09/07-Executive Board Meeting

09/09-78 Union Meeting

09/11-UPPA

09/20-County Federation of Lab

 [Calendar] [More..]

Health/Medical Claim Form

Voter Registration

UA 78 Member Services

Our History
Ralph A. McMullen

Photograph of Ralph A. McMullen, president of the League of California Housing Authorities, holding his 10th anniversary citation (August, 7 1951).

Our History
UA Local Union 78 Historical Review

by Calvin Emery

To tell the full story of Plumbers Local 78 would be to tell the larger story of trade unions in the United States and especially in California.

We will, therefore, confine this narrative to its origins and activities through time. References include information gleaned from old timers 50 and more years ago, local 78's minutes and a history of the labor movement in California, by Ira B. Cross professor of economics, University of California printed in 1935, and other readings in the Los Angeles library. How much of this was lost in the fire I do not know.

The earliest known plumbers in the area were a couple of families from Philadelphia who in 1852 landed in San Diego by ship with tools and equipment to construct and repair a variety of metal works.

They made their way north to Los Angeles over a couple of years, drilling wells with their steam powered equipment, and making tanks of lead and zinc, providing a few wealthy ranchers and farmers with gravity fed water systems and a new fangled porcelain device called a water closet.

In 1855 they constructed a brewery near the plaza, their first known project in Los Angeles.

They also formed a company that imported metal goods through the port of San Pedro.

The last known, to me, descendant of those families was Herman Siemer who died in 1932. He had a plumbing shop near downtown.

The exact date of the first union in Los Angeles is unknown, most likely the printers in 1862.

In 1868 the mechanics league was formed consisting of the construction men in the area, who notified their employers that after August 10, the workday would be eight hours not ten as then existed, and with no reduction in pay.

Very little is known of the organization other than it was modeled after a like-named organization in the bay area. It is not known if their demands were successful.

The group was very small in any event and the organization disappeared without a trace.

In May 1869, the rail link to San Francisco from the east was completed. Los Angeles then had greatly improved access to the east via coastal steamers, and when the coastal rail link from San Francisco went into operation in September 1876, Southern California's population began to surge. Even so, the 1880 census showed the population of Los Angeles at 11,183, but the local area with many small towns and hamlets was also growing rapidly. By 1882 the population of Los Angeles had increased to 15,000 and in 1887 it exceeded to 80,000. Between 1885 and 1887, over 200,000 people arrived in Los Angeles by train and disbursed over the local area.

The Southern Pacific arrived at Los Angeles in 1884, followed by the Santa Fe shortly after that year.

In 1890, the Union Pacific pushed a line from Ogden Utah to Los Angles via Las Vegas.

The bay area had been a hot bed of union activity from it's admission as a state in 1850.

Many organizations of workers came and went. They prospered sometimes, but their successes were often countered by employers importing cheap labor from China and South America.

The construction trades were most successful as their skills were not easily learned and as long as the men stuck together they could prevail against the employers who expected them to work with and train an unlimited number of low paid laborers. This tension between labor and management resulted in the establishment of both unions and management associations with by-laws and membership standards; formal organizations as it were.

The Los Angeles area basically emulated the bay area, where most of its skilled labor came from. From 1871 to about 1876 workmens protective associations were formed in California, the forerunners of todays unions. They were all local associations, but efforts were underway to connect them up into national organizations.

Local 78's forerunner Los Angeles Plumbers and Gas Fitters Protective Association was formed during the period 1871-1876. No exact date is known for the first meeting of the group, except that they first met in 1871; seventeen strong and worked hard to recruit every new plumber who appeared at the water front, and later on the train. At least one of their members along with other crafts would meet every ship or train looking for the telltale tool box or bag. (Plumbers carried their tools in a canvas valise, or shoulder bag).

For a while our predecessor was associated with the Knights of Labor, an organization modeled after the Free Masons. Their founding principle was the mixed assembly regardless of trade or occupation. They frowned on the separate trade organizations, but did admit some as associates. Any individual could join except those engaged in reprehensible occupations, specifically, saloon keepers, gamblers, lawyers, bankers and stockbrokers.

It thrived for a while, but gradually faded when national leaders fought for power and the American Federation of Labor was formed.

When the American Federation was formed in 1884, our predecessor did not send a delegate, but at the time it was associated with an organization based in Omaha which was trying to form a National Plumbers Union which did send a delegate. Little is known of this effort, what became of them I do not know.

The Los Angeles Plumbers and Gas Fitters Protective Association did affiliate with the AFL and when the United Association was formed, affiliated with it January 1, 1892.

