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History of UA Local 149
It was 1899 and if you wanted to travel around Champaign-Urbana chances are you rode in a horse-drawn carriage, a streetcar, or walked.
 Most homes were heated by coal-burning furnaces, though a fortunate few enjoyed the warmth of coal-fired steam boilers. Water was brought to homes through wooden mains that were in the process of being replaced by cast-iron pipe. The individual services connecting water to homes and businesses were made of lead. Indoor toilets were slowly being adopted and greater care taken to prevent contamination of water supplies by raw sewage. All in all, a very different world than that we enjoy today.Yet, even a century ago workers recognized the necessity to protect their jobs and their rights. For those in the pipe trades, this meant the United Association of Plumbers, Gas Fitters and Steam Fitters and Steam Fitters Helpers, which in 1899 organized Local 149 in Champaign-Urbana. These men came together in order, as their charter noted, "to protect members from unjust and injurious competition" and to "secure through unity of action among all workers in the trade" protection from the greed of corporations and employers. These Champaign County workers were part of a proud tradition in the pipe trades that extended back to the 1820s when such skills helped bring gas street lighting to America's fledgling cities.
In the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s, the trade evolved into its major components-- plumbing, steamfitting, and gasfitting. Workers from these trades played a role in one of the first strikes in the United States--an 1835 action to gain the 10-hour day in Philadelphia. Bouncing from labor organization to labor organization as either repression or internal disagreements or both snuffed out attempts to create alliances across trade lines, some the pipe trades workers finally organized their own union--the United Association--in 1889. Within a few years, the United Association had spread across the United States and, by the turn of the century, had merged with the steam and water fitters to form the present organization. Next >> |