Assignment Guidelines

Your group will work together to analyze the following case study.Follow these steps:

First, read the case over yourself. Make notes about your thoughts and/or answers to the Case Study questions (at the end of the case).

Log in to your Discussion Group and meet the other members. Use the Online Group Guidelines.

Talk about the case and answers to the Case Study questions through discussion group postings.

As a group, determine your final answers to the Case Study questions (i.e. the answers that will be submitted to the professor).

Submit your group's answers.

At the end of the reading, you and your group will be answering questions on:

the key players in this case

the main dispute

the outcome of the dispute

the decisions of the union leaders and the manufacturers

"(I)n Hamilton, the first Canadian home of the Knights, an angry dispute between the Order and local craft unions developed when the Knights accepted an assembly of strike-breaking cigar makers. Key local leaders were accused of belonging to the Home Club, a radical faction of the Knights. Soon, skilled workers deserted the local assemblies for their own craft unions in major centres. In smaller communities, the mixed assemblies faded for lack of a real function." (Morton, 1998, pg. 40)

This event became known as the Hamilton Home Club Affair of 1886. Hamilton Knights argued over the chartering of the Progressive Cigarmakers bitter antagonists of the Cigar Makers International Union No. 55 into a Knights of Labour District Assembly (DA).

Some things you need to know:

Union labels: Goods made in the shops of unionized skilled workers arestamped with a symbol called a "union label," sometimes referred to as "the union bug." This label tells consumers the product has been made with union labour. The Knights used a white label as their symbol and often encouraged workers to boycott non-union goods, or those produced by strikebreakers.

The union label is still important to unions today. See the American Federation of Labour's http://www.unionlabel.org/ and this one about British Columbia union providers of goods and services: http://www.bcunionlabel.ca/

Some terms: International union = trade union = craft union. (They all refer to unions of skilled workers, from the same trade.)

The beginnings of the Knights of Labor: The growth of the Knights in Canada began in Hamilton, Ontario in the early 1880s. The city had Canada's first District Assembly, No. 61, which by 1884 included 12 Local Assemblies and more than a thousand members. At the Knights General Assembly in the fall of 1887, membership was reported at more than 2200, in at least 31 Local Assemblies

Who did the Knights organize? The Knights organised the unskilled as well as the skilled. Restricting the membership in traditional craft unions to skilled workers, while very effective in defending craft traditions and skills, also meant that workers were separated, and the workers' movement was weaker for that. Excluding unskilled workers from craft unions also, generally, meant excluding women and members of those ethnicities and races that were not the majority in early Canada.

Who did the craft unions organize? Many members from the skilled trades had experience in the fight to control their workplace lives. The unions of skilled workers fought primarily to protect their control over the workplace and their own autonomy as workers. They demanded strict limitations on the numbers of apprentices (often through a set ratio of apprentices to the number of journeymen employed), limited hours of work, standardised wage rates, regular pay periods, etc.

Where did the Knights and the craft unions meet? The Central Labour Union (CLU), a representative body of Hamilton's organised working class movement, was formed in 1884. Here, delegates from Knights Assemblies met with those from the city's skilled trade unions to discuss labour's common problems and priorities.

Background

When the bosses threatened to destroy the Cigar Makers Union (CMIU) in 1885, the union paper thePalladium of Labor, declared, "the Cigarmakers' Union or any other trade union in this city -and there is about 30 of them?do not stand alone. They are linked together in one unbroken chain and 'an injury to one is the concern of all' As a result of the recent formation of the Central Labour Union, all our Labour Organisations are combined more solid than ever before." (Kealey & Palmer, 1987, pg.154)

The tight ties between Knights and craft unionists at the time are demonstrated by the fact that the Palladium of Labor, the official newspaper of the Knight's District Assembly 61, was often kept in production by contributions from Hamilton's Iron Molders International Union No. 26.

At the same time, tensions between Knights and craft Unionists are evident in internal documents as early as 1883. (Kealey & Palmer, 1987, pg.155).

The Dispute

Hamilton's Cigar Makers International Union (CMIU) joined the Knights in 1883 with many other skilled trades unions during a wave of strikes aimed at securing workplace control. The cigar makers went out on April 13, 1883, largely over the issue of apprenticeship regulation.

The strike lasted more than six weeks, and the manufacturers (bosses) brought replacement workers (strikebreakers or scabs)to Hamilton to make the cigars. However, the bosses found their work inadequate and poor quality.

The Cigar Makers' International Union and the Cigar Manufacturers Association submitted their conflict to a board of arbitration made up of two Knights and one liberal manufacturer. The settlement favoured the union and work resumed on the first of June, 1883.

The Cigar Manufacturers Association however, waited their turn until April 1885, during a recession, when many of the cigar factories were closed. With many workers laid off, the manufacturers asked the union to lower wage rates, or not return to work - basically a lock-out. The Cigar Maker's International Union was on strike.

One employer, J S. Lillis, broke ranks with the manufacturers association and agreed to run his shop on union principles. Other employers had not joined the manufacturers association and never locked workers out, and they continued to hire union men, operate under CMIU rules, and produce cigars sporting the CMIU's blue union label.

The CMIU and the manufacturers association remained in a stalemate. More and more cigarmakers came to Hamilton and eventually non-union shops began to open. This obvious defiance of the Cigar Makers International Union led to a boycott of cigars that didn't have the blue union bug and occasional violence against strikebreakers. This continued well into the summer of 1886.

