A local union, often shortened to local, in North America, or a union branch (known as a lodge in some unions) in the United Kingdom and other countries is a locally-based trade union organization which forms part of a larger, usually national, union.
Local branches are organized to represent the union's members from a particular geographic area, company, or business sector. Locals have their own governing bodies which represent the interests of the national union while at the same time responding to the desires of their constituents, and organise regular meetings for members. Local branches may also affiliate to a local trades council.
In the United States and Canada, locals are usually numbered (e.g. CWA Local 2101 in Baltimore, Maryland or ILA Local 273 in Saint John, New Brunswick). In the United Kingdom, they are usually named by geographical location (e.g. Manchester Branch), but may also have a name and a number (e.g. Manchester No.2 Branch) or have a more specific name (e.g. Manchester Fitters Branch) if there is more than one branch in a town. Some unions (e.g. Transport and General Workers' Union) number their branches as well as naming them.
In the British printing industry, union branches are traditionally divided into sub-branches known as "chapels", led by the Father of the Chapel. Each chapel represents members in a single printing works or department of a larger works.
Famous quotes containing the words local and/or union:
“While it may not heighten our sympathy, wit widens our horizons by its flashes, revealing remote hidden affiliations and drawing laughter from far afield; humor, in contrast, strikes up fellow feeling, and though it does not leap so much across time and space, enriches our insight into the universal in familiar things, lending it a local habitation and a name.”
—Marie Collins Swabey. Comic Laughter, ch. 5, Yale University Press (1961)
“The sacred obligation to the Union soldiers must not—will not be forgotten nor neglected.... But those who fought against the Nation cannot and do not look to it for relief.... Confederate soldiers and their descendants are to share with us and our descendants the destiny of America. Whatever, therefore, we their fellow citizens can do to remove burdens from their shoulders and to brighten their lives is surely in the pathway of humanity and patriotism.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)