The Glass Bottle Blowers' Association (GBBA) was a labor union representing workers involved in making blown glass in the United States and Canada. The union was formed in 1891.
Origins Early glassmakers' unions In 1842, craftsmen in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, formed a glass blowers' union that represented workers throughout the region.Flannery, p. 113.McCabe, p. 155. John Samuels was elected the first president. Several other local glass blowers' unions joined the nascent national union, which adopted the name Glass Blowers' League. The union represented workers who made soda-lime glass (or "green glass").Fones-Wolf, p. 15."Green glass" or "bottle glass" is the cheapest and hardest glass. It consists of silica, lime, clay, and a small amount of alkaline ashes. The ash was usually created by burning barilla, kelp, or wood. Impurities in the ash give the glass a green tinge. It is quite hard and strong, and resists corrosion. The new national union slowly disintegrated over the following quarter century, but glass blowers met again in 1866 and affirmed their affiliation to the Glass Blowers' League and its 1842 constitution. The reinvigorated union also changed its name to the Druggists' Ware Glass Blowers' League. Membership was largely centered in the states of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, then the center of the glass industry in the U.S.Fones-Wolf, p. 14.
The glass blowers faced a major challenge in the 1880s from a new union, the American Flint Glass Workers' Union of North America (AFGWU). Flint glass, commonly known as "crystal",Flint glass consists of three parts of silica, two parts of red oxide of lead, one part of potassium carbonate, and trace amounts of arsenic, manganese, and niter. was made in closed pots to protect the glass from impurities (unlike green glass), and generally the flint glass workforce was more highly skilled. The AFGWU formed in Pittsburgh in 1878, and within four short years had locals throughout West Virginia and Ohio and was spreading east.Skrabec, Edward Drummond Libbey, American Glassmaker, p. 42. Feeling threatened by the new union, the Glass Blowers waged several bitter jurisdictional strikes against the AFGWU in the 1880s and 1890s.Ulman, p. 151. The union's jurisdictional fight was an important one. Highly skilled workers like glass blowers made up 15 percent of the entire workforce. While 45 percent of American workers made just enough money in the 1880s to be at or above the poverty line ($500 a year), another 30 percent made less than that. A shocking 10 percent of all full-time workers made so little money they were considered absolutely destitute. Glass blowers, however, made 60 to 100 percent more than the average worker, and were considered the "cream" of the working class.Reef, p. 33.
Joining the Knights of Labor The union was also confronting a diversifying glass industry. Newer glassworks tended to be better capitalized, and paid workers better. Distinct differences between glassworks in the east and west emerged, and the union created an eastern and western division in 1884 to accommodate these industry changes.Kaufman, et al., p. 558. The eastern division of the Druggists' Ware Glass Blowers' League dissolved in 1886 and joined District 149 of the Knights of Labor (KOL), while the western division dissolved in 1889 and joined KOL District 143. An independent union of glass blowers, the "Western Green League", formed in western Pennsylvania around 1880 but merged with the Knights of Labor in 1886 as well.
Child labor and apprenticeships were major issues for the union in the 1880s as well. One in four workers in the green glass industry was a child. Apprenticeships in the green glass factories lasted four years. But the apprentice system was operated by the employers, who took on large numbers of apprentices in order to flood the market with skilled workers and thus put a downward pressure on wages.Minton, p. 13, 15. After the merger with the Knights of Labor in 1886, the glass workers' union struck to win control over the apprenticeship system. The eastern District 149 demanded one apprentice for every 15 workers, but the western District 143 accepted two.Minton, p. 15-16. The strike lasted into 1887, and the eastern District 149 glass blowers—angry over the employer-friendly stand taken by the western district—disaffiliated from the KOL. Employers instituted a lockout against the eastern workers. At an employer-union conference in 1887, a compromise was reached. The union not only won agreement on the apprentice issue but also an industry-wide agreement setting uniform wages and work rules. The agreement even listed the physical movements all workers would be expected to do.Davis, p. 145; Bonnett, p. 271.
Forming the Glass Bottle Blowers' Association In 1891, after four years of labor unrest, the two KOL glass blowers' divisions merged to become the United Green Glass Workers' Association of the United States and Canada.McCabe, p. 156.Fones-Wolf, p. 14-15. The glass blowers disaffiliated from the KOL in 1895 and formed a new, independent union, the Glass Bottle Blowers' Association (GBBA) of the United States and Canada.Flannery, p. 114. Denis A. Hayes was elected the new union's president in 1896, a position he held for the next three decades. The GBBA affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in 1899.
