Biography/History

Chronology

1896	Samuel Gompers of the AFL issues a call for a national convention of meat packers in Cincinnati.
1897	Constitution drafted by 4 delegates to the Cincinnati convention is accepted by AFL and union is chartered as the Amagalmated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America. Homer Call, the secretary-treasurer, and Michael Donnelly, the second president, are the early leaders.
1904	AMCBWNA leadership calls a national strike. The strikes fails, and the international barely survives. Donnelly departs.
1917	With support of reform elements, Dennis Lane replaces Call as secretary-treasurer. He is leading figure in the union for the next quarter of a century.
1918	AMCBWNA revives during World War I and membership increases from 6,000 to 63,000 in two years.
1920	Patrick Gorman is elected vice-president. In 1923 he is elected president. Gorman continues in this position until 1942.
1921	AMCBWNA calls its second national strike to protest wage cuts after major meat packers repudiate their wartime agreement. The strike is disastrous. A stable base among retail butchers is the backbone of the union during the 1920s.
1934	A series of indecisive strikes ends the AMCBWNA effort to organize packinghouse workers. The CIO launches its own attempt to organize packinghouse workers as the Packinghouse Workers Organizing Committee.
1935	Safeway stores signs the first national agreement in the retail industry.
1940	AMCBWNA merges with the Sheep Shearers' International Union.
1941	Armour signs the first master agreement in the meat packing industry.
1942	Patrick Gorman elected secretary-treasurer to succeed Dennis Lane. Earl W. Jimerson elected president.
1943	PWOC becomes United Packinghouse Workers of America.
1946	Post-war labor conflict results in a two-week strike called by both the AMCBWNA and UPWA against the nation's major packers. President Truman uses his war-time power to seize the packing plants. AMCBWNA workers return to work. Master agreement with the major packers is reached in November.
1951	AMCBWNA merges with United Leather Workers International Union.
1953	AFL merges with CIO. AMCBWNA and UPWA agree to coordinated bargaining. Although merger is mentioned with UPWA, discussions fail.
1955	AMCBWNA merges with the Stockyard Workers' Association of America and the International Fur and Leather Workers Union of the United States and Canada.
1957	After the death of Earl Jimerson, Thomas J. Lloyd is elected president of the International.
1958	AMCBWNA merges with the Fur and Leather Workers Union. Communist officers are asked to resign or be expelled.
1960	AMCBWNA merges with the National Agricultural Workers Union.
1968	AMCBWNA merges with the UPWA, now the United Packinghouse, Food and Allied Workers, as a result of talks that began as early as 1953.
1972	Joseph Belsky succeeds Lloyd as international president.
1976	Patrick Gorman becomes chairman of the board, and Harry Poole is elected to replace him. Addie Wyatt is elected as the first woman vice president of an international union.
1979	AMCBWNA merges with the Retail Clerks International Union to become one of the first “multi-jurisdictional, mega-unions.” William H. Wynn of the RCIU is founding president. Harry Poole of AMCBWNA is elected vice-president.