United Steelworkers Local 2003 is an amalgamated local union that represents over 1,300 members, employed at 42 companies located through out Northwest Indiana. Local 2003 consist of various services from basic steel, vacuum trucks, custodial services, and chrome plating among many other occupations The Local was chartered in 2003 when USWA Local 3069, USWA Local 8017 and 18 units of USWA Local 1010 (former Inland Steel, East Chicago) merged to create a local that would provide smaller plants fair representation and members would have a more active roll in union activities and educational programs with the resources and financial stability of a large local.
Early attempts to organize steelworkers encountered resistance, even violence. An example is the Homestead Strike. In 1889, after a strike at a mill in Homestead, Pennsylvania, the Carnegie Steel Company signed a contract with the workers. Three years later, however, the mill cut wages, triggering another strike. Management sent in 300 Pinkerton detectives to break the strike, resulting in a pitched battle on July 6, 1892, that left 10 dead and many wounded. Eventually, strikebreakers, backed by state militia, broke the strike, eliminating the early union from its mills. The USW was established May 22, 1942, by a convention of representatives from the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel, and Tin Workers and the Steel Workers Organizing Committee, after almost six years of divisive struggles to create a new union of steelworkers. The drive to create this union included such violent incidents as the infamous Memorial Day, 1937, when Chicago policemen supporting the rival American Federation of Labor (AFL) fired on workers outside a Republic Steel mill and killed 10 men.
The founder and first president of the USW, Philip Murray, led the union through its first organizing drives and dangerous first decade, when the workers of USW went on strike several times to win concessions such as the right to bargain collectively with steel companies, higher wages, and paid vacations. [edit] Growth of the union The 46,000 members of the Aluminum Workers of America voted to merge with the budding steelworker union that was the USW in June 1944. Eventually, eight more unions joined the USW as well: the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers (1967) the United Stone and Allied Product Workers of America (1971) District 50, the Allied and Technical Workers of America (1972) the Upholsterers International Union of North America (1985) the United Rubber, Cork, Linoleum & Plastic Workers of America (URW) (1995) the Aluminum, Brick and Glass Workers Union (ABG) (1996) the Canadian Division of the Transportation Communications International Union (1999) and the American Flint Glass Workers Union (AFGWU) (2003).
In June 2004, the USW announced a merger with the 57,000 member Industrial, Wood and Allied Workers of Canada (IWA Canada), a major Canadian forestry workers union. Then in 2005, it announced an even larger merger with the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International Union (PACE). The resulting new union adopted its current name after the PACE merger.
In September 2006, the Independent Oil Workers Union of Aruba, which represents refinery workers on the Caribbean island of Aruba, affiliated with the United Steelworkers, becoming the first USW union local outside of the U.S. (including Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands) and Canada. In April 2007, the USW also merged with the Independent Steelworkers Union, adding 1,150 members at Arcelor-Mittal's Weirton, West Virginia steel mill.