Scope and content:

The 2592 Record Group represents the one large company sawmill local, and after a 1971 merger with Local 3006, the one extensive body of records from a woods or loggers local.

This Record Group contains our earliest correspondence files, a partially surviving series dating to 1946, with some correspondence and other records of the 1946 Redwood Strike. It also contains a two box series on the Louisiana-Pacific (L-P) Strike of 1983-85 which ended the active life of the RDC and radically transformed collective bargaining for the entire lumber industry. This series includes strike bulletins from 2592, other striking L-P locals at Oroville and in the Pacific Northwest, and from local strike support groups as well. It also contains an extensive body of newsclippings and articles on the strike, correspondence on pre-strike grievances, the union boycott and corporate campaigns. There are several files of legal documents pertaining to L-P's court injunction limiting the Local's right to picket.

The record group is arranged in a chronological progression of three complete series organized alphabetically representing systems set up by three consecutive office secretaries. They contained large accordion files which have been split up into multiple folders. There are four series paralleling the Late Series of main office files: Grievances, Job Bids, Health, Welfare and Pension Files, and the Louisiana-Pacific Strike Files. The Grievance Files are mainly copies made when union records were seized by the Federal Government (see REPP Harris Papers historical sketch) and have been organized by the archivist. The L-P strike records were somewhat disordered, as in not unusual in a strike situation.

The final series represents the records of Local 3006 and, a four year extension of records after the merger in 1971, of the Fortuna Veneer and Fortuna Wood Products Companies through a strike and final plant closure in 1975. The records were fragmentary and required a more imposed arrangement. This local began as the Hammond Woods local and shared a common contract with 2592, at first with Hammond and then with Georgia-Pacific. This record group contains most of the collection's meager holdings on loggers. The 3006 series minutes contain 1960s minutes of the loggers unit meetings and these are completed in the post merger 2592 unit meeting minutes. The 2592 contract files contained within the three series of office files contain specific loggers sections detailing logging conditions There are also loggers'grievances within the 3006 Series many of which deal with company attempts to gyppo (contract out) more of the Woods operation. The amount of logger's material is surprisingly limited even in this record group and reflects the RDC locals' concentration in the sawmill, and most heavily the plywood, sections of the timber industry.

Biographical / historical:

Local 2592 was chartered in May 1940. The local lost an organizing election at the Hammond Redwood Company in August 1941. The second attempt in April 1942 was successful and marked the RDC's first breakthrough victory into the primary redwood lumber industry.

Collective bargaining began tempestuously with a wartime strike in July 1942 before certification to the War Labor Board. The Hammond Redwood Company, like the rest of the large redwood producers, was not reconciled to permanent collective bargaining. Negotiations broke down in April 1945 (for details of the strike period see overall historical sketch) and the major redwood producers were struck in January 1946.

Local 2592 and its sister Hammond locals 2893, Carlotta, and 3006, Big Lagoon, were the only redwood locals to emerge intact and victorious from the strike of 1946-48. Hammond broke ranks with the other companies and signed a union shop contract with minimal exceptions in February 1947.

The immediate post-war period marked other momentous changes for Local 2592. Hammond hired many women during the war and women filled the top financial secretary position in the union from 1943-45. By the early 1950s, there were no women in the local.

The strike period saw an explosion of small sawmills in the region. Local 2592 represented workers in several of these mills until the harder economic times of the mid 1950s. The local was involved in long bankruptcy proceedings with the Manila Mills Company and Coast Redwood/A.K. Wilson to secure back wages for the men.

The Georgia-Pacific Company bought Hammond in 1956 and operated it under the name of Hammond Redwood Company until the early 1960s and thereafter under the Georgia-Pacific name. The sale brought confusion and low morale to the local at first, but Georgia-Pacific had developed a stable collective bargaining relationship with its operations in the Pacific Northwest and Local 2592 was integrated into this system. Local 3006, the Hammond Woods Local, shared a common contract with Hammond and later G-P. Both showed dissatisfaction with a perceived loss of autonomy attendant upon their integration into industry-wide bargaining through the Western Council of Lumber and Sawmill Workers centered in Portland Oregon. The Western Council Defense (strike) Fund, procedures for separate local issue negotiations, and the success of the 1963 negotiations and strike, converted 2592's membership into firm supporters of the Western Council by 1965. Collective bargaining relations were to remain stable for the next fifteen years.

The late 1950s and early 1960s were a period of rapid technological change. The old plants #2 and #3 were closed in 1960 and an entirely new automated sawmill was built at Samoa, which opened in 1964 with a loss of 90 members to Local 2592. Despite such setbacks, Georgia-Pacific's extensive timber holdings allowed for a measure of job security unknown by workers in the region's small sawmills.

The U.B.of C. & J. of A. forced Local 3006 to merge with 2592 in 1971 bringing in the Georgia-Pacific Woods, Big Lagoon, and Carlotta operations. Georgia-Pacific's Cloverdale trucking and later a Hayward lumber yard were added. When Georgia-Pacific was forced by federal anti-trust action to spin off Louisiana-Pacific Corp., 2592 represented the workers in the heart of the new company. The 3006 merger also brought in Fortuna Veneer and Fortuna Wood Products, owned by Abe Rochlin (See 2808) for their final three tumultuous years. The Rochlin interests closed down their operations under Local 2808's jurisdiction in 1974 and tried strikebreakers, a decertification election and finally plant closure of the Fortuna operations rather than accept the high 1975 Western Council settlement.

The 1970's saw the successful organization of both McNamera & Peepe's Arcata and Crescent City operations amid a number of other unsuccessful drives. The late 1970's saw the collapse of the plywood industry in the RDC region and the opening of a number of non-union Louisiana-Pacific operations in Northern California and elsewhere. By 1981, Locals 2592 and 2505 (Simpson Klamath sawmill) were the last remaining RDC locals with contracts.

Louisiana-Pacific labor relations grew increasingly more combative with the advent of the Reagan Administration. In 1983, Louisiana-Pacific adopted a full scale southern strategy calling for wage freezes, a two-tier wage scale with much lower wages for new hires and the gyppoing (contracting out) of woods operations. Louisiana-Pacific broke away from the industry-wide negotiations and prepared to take and break a strike. This strategy was successful despite a nationwide boycott and corporate campaign by the U.B. of C. & J. A. Local 2592 was decertified in June 1984 with the strikebreakers voting. Other Louisiana-Pacific locals were also decertified and the strike officially called off when the election appeals procedure was exhausted in 1985. The breaking of the strike was to have strong repercussions on all collective bargaining in the western lumber industry.

McNamera-Peepe went into bankruptcy and closed during the Louisiana-Pacific strike. Local 2505, Klamath, expired along with the Simpson Klamath sawmill operation in 1989. Local 2592 maintains a shadow existence as the sole survivor of the former RDC locals as of this writing in 1991.

Physical description:

21 cubic feet

Contents

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