United Brotherhood of Railway Employees
| Founded | 1898 (Canada) 1901 (America) |
|---|---|
| Date dissolved | 1905 |
| Merged into | Industrial Workers of the World |
| Members | Railway workers |
| Affiliation | American Labor Union |
| Key people | William Gault (Canada) George Estes (US) |
| Country | Canada |
The United Brotherhood of Railway Employees (UBRE) was an industrial labor union established in Canada in 1898, and a separate union established in Oregon in 1901. The two combined in 1902. The union signed up lesser-skilled railway clerks and laborers, but had the ambition of representing all railway workers regardless of trade. The Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) was determined to break the UBRE and provoked a major strike in Vancouver in 1903. The CPR used strikebreakers, spies and secret police to break the strike. The crafts brotherhoods of engineers, conductors, firemen and brakemen would not support the UBRE. The strike failed, and the UBRE disintegrated over the next year.
The last local of the American Railway Union (ARU) in Winnipeg dissolved in 1897. The UBRE was formed in Winnipeg in September 1898, presumably to fill the gap. At first membership was limited to a small number of fairly skilled Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) workers without a union, including yardmen, bridgemen and some classes of track repairer. It was not recognized by the CPR and had no contract with the railway. The UBRE was low profile in its early years, but in 1901 started to organize the low-paid CPR freight handlers and clerks in Winnipeg. The new activism may have been the result of the appointment of William Gault as the new Master of the union. The UBRE affiliated with the Winnipeg Trades Council at the end of 1901. The goal was to organize all railway employees into one union, regardless of their skill, so that as William Gault said they would be "not brothers in name only, but brothers indeed."
An American union, also called by coincidence the United Brotherhood of Railway Employees, had been formed by George Estes in Oregon in January 1901. Estes' UBRE was founded to create a union that would "bring all classes of actual railway employees in closer contact with each other, for their mutual benefit and improvement." It proposed to take a moderate approach to dealing with employers, and to avoid any political affiliation. A similar union had been formed in San Francisco, the Railway Employees Amalgamated Association. The two unions combined with headquarters in San Francisco, using the UBRE name. The UBRE tried to meet a need for representation for the less skilled railway workers. The running trades – engineers, brakemen, firemen and conductors – were represented by crafts brotherhoods. They were well paid, and the railways gave them good treatment because of the responsibility of their jobs. The less skilled laborers, track maintenance crews and freight handlers had worse conditions and no representation.
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