The Early Years(1900-1920)
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Early in 1900, nine Seattle butchers met to establish Protective Union of Butchers, Local 81, Seattle Washington. William Warren was elected as President, J. Denton as Vice-President, F.G. Tapert, Secretary, Jay Summers as Treasurers, Gus Meirs, Sergeant-At-Arms, and J. Casura as Labor Secretary. They immediately applied for a charter from the Amalgamated Meat Cutters & Butcher Workmen of North America, organized on the east coast in 1897. This charter was delivered and signed on April 2, 1900. Thus was the birth of today’s oldest retail butcher union in North America, the Fighting 81st of Seattle, Washington.
The first move of the local was for an early closing day for at that time markets were kept open as late as 8:00 P.M., meat cutters working 80 hours per week. After a struggle of about eight months and with the assistance of the Western Central Labor Union(Seattle Labor Council), the young local succeeded in obtaining a 6:00 P.M. closing Monday through Friday, 10 P.M. on Saturdays, and a half day on Sundays(a 66 hour workweek and no overtime!). This hours struggle and standard became the bedrock of Local 81's earliest contracts.
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Their organizing tool was the union consumer: "The Butcher’s union of this city has discovered the most effective weapon for the use of organized labor. It is for all union people to demand the working card of all other union people when patronizing business houses. Make the butcher show you an up-to-date card or refuse to buy from him."(Seattle Union Record). Fines were assessed members seen purchasing goods from non-union markets. In June, 1903, the union ordered its members to "wear the union button on the left lapel of your working gown, with the letters ‘AMC & BW of NA, AFof L’ on the border, and the knife, saw, cleaver, and steel in the center." Thus the proud seal of the Amalgamated became the organizing tool of the young local.. With the help of the growing Seattle labor movement, Local 81 established itself as the strongest retail union on the Pacific Coast.
"Seattle union men and women will not have to go far for a market where the men are perfectly willing and anxious to better their own condition and elevate their trade, by keeping up the standard of wages and obeying rules which give more pleasure and time for the wage earner to be at home with his family."(Seattle Union Record).In 1904, the Amalgamated introduced one of the first benefits of the Fighting 81st, the Amalgamated Sick and Death benefit provided to members in good standing. For the next 60 years, this benefit bound butchers to Local 81 and the Amalgamated.
In 1906, the Amalgamated provided new celluloid union market cards, still visible in retail butcher markets(the oldest being signed by Homer Call, then Secretary-Treasurer of the Amalgamated).
The first strike of the Fighting 81st occurred in 1902 when retail butchers joined with their brothers in the packing houses to support the efforts of Frye workers to organize the Frye-Bruhn Packinghouse. Thus began a long history of partnership between the retail and packinghouse butchers. In these early years, the packinghouse butchers were members of Local 81.
Early union meetings were weekly and a combination of initiations, speeches, music, wine, cigars, and boxing matches between the burly killers of cattle and the retail butchers. In1909,a fine was placed on members who failed to attend meetings once a month.
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On February 6, 1906, Joe Hofmann was initiated into Local 81. Born in 1880 into a family of Austrian sausage makers on a ship bound for America, Joe grew up in Kansas City. Joe arrived in Seattle in the early 1900s. By the late 1900s, Joe Hofmann had become the forceful and imaginative red-headed leader of the Seattle butcher union, a position he would hold for the next forty years.
One of the earliest records of Joe Hofmann was his message to union butchers regarding the 1909 Labor Day parade: "The Butchers’ uniform will be a white cap, white gown and a white apron with red silk ribbon for apron string, and a pair of straw cuffs." The following letter best reflects his passion for Local 81 and trade unionism:
"The union extends its deepest sympathies to Bro. McLaughlin, whose wife was buried this week. Our union donated a beautiful floral wreath. It is when such affliction comes to us that we realize the priceless benefit of aid and sustaining power that we derive from organization. Few men who have gone through these trials, soothed and assisted by fellow workmen in their craft through the bonds of unionism, ever find it in their hearts to desert the ranks."
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And Joe Hofmann insured that the price was high for those who deserted the ranks.
Joe Hofmann led Local 81 during the great strike of these early years: the Frye packinghouse strike of 1917. The Frye Company provided meat for most Seattle shops and could control thereby the local shop owners. In 1917, Local 81 sought to assist Frye workers in achieving a union shop and reduced hours of work. The Company responded by attempting to break the power of the Seattle local of 250 meat cutters. At the end of this struggle, the Fighting 81st achieved a $30 workweek, although work hours continued to be well over 60 hours for another 20 years and the Frye Company an open shop for the next ten years.