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The International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers (IUMMSW) was a labor union representing miners and workers in related occupations in the United States and Canada.
The union played an important role in the protection of workers and in desegregation efforts beginning in 1916 when the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) changed its name to International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers (IUMMSW), also known as Mine Mill. The union was created in the western United States, and eventually expanded throughout the United States and Canada.
The union was known for its militant measures in dealing with opposing forces, and firm in its opposition to the politics that existed in the country during the Cold War. The Mine Mill union was very active politically from the 1930s to the 1960s, when it merged with the United Steelworkers. Ironically, the principles that the union supported in the workplace often clashed with popular ideology found in the home and community.[1] The philosophies of the union often mirrored communism, and some of its leaders were believed to be members of the Communist Party. Just as the nation struggled with the idea of communism in the 1920s, unions were faced with philosophical treatment of those in positions of power. Reid Robinson, IUMMSW president appointed communists to union positions of authority. Anticommunist members called for Robinson to resign in 1947, but were aggravated when they learned that Maurice Travis, a communist, would succeed him. Travis eventually left the party to comply with specifications of the Taft-Hartley Act, but his activities were heavily scrutinized by Senator Joseph McCarthy and his investigators.[2]
In 1942, the union absorbed the National Association of Die Casting Workers.[3] By the 1950s, the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers had achieved establishment of approximately 300 locals, with about 37,000 total members in the United States and Canada.[4] Although all locals had some common goals, such as establishing ways to ensure that all workers are treated fairly, each local dealt with issues specific to that group.
- ^ Mercier, Laurie (August 2012). "Gender, labor, and place: reconstructing women's spaces in industrial communities of western Canada and the United States". Labor History. 53 (3): 389–407. doi:10.1080/0023656X.2012.695561. S2CID 154730801.
- ^ Aiken, Katherine G. (Spring 1995). "WHEN I REALIZED HOW CLOSE COMMUNISM WAS TO KELLOGG, I WAS WILLING TO DEVOTE DAY AND NIGHT": Anti-Communism, Women, Community Values, and the Bunker Hill Strike of 1960". Labor History. 36 (2): 165–186. doi:10.1080/00236569512331385422.
- ^ Reynolds, Lloyd G.; Killingsworth, Charles C. (1944). Trade Union Publications: The Official Journals, Convention Proceedings, and Constitutions of International Unions and Federations, 1850-1941. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press.
- ^ Stein, Judith (1988). Running Steel, Running America: Race, economics and the Decline of Liberalism. University of North Carolina Press.. pp. 46–49.