History of the modern union
Affiliations and jurisdiction The GBBA struck the glass blowing industry in a lengthy strike from April 8, 1899, to July 1, 1900, that led to the unionization of all but two glass plants.United States Industrial Commission, p. 172, 174. By 1900, the GBBA had 61 local unions and 4,300 members.United States Industrial Commission, p. 172. The GBBA, with the consent of the American Flint Glass Workers' Union (AFGWU), affiliated the Prescription Glass Blowers' department of the AFGWU.Ulman, p. 319. In 1906, one scholar of trade union activity noted that the GBBA tended to hold regional or national strikes, and only rarely struck individual employers.Sakolski, p. 55-56.
Disputes with the AFGWU did not end, however. Mechanization tended to eliminate the skill differences between flint glass and green glass workers, and the two unions clashed repeatedly over who should represent glass industry workers. Bottle and fruit jar manufacturing had long been "green glass work", but now the two unions enter into a bitter dispute over who should represent workers in this section of the industry. When the American Federation of Labor (AFL) ruled in favor of the GBBA, the AFGWU disaffiliated from the AFL on January 30, 1903. As an independent union, the AFGWU tried to organize these workers but lacked the support and protection which the national trade union center gave the GBBA. The AFGWU reaffiliated with the AFL October 21, 1912, after renouncing its claims to bottle and fruit jar workers.Fink, p. 128.
The challenge of mechanization In 1904, Michael Joseph Owens received the first American patent for an automatic glass bottle blowing machine, which transformed the glass bottle and jar industry.Skrabec, Michael Owens and the Glass Industry, p. 188-196. The GBBA strongly opposed mechanization,Flannery, p. 95. but there was little they could do to stop new companies from employing the technology. Mechanization turned glassmaking from a skilled profession to an unskilled one.Skrabec, Henry Clay Frick, p. 229. Output tripled, and so many workers were needed that the surplus of apprentices was more than easily absorbed. But as bottle-making became an unskilled profession, the GBBA responded by allowing union wage rates to fall dramatically.Ulman, p. 32-33.
Between the Panic of 1907 and World War I, the GBBA found itself struggling. Employment (and membership) dropped sharply due to bad economic conditions. As more and more states and large cities adopted Prohibition laws, the need for bottles fell drastically, causing even more unemployment and membership losses for the union.,Minton, p. 52-53. Mechanization worsened the unemployment situation, as companies developed procedures that allowed molten glass to flow directly from the furnace into the molding and blowing machines. By 1920, the hand blower and hand-operated glass-making machine were nearly eliminated. Although the union had organized 95 percent of worksites employing hand-blown or hand-operated machines, it had but a single contract at an automated company.Minton, p. 56-58.
To counteract the membership problem, the GBBA began organizing all workers in glass factories, not just blowers. This was a major change for the union. Previously, the GBBA had adhered to a philosophy known as craft unionism, in which a narrow set of highly skilled glassworkers were organized by the union. These highly paid workers generated significant dues, and their specialized skills and homogeneous socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds made them easy to organize. But by 1916, the union had shifted to a new philosophy, industrial unionism, in which all workers in the glass industry were potential members of the union. This included semi-skilled and even unskilled workers, such as bottle sorters, helpers, and packers. By 1916, unskilled workers were organized in 16 different plants. Organizing successes included those at the Whitall-Tatum plant in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, and the George Jonas Glass Co. in Minotola, New Jersey—both of which had resisted unionization for decades.Minton, p. 59-61.
Prohibition World War I proved to be a boon for the union. Immigration from Europe to the United States almost came to a stop, eliminating a major source of cheap labor. Additionally, major production increases necessitated by the war effort led to significant wage increases, extensive overtime, and many new hires. But adoption of the Eighteenth Amendment and passage of the Volstead Act led to nationwide Prohibition in 1920. The need for glass dropped precipitously, leading to major membership losses and wage decreases.Minton, p. 64.
When John Maloney was elected president of the GBBA in 1924, the union was in crisis. With just 1,800 members and the union running a large budget deficit, Maloney cut the salaries of officers and staff, eliminated staff, and canceled publication of the union magazine. He also began working with the United Brewery Workers to repeal the Eighteenth Amendment.Minton, p. 77. Building a coalition against Prohibition took a full decade. At Congressional hearings in 1926, few witnesses spoke against Prohibition, and those who did emphasized the law's impact on personal liberty (rather than employment). By 1930, the Glass Blowers and Brewery Workers had organized a much larger coalition of labor unions—which included, at last, the AFL itself—to speak out against the amendment, and they began emphasizing the negative economic, employment, and tax revenue impacts of the law.Gusfield, p. 127-128. In 1932, the Glass Blowers, the Amalgamated Lithographers of America, and the Allied Association of Hotel and Stewards' Associations openly lobbied for Prohibition's repeal before Congress.Colman, p. 33.