National Building Trades Council - National Building Trades Council

National Building Trades Council

In 1897, a group of building trades unions from the Midwest met in St. Louis to form a national organization. The new group, the National Building Trades Council, would adjudicate jurisdictional battles through neutral arbitration and encourage the amalgamation of construction and building unions. The NBTC also encouraged the formation of local and regional building trades councils, established a correspondence committee to keep unions informed of jurisdictional decisions and collective bargaining trends, worked to create a national work card system, lobbied for laws requiring an eight-hour day, and lobbied for laws creating mechanics liens.

But the NBTC was often as ineffective as local councils. Many national and international unions refused to join. The NBTC's respect for local union autonomy often meant that local unions set jurisdictional policy for national unions, a situation national unions could not accept. Local autonomy also meant that jurisdictional decisions in one area held no weight in another, creating a patchwork of different jurisdictional rules nationwide. Membership on the local level was also spotty, hurting local council finances and undercutting the weight of local council decisions. Because the NBTC permitted not only unions belonging to the AFL but also independent union to join, the AFL formally accused the group of dual unionism in 1899 and proceeded to establish building trades councils of its own.

The ineffectiveness of the National Building Trades Council and pressure on member unions from the AFL led Frank Duffy, president of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, to form the Structural Building Trades Alliance (SBTA) in 1903. With most of its members participating in the SBTA, NBTC struggled to remain relevant. It became moribund in 1907, and disbanded in 1921.