent of labor unions, and the main supporter for the open shop movement in Los Angeles. Authorities arrested James B. McNamara and Ortie McManigal in Detroit, carrying dynamite in a suitcase. Both men were in positions of importance in the Ironworkers Union. McManigal confessed to a number of dynamite bombings, and named the Secretary-Treasurer of the union, John J. McNamara, as the man who directed the bombings. James and Jim McNamara were brothers, and John gave James $1,000 per month from the union's treasury to finance the bombings. The union hired famed attorney Clarence Darrow to defend the McNamaras. Darrow, however, concluded that the brothers faced a strong chance of receiving the death penalty for the crime. Darrow therefore made a clumsy attempt, in broad daylight in downtown Los Angeles, to bribe one of the jurors. As it turned out, it was a trap and Darrow was arrested. Now more desperate than ever, he persuaded the McNamaras to plead guilty on the basis of an unwritten plea bargain that would have freed John. Once they pleaded guilty, however, the authorities denied that they had any deal at all. John McNamara served nearly ten years, while his brother spent his remaining years in prison. Their guilty pleas effectively defeated the campaign of Job Harriman, then running for mayor of Los Angeles as a socialist, and nearly destroyed Darrow's career and reputation. The federal government then indicted dozens of other Iron Worker officers for conspiring to transport dynamite as part of this campaign; the International's current President, Frank M. Ryan, and one of its future Presidents, Paul "Paddy" Morrin, were convicted along with several other defendants on December 31, 1912, after a trial in which Herbert Hockin, the International Secretary-Treasurer, testified against them. John J. McNamara later returned to the union after his release from state prison. He was expelled from the union in 1928, however, for submitting false audit reports on behalf of his local union. In 2006, Journalist Robert Fitch described the Ironworkers Union bombings as perhaps the largest domestic terrorism campaign in American history, and further notes the Los Angeles Times bombing and subsequent trials as marked a precipitous decline in labor union power in the Los Angeles area.
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