Scope and content:

This record group consists of the Redwood District Council (RDC) office files that remained in original order.

The Organizing Series consists of an intact series of alphabetical files dating from 1951-64, with the majority from the reorganization period when the U.B.of C.& J.of A. assigned up to four International representatives to organize in the RDC area. These files represent the failures. When a company was successfully organized, assigned to a local union, and had signed its first contract, it was transferred to the Contract files. If the organizing failed, the company was left in the Organizing files to provide material for future attempts. The Mutual Plywood Corporation and its successor the Mutual Plywood Division of U.S. Plywood show no less than six attempts to organize between 1951 and 1965.

The early 1950s Mutual files also provide information on the functioning of a worker-owned cooperative plywood plant. They especially illuminate the relationships between the owner-workers and non-stockholding employees and the attitudes of the RDC organizers toward stockholder employees and vice versa.

The Rainbow Lumber Company 2799 files contain a transcript of an NLRB unit determination hearing which gives a detailed description of the organization and functioning of a small mainly family-owned sawmill operation circa 1952 and the role of the Northern California Lumber Operators Association in preventing and containing union organization.

The Nelson and Walker Milling Company is a joke file purporting to be the "Onion" Agreement between International representative organizers Nelson and Walker and a house of ill repute.

The Negotiations and Contract series is incomplete, consisting of those files still in original order. When processed, the Negotiations files are a series within a series, interfiled folders of the records of the negotiations of a specific contract. The Contract files consist of organizing material from successful organizing campaigns, negotiating records, grievance material, signed contracts and miscellaneous materials. The series was filed alphabetically by company.

The Strike Files Series is a hodge-podge. The two files on the Local 598 Grants Pass Veneer Co. Cal-Ore Division Strike were created specifically for the bitter 1961 strike that basically marked the end of the RDC's presence in northern Del Norte County. The Local 2952 -Morrison and Jackson and the Local 2697 -Twin Parks files have apparently been converted from "contract to "strike" files. The Local 2952 -Morrison and Jackson file contains organizing records from 1946, contracts, and monthly financial reports and other data on Local 2592 Myers Flat --an apparently quite active small local. The strike era material details the destruction of the union hall and heavy damage to the company mill in the 1955 flood which together with the sharp lumber industry recession of 1957 apparently drove the company to force a bitter union busting strike in that year.

The Industrial Accident Case Files Series in this record group and in the records of the individual locals were created in the process of filing claims for Workers' Compensation, a service performed by the California State Council of Lumber and Sawmill Workers and its contracting law firms. The files contain a wealth of information on injuries incurred in sawmill accidents and, to a lesser extent because of the smaller membership base, logging injuries. Working at sawmills and especially logging, rank at the very top of dangerous occupations.

The Cahill Era Subject Files document the RDC locals' political role. They reveal the unions' self-conception as an integral part of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party in the "Great Society" period, working for Civil Rights and Medicare legislation at the Federal level, and fighting for liberal County Welfare benefits and the creation of the County Human Rights Commission. The file, "Reagan and the Birchers" aptly sum up their feelings toward the rise of the Reagan Right in California during the late 1960s. There are three thick files on Congressman Donald Clausen, a political enemy. The fight against the California State Right to Work Initiative in 1958 would appear to have initiated this period of political activism.

The Roy Clement Era files of the mid to late 1970s are less concerned with politics and what there is mostly concerns trying to prevent the expansion of the Redwood National Park and fighting for the best compensation and retraining package for affected lumber workers --The Redwood Employee Protection Program (REPP). The Diamond International Strike, Marysville File contains correspondence that best illuminates the Western Council's role in negotiations and the frictions inherent in its role as an industrial union operating within a craft union.

The Henderson Village Townhouses, Humboldt Plaza Apartments Series documents the RDC's role in creating moderate income housing in both Arcata and Eureka and certain unexpected landlord/tenant problems including having to deal with an unhappy tenant's union.

The highlight of the Walt Newman Era Files are those dealing with the aftermath of the Redwood National Park Expansion and the rash of plant closures during the late 1970s and the recession of 1981-82. The several REPP files and the Roundtable and Union Defense Committee files deal with this and most especially the Reagan Administration Labor Department's attempt to rewrite the REPP guidelines to drastically curtail worker benefits.

Physical description:

13 cubic feet

Contents

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