Title: UAW Foundry and Forge Departments Collection Type: Papers Date: 1946-1985 Size: 14 linear feet, 14 storage boxes ID#: 1425-uaw OCLC: |
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Emerging from the Foundry Council established in 1946, the UAW Foundry Department was organized in 1949 to provide industry wage data and other technical information to local unions representing foundry workers and their servicing representatives and to address health and safety issues of special concern to foundry workers, whose jobs exposed them to more danger than other autoworkers. The department also sought to improve working conditions through support of federal legislation and civil rights initiatives.
In 1970, the Forge Department, which addressed similar concerns for forge workers, was set up under the direction of Nelson Jack Edwards, the UAW’s first African-American vice president, who had become head of the Foundry Department in 1962. He was succeeded by Marc Stepp in the mid-seventies, and the two departments merged in 1991.
The UAW Foundry and Forge Departments Collection consists of correspondence, reports, minutes, publications, wage rate schedules, and other material pertaining to foundry and forge workers and the foundry and forge industries and to non-UAW organizations in which Nelson Jack Edwards participated.
African American Autoworkers
Automation
Detroit Labor Action Committee
Forge Industry
Foundry Industry
Metropolitan Detroit Labor and Community Association
National Safety Council
South African Politics & Economy
UAW Eaton Council
Workplace Health & Safety Issues
Nelson Jack Edwards Emil Mazey
Douglas Fraser Marc Stepp
William Humphreys Horace Sheffield
Paul Kiel Walter Reuther
A number of photographs and audio tapes documenting Foundry and Forge Department conferences and Council meetings as well as events in the civil rights movement have been placed in the Archives Audiovisual Collection. Contracts and serial publications pertinent to foundry work have been transferred to the Archives Library.