Scope and content:

This Record Group comes with an unusual, and very necessary finding aid --its own card index. The cards have been eliminated for files that no longer exist. Falling outside the system are: The Minutes Series, Plant Committee Minutes and Notes Series, Negotiations and Contracts Series, Strike Files Series, and the Meeting and Working Files Series. Certain series predate the system: the Office Files: Old Series which contains records created before the advent of business agent Noel Harris and office secretary Ina Harris, and the Office Files: Transitional Series from their first several years in office. The Carl Brandt Files Series covers the last eighteen months before plant closure and afterward until the plant was sold and the local formally merged into 2592.

Ina Harris' card system #1, #2, and #3 Files follow a logic all their own, which is not apparent without the card file and its subject cross referencing. It is best to start searching them by looking through the card file.

The local minutes lack only the first year, but are otherwise notable only for their brevity. Perhaps the most interesting file in the entire record group is the M and M Joint Bargaining Board File in the Office Files Old Series, some of its minutes date to 1943, well before the building of the Eureka Plywood Plant and the establishment of Local 2931. This file contains good detail on the early multi-plant bargaining and the only surviving correspondence with the Malarky and Malarky Company. The last two M and M contracts, 1955 and 1956 are contained in the Negotiations and Contracts Series. Little else survives from before the Simpson buy-out in 1956. Clarence Purnell replaced Joe Stockwell as business agent shortly after the buyout and there appears to have been a general clearing out of old records from this local along with the RDC office files and the Local 2808 Cal-Barrel Era records attendant upon moving into the new RDC office building in 1958. The Plant Committee minutes begin in 1957 and almost no correspondence files predate this time.

The 2931 Strike Files are the best strike files from the 1970s period in the collection, with the important exception of the 1975 Fortuna Veneer/Fortuna Wood Products Strike file in the 3006 series of the 2592 Record Group. The Simpson/Shelton IWA Sexual Harassment 10/25/79 Strike File is especially interesting, dealing with a solidarity strike in support of a woman in another plant covered by a local in another international union.

The most significant files in the card file system are probably the political and other subject files such as: The United Farm Workers, 1967-79, the Redwood Park 1966-74 and the Redwood Park Expansion 1975-77 files, Political Legislation: Letters to Congress etc, Jobs Bill/Redwood Park/Dept of Labor 1977-78 and 1978-79, and Women/Grievances --Sexual Harassment 1977-78.

The correspondence files are scattered and again best found through the card file. Safety information can be found in the OSHA Files and the Safety Meeting Files. The Carl Brandt Series includes the Plant Closure File, the REPP File and Union Defense Committee Files which document the effort to gain and protect worker rights to post-closure benefits and retraining.

Biographical / historical:

The Malarky and Malarky or M and M Eureka Plywood plant was opened in 1948 during the post-war lumber boom. M and M had been operating plywood plants in the Pacific Northwest and had a well established collective bargaining relationship with U.B. of C.and J. of A. lumber and sawmill locals in that region.

Local 2931 was organized soon after the plant opened and was integrated into the existing M and M Joint Collective Bargaining Board (JCBB). The JCBB performed many of the functions of a district council and Local 2931's presence in the RDC during the M and M years was accordingly minimal.

Early labor relations seem to have been amicable achieving the first settlement in the industry in 1952. 2931 and the other JCBB locals did not need to join the industry-wide strike of 1954 after reaching an interim agreement on the eve of the strike. The company abruptly closed its long established Longview, Washington plant at this time; and moved production to a new plant at Albany, Oregon.

M and M Plywood Company was bought out by the Simpson Redwood Co. in 1956, the year of a wave of buy-outs that was to transform the lumber industry in the RDC area and integrate it much more closely with the Pacific Northwest.

Paradoxically, the Simpson buy-out was to integrate 2931 more closely into the RDC, especially with other RDC Simpson locals: 2505, Klamath; 3006, Simpson, Arcata and later Simpson Mad River Plywood, Local 2789. All RDC locals were learning to integrate their negotiations with industry-wide patterns negotiated by the Western Council. Same-company RDC locals began to coordinate their local issue negotiations and give each other strike support.

Simpson ran a "tighter ship" than the family owned M and M and there were adjustment problems but collective bargaining settled into a stable pattern for the remainder of 2931's existence. Their were several contract strikes and local issue strikes over grievances and 2931 honored picket lines established by other Simpson locals, notably an IWA Shelton, Oregon local's strike over sexual harassment of a woman member.

The Simpson Co. bought the closed U.S. Plywood Mutual Division plant in Fairhaven on the Samoa peninsula and moved operations there from the Eureka plywood plant in 1967. The new Simpson Fairhaven Plywood plant was staffed by 2931 members and remained under the local's jurisdiction. The Company spent millions of dollars refurbishing the old Eureka plant and reopened it for a few months in 1969 as Eureka Specialty, then closed it again permanently.

2931's membership enjoyed the relatively greater job security of the plywood sector of the lumber industry during the 1950s and 1960s. By the 1970s, this began to change, despite Simpson Fairhaven's near monopoly on redwood plywood. Layoffs and curtailments grew increasingly frequent.

The Fairhaven mill closed in 1981 with Local 2931 remaining in existence until the mill equipment was sold in 1983.

Physical description:

20 cubic feet

Contents

Access and use