Labor and the making of the postwar order at the Boeing Company

This dissertation examines the emergence of the postwar order between labor and management at the Boeing Company's Puget Sound area plants. Battles within the post-World War I Seattle labor movement and the national movement profoundly influenced the context from which the Boeing local union of the International Association of Machinists (IAM) emerged. By the mid-1920s, craft unionist followers of American Federation of Labor (AFL) head Samuel Gompers had successfully eliminated progressive industrial unionism within the AFL and the IAM. The workers who organized industrial unions in the early to mid thirties faced opposition from both corporations and the craft-oriented AFL. At Boeing and throughout the country the IAM, claiming infringement on its craft jurisdiction, busted a nationwide AFL federal local of aircraft workers. The IAM won AFL jurisdiction over the aircraft industry and organized an IAM local at Boeing in 1935. A loose coalition of progressive industrial unionists took political control of the local between 1939 and 1941. The progressive local opposed IAM policy regarding black exclusion from the union, opposed entry into World War II, opposed IAM International President Harvey Brown, and promoted a form of democratic industrial unionism at odds with the IAM's conservative craft-unionist practices. The IAM busted its own local and installed conservative leadership. Conditions during World War II served to further discourage militancy and to bureaucratize labor relations at Boeing. In the postwar management offensive, Boeing attempted to roll back previously won seniority and union security gains. The company caused a bitter strike and with the aid of the Teamsters Union nearly broke the IAM at Boeing. The union, having worked nearly four years without a contract, finally negotiated a new contract in 1950, in which it lost seniority, the union shop and effectively lost the ability to pursue grievances. In the case of the IAM at Boeing, the actions of the international union laid the groundwork for Boeing's postwar domination of its workers.