Tobacco Workers International Union (TWIU) records

In 1895, representatives of ten local unions met in St. Louis, Missouri to found the National Tobacco Workers Union of America and they were granted a charter from the American Federation of Labor (AFL). In 1899, the union's name was changed to the Tobacco Workers International Union (TWIU). Subsequently, the AFL recognized the TWIU as the official national union representing workers in the tobacco industry, primarily in factories that produced cigarettes. The union's major campaign in the early years was centered around the union label, and the label became a symbol of independence from the tobacco trust.

In their efforts to organize the industry, the union faced the opposition of the American Tobacco Company which, at the time, had almost monopolized cigarette production in the United States. After years of unsuccessful effort, the TWIU ended its campaign to organize American Tobacco and retreated to organizing smaller less powerful tobacco manufacturers, primarily in the South.

By the turn of the 20th century, the TWIU was able to unionize a minor segment of the tobacco workforce, involving a few hundred workers. In the 1930s major organizational campaigns were begun in Kentucky, Virginia and North Carolina, and in 1933 the union signed a contract with Brown & Williams including Union Shop, checkoff, and the use of the union label. The union’s approach was to sell the management of smaller companies the right to use the union label on cigarette packs in exchange for a closed shop. This was often done with little or no knowledge of the workers involved who would find out about the backroom deals when union dues were subtracted from their paychecks. This private cooperative approach with management meant that TWIU members wages were often lower than non-union workers. Black employees were concentrated in the preparation departments where they manually cleaned, stemmed, blended, and conditioned tobacco. White workers operated and maintained the machinery making cigarettes. Supervisory and management personnel were exclusively white. Black workers’ wages were at best subsistence level, benefits were few, and in some cases, workers draped themselves in used burlap tobacco bags to keep warm on the job during the winter. Women workers, black and white, faced routine verbal and sexual abuse. Overall, conditions in the tobacco industry remained little changed from the era of slavery.

During World War I, the TWIU had significant success in organizing tobacco workers in a more public way, most notably at the R. J. Reynolds Company in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. By 1920, the union claimed 15,200 members, but a counter offensive by tobacco management rapidly reduced membership to an all-time low of 1,500 by 1925. Despite many organizing defeats, the union leadership continued its conservative approach. The TWIU did not even call a convention and have any black unionists in the national leadership between 1900 and 1939. It continued it segregationist practices from its founding, recognizing separate unequal local unions, separate wage scales and seniority ladders, and exclusion of African Americans from the best paid jobs.

With the advent of the New Deal and the Wagner Act legalizing union organization, the TWIU made modest gains negotiating union contracts with Liggett & Myers, American Tobacco, and Philip Morris. The new members led an internal insurgency overthrowing the conservative national leadership. Subsequently, the new leadership made some limited progress in reducing racial divisions within the union by supporting a new black vice-president and developing joint integrated shop committees. By 1942, and TWIU membership had increased to 20,000.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the rise of the Civil Rights movement had a significant impact on the TWIU. By 1963, segregated locals were merged into single integrated locals. In 1965, the union began phasing out separate job progression ladders and adopting plant wide seniority. And in the wake of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, women union activists began the first major effort to establish gender equality in the tobacco industry. In this same period, tobacco management began a major investment in new production technology. This resulted in large scale elimination of jobs, particularly in traditionally African American positions. In addition, management sought to counter the pro-union influence of the Civil Rights movement by using the introduction of new technology to restructure the workforce. The reassertion of the tradition of hiring white people into jobs involving operating and maintaining the increasingly productive machinery resulted in a smaller, but whiter labor force, while black workers continued to be hired into remaining manual jobs such as janitors.

In the late 1960s, the TWIU attempted to counter this new management strategy. Initially, the union was successful when it led a strike at American Tobacco, the first post-World War II strike in the industry. Significant wage gains were achieved, but the issues of equality and technological job elimination were not addressed in the settlement. The TWIU’s new attempt to reverse industry trends was cut short when it suffered a major defeat in a union recognition election at R. J. Reynolds in 1974. From that point, the TWIU was not able to establish any new union strength in the tobacco industry and merged with another union to seek security that a larger organization provided thus forming the Bakery, Confectionery and Tobacco Workers in 1979.