Background on UBCJA
With a long history of labor activism in their trade, Peter J. McQuire and Gustav Luebkert organized the United Brotherhood of Carpenters in 1881 to serve as a focal point for collective bargaining in the building trades. Holding its first convention in Chicago that August, the new union began to expand nationally, growing from barely 2,000 members in its first year to nearly 100,000 twenty years later.
The first local of the UBCJA founded in western Massachusetts was chartered in 1885 as Springfield Local 96, followed in quick order by locals in Holyoke (Local 390), Chicopee (Local 685), and other towns. Several locals represented the ethnic and linguistic diversity of the region, with Locals 96, 685, and 390 drawing mostly from among French Canadians and Locals 177 (Springfield), 222 (Westfield), and 1888 (Holyoke) focused on Anglophones.
With the pace of unionization picking up at the turn of the century, the Springfield District Council was established in 1906 and played an immediate role in coordinating collective bargaining, apprenticeship, and work rules in the local construction industry. Although Holyoke carpenters formed their own District Council soon thereafter, the logic of consolidation and a unified voice eventually prevailed. The Springfield locals consolidated as Local 32 in 1968, which in turn merged with the Holyoke District Council in 1973 to form Local 108.
