United Packinghouse Workers of America

The United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA), later the United Packinghouse, Food and Allied Workers, was a labor union that represented workers in the meatpacking industry.

Between the mid-1800s and mid-1900s, the Midwestern United States supplied nearly all the nation's beef and pork. The companies supplying this meat were known as the "Big Four" of meatpacking. The companies that made up the "Big Four" were Armour, Swift, Wilson, and Cudahy. Butchers at "Big Four" stockyard plants in Chicago, Kansas City, and Omaha formed the backbone of the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen (AMCBW). The AMCBW was chartered by the American Federation of Labor in 1897, and was the original labor union to represent retail butchers and packinghouse workers. In the early years of the twentieth century the AMCBW experienced some success, however the union was very divided and unorganized, and lost two major strikes in 1904 and 1921-1922. After experiencing failure in the nationwide strike of 1921-1922, the AMCBW lost many members. After the passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act in 1933, the AMCBW started gaining back more members, however it was not as successful as new packinghouse unions of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).

The Packinghouse Workers Organizing Committee (PWOC) was chartered by the CIO, and established on October 24, 1937. The PWOC organized locals throughout the nation with the greatest concentrations in the Midwestern and Great Plains states. Like many unions in the CIO, the PWOC tried to organize all workers in a given plant regardless of skill or trade (see industrial unionism). Unlike the AMCBW, the PWOC recruited not only butchers, but also masses of unskilled packinghouse laborers. The formation of the PWOC gave direction and coherence to a previously fragmented movement. The PWOC provided more organization and structure, thus allowing union activists from different plants and different cities to coordinate movements. The PWOC was very successful in recruiting African American workers, who dominated the packinghouses in Chicago and Kansas City. It was also successful in recruiting rural white workers, and succeeded in overcoming ethnic and racial antagonisms that had plagued similar, previous efforts. Active in both black and white neighborhoods, the PWOC functioned as an important social and cultural institution in addition to its primary role as a union. In 1943 the PWOC was officially chartered as the UPWA.

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