"Here's the way to Union City," a sign on the back of the January 1996 America @ Work reads. The AFL-CIO announces a new Union Cities program to encourage unions to work together to organize, to mobilize members for solidarity actions, to form grassroots political action networks, and to build community coalitions. The program recognizes the strategic importance of central labor councils as the hub of a vigorous labor community. For over a century, Tacoma and Pierce County unions have worked together "to help bring economic security and justice to working families and a healthier political and social environment to the community as a whole."

Here is the record:

1890
1900's
1910
1920's
1930's
1940's
1950's
1970's - 1980's
1990's

1890 - Delegates from trade unions and the Knights of Labor organized the Tacoma Trades Council. the council helped men and women in retail stores organize and launched a campaign, supported by churches and civic groups, to shorten the hours of labor for clerks. The council endorsed candidates for the Tacoma City Council pledged to support an eight-hour ordinance for unorganized city workers and succeeded in reducing the hours from ten to nine. Hard times destroyed the unions.

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1900 - Returning prosperity and rising prices sparked labor upsurge. Reorganized Trades Council affiliated with the AFL and assisted local unions to organize.
1907 - Tacoma Trades Council and Tacoma Building Trades Assembly merged to become Tacoma Central Labor Council.
1908 - Council sponsored formation of the Women's Label League, principal expression for working-class women of growing feminist impulse.

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1910 - Reflecting Christian concern for labor issues, the Central Labor Council and Ministerial Alliance exchanged fraternal delegates, a practice continued for several years.

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1920's and the Great Depression - A small, defensive union movement survived, struggling to protect members' jobs and wages. The Labor Council fought for relief and work projects for the unemployed.

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 1933 - With the union upsurge, the Central Labor Council activated the organizing committee, helped retail stores employees, smelter workers, and other trades to organize and bargain with their employers.
1934 - Central Labor Council mobilized support for striking longshoremen--kept employers at bay with threat of a general strike if the governor called out the National Guard.
1935 - Tacoma unions supported striking lumber workers. The 88-day strike involving 2,800 workers in Tacoma unionized the lumber industry.  
1938 - The Central Labor Council conducted an intensive voter registration drive to defeat Initiative 130, "Prevention of Labor Uprisings," which would have wiped out unions. The initiative lost statewide by 52.36% and in Pierce County by 63.55%.

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1944 - Tacoma unions assisted in establishing the L.H. Bates Vocational-Technical Institute as part of the Tacoma public school system to teach vocational education and train apprentices.
1946 - The Central Labor Council cooperated with Tacoma doctors to establish the Tacoma-Pierce County Blood Bank, financed in part by $1.00 membership cards purchased by over 30,000 union members.  
1948 - Tacoma unions supported the strike/lockout of clerks in retail stores for a wage increase for women, who comprised the overwhelming majority of employees, equal to the amount offered to men. After eleven weeks, the fourteen craft unions of store employees won the equal wage increase and other improvements under a blanket agreement signed by the Central Labor Council and Building Trades Council.

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1956 and 1958 - Tacoma unions mobilized voters to defeat Right-to-Work Initiatives 198 and 202.  

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1970-1982 - Pierce County Building Trades Council cooperated with the Urban League to recruit black apprentices to the construction trades.

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1995-1996 - Pierce County unions responded to the needs of unorganized workers with massive organizing drives, bringing hundreds of new members into unions. In the general election, labor's intensive campaign brought out 76.32% of Pierce County voters, as against 70% in Washington and 49% nationwide. The Pierce County Central Labor Council ranks 48th in size in the United States, with 57,000 members, a union density much higher than the national average.  

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