1954 "Black and White Unite" at the Colonial Meatpackers Strike

In October of 1954, there was a union meeting which went a little late, and the workers returned from the meeting in the afternoon to find that they had been locked out of their jobs. They had been preparing a strike in the expectation that their negotiation demands would not be met. United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA) Local 11, which represented the locked out workers, began their campaign against the Colonial Provision Company, which began recruiting scabs to replace the union workers.

The UPWA set up a picket line in front of the factory, causing reduced production. They also started a campaign to boycott Colonial meat products for the duration of the lock out. The company tried to portray the strikers as communist militants, which was effective to some degree due to the fear of communism which ran rampant in the United States during the 1950’s. With no strike fund, Local 11 could not have survived the strike without the continued support and solidarity of the entire Labor Movement. At the time of the strike the AFL and CIO were not yet merged and a rivalry existed between the organizations and their affiliated unions. The UPWA were affiliated with the CIO and they received support from CIO unions at General Electric and Revere Sugar, but they also received support from their AFL rival, the Meatcutters’ Union “which forced First National Supermarkets to remove Colonial products from its stores.”  This show of solidarity despite the existing rivalry was a precursor to the merge of the AFL and CIO less than a year after the UPWA strike.

Throughout the strike, Colonial used various shameless tricks in an attempt to break the union. The first such trick came from the union busting Taft-Hartley Act, which allows for a majority vote to disband a union. Because most of the workers at the plant were scabs, they were easily manipulated into voting out Local 11. This was a massive blow to the strikers, but it only served to motivate them. Their main reason for picketing was to intimidate scab workers and to let the company know they were not going away. They now adopted a strategy to “(stop) harassing replacement workers and (start) trying to organize them.”  The scab replacement workers were mostly African-American, and many of the locked out workers were white. The union believed this was an intentional move by Colonial to capitalize on racial tension, but the company neglected to consider that the UPWA was one of the most racially progressive unions in the country and had many African-American leaders.

After fourteen long months, the strike was officially called off as Colonial decided to return to the bargaining table. The Company agreed to not hire anyone until all members of the union were rehired and back to work. This was not only a great victory for the union but also for the civil rights movement at the time. The collective power of both black and white union members made the strike successful and inspired black workers members who had, previous to joining the union, felt a lack of power.