The records consist of case files of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) about labor disputes, collective bargaining negotiations, and labor-relations training that the regional staff conducted for employers, unions, universities, and civic organizations in Illinois, northern and central Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, and North Dakota. A few case files relate to labor disputes that extended into other states, including Kentucky. Most of the disputes appear to have occurred in small cities or towns, not in regional urban centers.
Commonly, case files contain complaints, job descriptions, correspondence, and signed agreements about the origin of the dispute, the issues in contention, the sentiments of union and management officials, and mediation efforts. They also contain fact-finding reports, records about arbitration proceedings, and progress reports about the resolution of disputes between employers and the labor unions that represented bargaining unit workers, or the replacement of strikers with non-union workers. The FMCS promoted collective bargaining and voluntary arbitration as long-term solutions for sound and stable labor-management relations. The case files reflect those FMCS efforts, including special industrial relations educational programs that were initiated without relation to any specific dispute. Some case files also contain newspaper article clippings, company brochures, or labor union newsletters. FMCS efforts relied upon training and persuading labor and management officials, but lacked binding enforcement of law.
In certain cases, a dispute remained unsettled or escalated into a strike, lock-out, or other work stoppage that interrupted interstate commerce. A few case files contain references to petitions to U.S. District Courts for writs of injunction or other lawsuits, for which separate civil case files of the federal courts are extant. Some of the case files contain references to the permanent closure of a factory or facility. Many of the category 7 cases files about ordinary disputes and strikes contain documentation about factories, plants, occupational groups, and entire industries that no longer exist in the places where the labor disputes occurred. Most of the disputes appear to have occurred in small cities or towns, not in regional urban centers.
Examples of the diverse types of businesses and occupations that are documented in the case files include bakeries and bakers, construction contractors and the building trades, coal mining and miners, the coal trade, mineral industries, dairy processing and dairy workers, distilleries, food producers and retailers, meatpacking companies and butchers, metal forge shops, steel mills, iron and steel workers, petroleum refineries, natural gas works, hospitals, nursing homes, and other medical care establishments, radio and television broadcasting stations, cable television companies, trucking firms, warehouses, sporting goods manufacturers and retailers, papermaking, public schools and school teachers' unions, and government employees at the municipal, state, and federal levels of government.
Some of the labor unions involved in the disputes included the Allied Industrial Workers, the United Auto Workers, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the International Association of Machinists, the United Steelworkers of America, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, and the American Federation of Government Employees. A few of the companies involved in labor-management disputes included United States Steel in Chicago, Illinois; Wisconsin Steel in Chicago, Illinois; the Ford Motor Company at several plants in Michigan and Illinois; the Chrysler Corporation in Michigan; the Radio Corporation of American (R.C.A.); Hamms Brewing Company in St. Paul, Minnesota; the Brunswick Corporation in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin; the Lauhauff Grain Company in Danville, Illinois; the Trailmobile Division of Pullman, Incorporated, in Charleston, Illinois; Raybestos-Manhattan, Incorporated of Crawfordsville, Indiana; and the Thrall Car Manufacturing Company of Chicago Heights, Illinois.
