Arizona AFL-CIO Records

Unionism in Arizona began in the state's mines. The first miners' union in the western United States was the Storey County Miners Union, which formed in Storey County, Nevada in 1864 and had a simple premise: wages should not be cut and any underground worker was eligible for membership. The miners and their ideas spread across the west in the 1870s and 1880s. Numerous local unions were formed, but they were not affiliated with one another and thus wielded little power. In 1892, miners in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho struck. Although every district union backed the strike, the miners were defeated and subsequently jailed. Several of the strike's leaders envisioned a regional mining union that would encompass the entire western United States. They organized a conference of local unions from Idaho, Colorado, Montana, and South Dakota in Butte, Montana in 1893, where the group formed the Western Federation of Miners (WFM). The WFM joined the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in 1896 but left in 1897 due to the AFL's conservatism. The WFM rejoined the AFL in 1911 as a result of a break with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).

Ed Boyce, one of the miners jailed in the Coeur d'Alene strike, brought the WFM to Arizona in 1896 and the state was home to thirteen locals by 1903. The WFM organized aggressively and made major strategic gains in Arizona during the 1900s, including adding Mexican and Mexican-American miners to the union. Mexican miners had initially been among the elite of the mining community because they had experience in the hard rock that their Anglo counterparts lacked. When Cornish immigrants began arriving in the 1880s, they brought newer and more efficient European techniques, ridiculed Mexican methods, and helped to move Mexican miners from the top to the bottom of the hierarchy.

The WFM suffered from several weaknesses, including superficial organization of locals (which often led to the decline of the local once the original dedicated organizer was no longer present), involvement with such radical ideas as Socialism, and well-prepared opponents among mine owners. In 1916, the WFM became the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers (IUMMSW). The union, however, declined during the strikes following World War I and in the open-shop atmosphere of the 1920s.

The WFM formed the Industrial Workers of the World (widely known as Wobblies) in 1905 in an attempt to create a nationwide industrial union that could aid the Federation in its future conflicts with capital. The IWW believed that unions should be industrial and that their politics should be radical. The WFM was phased out of power in the IWW by approximately 1907. The IWW did not have the manpower or organizational skill to mount a serious threat to American capital but were well known for dramatic strikes and unique publicity. Beginning in 1912, the IWW organized miners (including the miners of Bisbee, Arizona), agricultural workers, and oil field workers in the southwest. Notably, the IWW was active in organizing Mexican workers, who were frequently overlooked by other unions. During World War I, owners and managers portrayed the IWW as a hindrance to the war effort in order to break its hold on the western United States. Their tactics worked, and individuals known or suspected to have ties to the IWW were unceremoniously deported. One of the best known examples of these purges is the Bisbee Deportation of 1917. These purges brought an end to the IWW.

By the 1930s, copper interests employed approximately 15,000 miners in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. About 50-60% of this labor force was Mexican or Mexican-American. Mine owners continued the long-standing practice of discriminating against these employees routinely, paying them lower wages for the same work, restricting them to common labor positions, denying the opportunity for seniority, and segregating housing, education, and recreation. Revitalized by a controversial new president (Reid Robinson) and radicals originating on the far left of the political spectrum (including the Communist Party), the IUMMSW served as the primary link between mine management and labor. Major progress was made against the Mexican scale beginning in 1937 when the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) began actively supporting equitable relationships between mine owners and miners in the southwest.

The IUMMSW became one of the founders of the Committee on Industrial Organizations (CIO) when it was organized as part of the AFL in 1935. The CIO's formation reflected a fundamental difference of opinion between craft unionists and industrial unionists: craft unionists believe that it is most effective to organize workers using occupational categories (i.e. forming one union for miners, one for teachers, one for barbers, etc.) while industrial unionists organize all of the individuals working for a particular employer (i.e. all of the employees working for the Magma Copper Company). The AFL suspended the CIO unions in 1936 and formally expelled them in 1937. In 1938, these unions formed the rival Congress of Industrial Organizations under the leadership of John L. Lewis of the coal miners' union. The IUMMSW and ten other unions were expelled from the CIO in the late 1940s and early 1950s as part of an attempt to eliminate Communist elements. The IUMMSW was also mired in conflict with the United Steel Workers of America (USWA), which used racist and anti-Communist rhetoric to convince locals associated with the IUMMSW to transfer their loyalties to the USWA. The conflict was partially resolved in the early 1950s when a petition to the NLRB resulted in a series of elections to determine who would represent miners and the IUMMSW defeated the USWA. The two unions merged formally on June 30, 1967, thus returning the IUMMSW to the AFL-CIO fold.