In the 1870s, the great cities of the east coast were overwhelmed with a huge surge of immigrants. Tenement houses were packed with these new arrivals. They had little or no sanitary facilities and water had to be carried in to five story walkups from neighborhood wells or faucets. Disease was rampant; cholera, smallpox, typhus, diphtheria, tuberculosis, all diseases abetted by crowded unsanitary conditions raged.

Philadelphia in 1871 recorded over 2000 deaths from smallpox alone. New York, Boston, Baltimore, all were likewise afflicted.

It was in the decade of the seventies that a growing understanding of the nature and causes of diseases brought on the development of health departments throughout the country. The need for safe water supplies and sanitary waste disposal became an imperative.

The first plumbing codes were devised by the health departments, not the building departments, less concerned with the physics of plumbing, but serious about its safety.

In Los Angeles, the small colony of plumbers in the city who were the vanguard of Local 78 worked closely with the City Fathers to develop the health codes, and from those early efforts a very effective plumbing code was developed by the City of Los Angeles, almost exclusively the work of Plumbers local 78 and the original Master Plumbers Association of Los Angeles.

For many years the City of Los Angeles maintained one of the finest plumbing research laboratories in the United States and the work done there was the basis of code development throughout Southern California. The Western Plumbing Officials Association began with the Los Angeles plumbing inspectors, virtually all members of Local 78. The last Chairman of this Association was George Campbell of Local 78, when it became the International Association of Plumbing and Mechanical Officials (IAPMO),

In 1924 Ralph McMullen, was certified as the first teacher of Plumbing in California. He taught at the old Frank Wiggins Trade School, not Los Angeles Trade Tech. In about 1935, Ralph McMullen and Earl Schultz of Local 78 set up the maintenance department for the City Housing Authority, a large part of which was plumbing, and other crafts did not come aboard until several years later. You can see their pictures on the wall at the housing authority offices.

Local 78 also had, and still have, a close relationship with the School board; our members who inspected for them were the toughest inspectors of all. When I worked on Schools in the 40s and 50s, they let nothing escape their eye, all must be perfect.

The City Inspectors were no slouches either; they commanded a great deal of respect from us plumbers in Local 78. They knew the code and greatly understood the importance of proper installation. I am sure it is the same today.

The department of water and power has employed our members from the earliest days of redwood water mains, on through the construction of the earliest well fields, the earliest electric power plants, the aqueduct from the Owens and Colorado rivers and the vast network of mains in the City.

A young William Mullholland, famous for bringing the Owens River aqueduct to Los Angeles was a member of Local 78. He was a self taught engineer with no college degree, but a great student of water supply systems.

When the City lifted the height limit in 1957 or 1958, cant remember exactly, new fire protection systems were required. It took a while for the City to settle on design requirement, and in the meantime designs were submitted for review by the City Plumbing Department. I sent one in for the old Security Bank Building at 6th & Spring in 1960, and one for the Wilshire Medical Building about 1963. Vince Mangan did a couple also, and there were others before the systems were certified.

Some miscellaneous facts:

Although Local 78 certainly was not the first trade union in the State, oddly enough we are the oldest continuously operating trade union in California. So many organizations would form, and then break up with their members going independent or joining others. The Bay area locals were very independent, as were some Los Angeles locals and didnt join the national union until the employers began to kick their butts and put them out of business.

Local 78s relations with employers were, on the whole, good.

Our employers nearly all came from our ranks and there were always strong ties of kinship and fraternity.

The unique nature of the trade, whereby the plumber designed his own work using the plumbing code instead of architectural drawings, and the small number of plumbers relative to other crafts, contributed to this long term stability.

We even had a small communist cell at one time. Communists were active in the labor movement from the twenties to the sixties, and in some unions, they did have some influence.

But in Local 78 they couldnt get themselves taken seriously. They were hardly noticed, just one of the guys who sometimes fielded strange ideas at the local meetings. Just another plumber on the job.

Another Local 78 Fact:

The collective bargaining agreement was a concept developed in the 19th Century, but many years were to pass before they became a reality.

The best that could be done was to put the working rules and wages in the by-laws and ask the employers to agree to abide by them. This was not considered a contract and was not legally enforceable.

Some courts considered collective bargaining agreements to be conspiracies in restraint of trade and /or blackmail, and unions were prosecuted for promoting them.

In 1934, congress at the behest of President Roosevelt enacted the National Recovery Act which fixed prices for farm products and other commodities, including retail products.

It also was amended by the Wagner Act named for its sponsor Secretary Robert Wagner of New York which recognized unions right to bargain with their employers.

The NRA act was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court except that the Wagner Act was allowed to stand. This was the most important labor legislation in history.

Again Local 78 brought in a first, signing a collective bargaining agreement with the Master Plumbers Association in 1937, and was the origin of the present collective bargaining agreement used today.

CATEGORY

PDF

TITLE (click to visit)

Last Modified

Our History Links (click to visit)