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Michigan trades council sought 'solid front' in 1957 formation

Date Posted: August 19 2005

Now firmly entrenched as a single-source, leading advocate for the state's trade unions and unionized construction workers, the Michigan Building and Construction Trades Council was first established in Lansing in 1957.

The Building Tradesman reported in March 1957 that the new charter was presented to the Michigan Building and Construction Trades Council officers by AFL-CIO Building Trades Department President Richard Gray in Washington, D.C.

The new council replaced the Michigan Conference of Building Trades Councils, and was intended to supplement the Greater Detroit Building Trades Council, which was established in 1937 and represented some 75,000 active construction workers at the time.

"Actually," the Tradesman reported, "the Michigan Conference voted its own demise in the best interests of the building trades. The current body is loosely knit, with no full-time or paid representatives.

"The new body is expected to bring fuller representation to all councils and to work night and day for unity in the building trades throughout the state on all questions involving the prestige and traditions of the entire building trades union movement."

After the presentation of the charter, a 19-man committee, representing each building trade union at the time, was said to be ready to work on a new constitution governing the new council.

"The new council," The Building Tradesman reported, "came into being at the behest of leaders of the Detroit Building Trades Council and similar organizations throughout the state.

"These leaders saw a need for a more compact and unified body… the need for central organization, and the need to coordinate the state's building tradesmen into one unit as a means of presenting a solid front against jurisdictional inroads and organizational drives."

At the time, with the 1955 merger of the American Federation of Labor and Council of Industrial Organizations newly completed, "jurisdiction" took on a somewhat different meaning than it does today. The building trades and the Industrial Union Department of the AFL-CIO were still arguing about work assignments and raiding workforces, and the building trades councils were spearheading the trades' efforts.