By 1886, the strikebreaking cigarmakers had had enough of their unreasonable bosses and bad working conditions, they wanted to protect their interests by joining a union and they petitioned the Cigar Makers International Union No. 55 to join, agreeing to pay appropriate fines (for being strikebreakers). Unsurprisingly, the CMIU rejected the petition. Consequently, these workers joined the Cigarmakers Progressive Union of America (CPUA), and became Hamilton Local No. 34.

Near the end of June in 1886, the Cigarmakers Progressive Union was admitted to District Assembly 61 of the Knights, and a cigars made by the CPUA members began to sport the Knights' white union label.

The CMIU was furious at the Knights for supporting the strikebreaking cigarmakers and allowing them to join the Knights Assembly. On June 29, 1886, the CLU held a mass meeting to discuss the Cigar Makers International Union's charges against the Knights. Many of those in attendance belonged to both the Knights and the craft union of their trade.

The U.S. president of the Cigar Makers International Union, Adolph Strasser, dominated the meeting. He told the crowd that he believed the vast majority of Knights of Labour supported the international union (CMIU) in their stand against the progressive union (CPUA), which he called "a scab organisation."

Strasser blamed the Knights support of the progressive union on a small group of allegedly unethical leaders in the Order that he then associated with the "Home Club" and claimed they were attempting to "destroy trade unions all through the country."

The "Home Club" was a small, secret, radical cadre of Knights in New York who were anarchists, disagreed with the exclusionary practices of trade unions, and, it seems, supported Irish nationalism. Even today, there's very little record of the activities or members of the Home Club. Historians have been unable to conclusively connect any of the men Strasser accused, or any of the leadership of DA 61 to the Home Club.

The meeting ended with a resolution condemning "certain unscrupulous individuals temporarily in control of District Assembly 61," and supporting the Cigar Makers International Union and their blue union label (Kealey & Palmer, 1987, p. 157)

In the following weeks, rumours abounded. One held that the Home Club of Hamilton had been paid by the Cigar Manufacturer's Association to grant a charter to the progressive union (CPUA). The so-called members of the "Home Club" in the Hamilton Knights were called all kinds of names and their motivations held in suspicion.

By September, 1886, the Iron Molders and the Palladium of Labor had taken a stand against the actions of District Assembly 61, and endorsed the international union's blue label. Even the CLU were soon boycotting the white label cigars.

Internal controversy raged in Hamilton's labour movement. Locals that supported the alleged-members of the "Home Club" were pitted against those who didn't, dividing Labour bodies such as the CLU. The split, when it wasn't articulated as slander of the particular Knights leaders, was described as between "trade unions" (craft unions) and the Knights generally.

Knights candidates were defeated in both provincial and federal elections in 86/87, leading to more internal discontent and many craft unionists leaving the ranks of the Knights.

In November 1887, District Assembly 61, now led by men who had won their positions during the widespread condemnation of the "Home Club," raised the possibility of reconciliation between the Knights and trade union interests.

The CMIU said that they would accept the members of the progressive union (CPUA) into their ranks if they paid fines against those who had broken the 1885-6 strike.

By then, however, most of the trade/craft unionists had resigned from the District Assembly, and the voters (members of the DA) at the November meeting declared themselves die-hard Knights of Labour.

In a dramatic move, the voting Knights at the meeting supported the use of the Knight's white label, and the elected leaders of the District Assembly 61 resigned en masse, disgusted with their members' refusal to reconcile the Knights and the trades. When they left the DA, they likely took any trade unionists who had been left with them. (Kealey & Palmer, 1987, pg 162)

Eventually, in 1889, the progressive union (CPUA) withdrew from the Hamilton Knights. But by this time, rifts and infighting had already decimated the Hamilton Knights, who had arguably lost most of their members and clout by late in 1887.

Sources:

Kealey, G.S. and Palmer, B. D. 1987. Dreaming of what might be: the Knights of Labor in Ontario, 1880-1900. Toronto: New Hogtown Press.

Montgomery, D. (date unknown ). 'Chapter 3: Labor in the Industrial Era.' History @ D.O.L. Office of the Assistant Secretary for Administration and Management, U.S. Department of Labor. Retrieved June 2, 2008 from http://www.dol.gov/oasam/programs/history/chapter3.htm

Morton, D. (1998). Working People: An Illustrated History of the Canadian Labour Movement, Fourth Edition. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press.

Weir, R. E. (1996). Beyond Labor's Veil: The Culture of the Knights of Labor. University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press.

Case Study 1 Questions

Answer in detail and complete sentences. Marks will be deducted for spelling and grammar errors.

1. Who are the key players? List them, identifying which organizations represent workers and which represent owners/manufacturers/bosses.

2. What is the main issue being disputed in this case? Explain it in 4 or 5 sentences. If you think there are more than one issues being disputed, name and explain them too.

3. What side of the issue won? Who lost (or what was lost)?

4. Explain in 4 or 5 sentences what events, actions, votes and leadership decisions led to the outcome of the case.

5. Why did the unionists in this case make the decisions that they did?

What could have been done differently to change the outcome? What would you have done differently, or advised others to do differently?

What were the long-term consequences of these events?