In Arizona, the political climate became increasingly hostile to labor during the 1940s as conservative politicians and business leaders began fighting to curb union power. The most significant threat to organized labor were Right to Work laws, which made it illegal to mandate union membership as a condition of employment. Proponents of these laws argued that mandatory union membership constituted a constraint on individual liberty and that the 1935 Wagner Act promoted class conflict and gave labor enough power to grind industry to a halt. Business advocates contended that this power allowed labor to interfere with managerial decisions and to slow business growth, portrayed organized labor as being linked to organized crime, and presented normal, legal union activities as prime examples of corruption and racketeering. Organized labor argued that powerful unions were a necessary check on potentially exploitative business owners, contended that Right to Work legislation would cause a return to the poor working conditions and low wages that had originally spurred labor organization, and focused on explaining the economic necessity of unions (including linking the union shop with the survival of the middle class). Labor also collaborated with the Mexican American civil rights movement to oppose Right to Work laws, making the unions part of a broader campaign for social, economic, and political justice. Labor, however, was less organized in the Southwest than it was in other parts of the country and the movement was plagued with rivalry between AFL and CIO locals prior to the merger of the two groups in addition to fears of Communist infiltration. Thus, labor was unable to mount a successful counterattack and Right to Work legislation passed in Arizona in 1946. The Taft-Hartley Act, which severely curtailed organized labor's power by restoring anti-strike injunctions, limiting picketing, prohibiting secondary boycotts, and allowing states to ban union shops, became national law the following year.

By 1955, both the AFL and the CIO had grown stronger as separate entities. The CIO had enrolled over 5 million members and had demonstrated that industrial unionism was an effective strategy. Both groups had adopted similar union structures, with the AFL moving away from single-craft unionism and the CIO moving away from strictly industrial unionism in favor of broader strategies like mixed industrial and craft unions and multi-craft unions. The two groups also shared concerns about such subjects as Right to Work legislation and new restrictions being imposed on union political activity. The AFL and CIO merged in February of 1955, thus forming the AFL-CIO and uniting approximately 15 million unionized workers in 140 unions of craft, industrial, mixed, and unlimited jurisdiction unions. It made fighting Right to Work legislation a priority, enlisting mainline American churches, politicians (including Eleanor Roosevelt), and liberal business giants. In 1958, off-year elections provided an opportunity for a national referendum on the Right to Work issue. Right to Work laws were defeated in several states, but open-shop proponents continued to fight to curb organized labor's power. Among the most significant of these proponents was Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, who ran for President in 1964 and included opposition to organized labor in his platform. By 1970, anti-unionism was the prevailing ideology in the Southwest.

Unions continued to weaken in the 1980s after the United Auto Workers agreed to a six-month wage freeze, a deferment of pension increases, and surrender of six paid holidays in October of 1979 as part of the Chrysler Corporation's bailout. Congress subsequently increased the concessions demanded to surrender of seventeen paid holidays and a continued freeze on pay increases. Once the practice of pattern bargaining (intended to standardize wages across an industry) was broken, demands for concessions in other industries, including steel, trucking, airlines, meatpacking, and rubber, followed. Concessions to the Basic Steel Agreement were made in February of 1983, including a $1.25 per hour pay cut, loss of six cost of living adjustment payments, reduction of vacation time, and reduction of Sunday pay to time and a quarter. These concessions were estimated to be worth approximately 3 billion dollars to steelmakers. Outrage over these concessions spurred a long, bitter, and ultimately unsuccessful strike against Phelps Dodge in Clifton-Morenci, Arizona. When the strike finally ended, Phelps-Dodge imposed deep cuts in the non-unionized workforce.

To make concessions more palatable, employers began offering incentives to workers, including bonus payments. These lump-sum payments actually decreased workers' income, as they did not increase the employee's base wage. Thus, a worker making $8 per hour would accrue approximately $2,000 in three years if his wage were increased by 2% per year, but only $1,000 were he given a bonus of 2% for three years. Employers also introduced starting rates that allowed them to hire new employees at a lower salary than their current workers and began tying pay to company performance to encourage workers to identify with company goals rather than with organized labor. By 1990, bargaining was frequently done at the local level by individual unions rather than at the national level by such organizations as the AFL-CIO. Although labor saw some gains in the 1990s and 2000s, including the defeat of legislation that would give the President the ability to fast track trade legislation without a guarantee that workers' rights and the environment would be protected (1997), the passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (2009), and the formation of new groups like American Rights at Work (2003), organized labor remained weak. It has been further attacked in the 2010s through state level legislation outlawing unionization of public sector employees and passage of additional Right to Work laws.