UE Local 1111’s Demise: Sadness Mixed With Pride

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/6284/ue_local_1111_demise_sadness_mixed_with_pride/

Tuesday August 3 2:14 pm

By Roger Bybee


Members of UE Local 1111 strike outside the Allen-Bradley factory in the 1940s.


Looming high over Milwaukee's near South Side is a tower with the world's
largest four-sided clocks, sitting atop the castle-like headquarters of Rockwell Automation.

When the gigantic clocks struck midnight and July 31 slid into August 1, it ended the last contract and the 73 -year history of one of Wisconsin's most storied unions, United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers Local 1111.

When the Rockwell operation was still controlled by the Allen-Bradley Corporation, turning out switches, relays, timers, starters, and other automation equipment, Local 1111 claimed about 7,000 members.

Throughout its history, the local had been a consistently progressive force in labor, launching coalitions with labor, civil rights and other community groups, sponsoring aggressive union organizing drives, and opposing the expansion of corporate america under the shield of U.S. military power.

RELOCATING JOBS OUT OF MILWAUKEE

While Allen-Bradley had begun shifting jobs to the South, Mexico, and rural
Wisconsin in the 1970s, the pace of relocations picked up sharply after Rockwell acqured the firm in 1985. Membership plummeted from 5,500 in 1980 to 550 by 2006. (Rockwell's purchase of Allen-Bradley also provided the funding for the ultra-right wing policies and genteel white supremacy of the Bradley Foundation).

"Rockwell made a decision a dozen years ago that they were going to shut down production in Milwaukee," Carl Rosen said in December 2008

FULL story at link.