Workers of at the Montana Flour Mills Company in Bozeman, MT established the Flour, Feed, and Cereal Workers Federal Labor Union No. 18848 sometime in 1933. A federal labor union was a local union with no affiliated national or international union that received a charter directly through the American Federation of Labor. This was typically a transitional phase prior to the establishment of a national or international union. It became part of the American Federation of Grain Millers (AFGM) sometime after 1941 as Local No. 23 of the American Federation of Grain Miller. The Local was part of the Gallatin County Trades and Labor Assembly, which had a union hall in Bozeman. C.R. McClave and Austin Warr of Lewistown, MT established the Montana Flour Mills Company in 1911 with grain elevators and mills in Bozeman, Missoula, Great Falls, Harlowton, and Moore, MT as well as operations in Ohio and Minnesota. The company operated until 1969 when it sold to Con Agra-Agri Basics. Local No. 23 appears in the Bozeman Polk City Directory until 1970 at that point it is uncertain if it remained active after the buyout by Con Agra-Agri or if the locals in Montana consolidated into one.
This collection consists of the records of the American Federation of Grain Millers Local No. 23, Bozeman (Mont.). The local union was established through direct affiliation with the national AFL-CIO as the Flour, Feed, and Cereal Workers Federal Labor Union No. 18848 sometime in 1933. The Federal Labor Union designation was reserved for those locals that had no international to affiliate with at the time of their formation and was a transitional phase for local unions to organize under. It became Local 23 of the American Federation of Grain Millers sometime after 1941. The local was comprised of employees of the Montana Flour Mills Company, which was established in 1911 by C.R. McClave and Austin Warr of Lewistown, MT. The local union was affiliated with the Gallatin County Trades and Labor Assembly. The collection consists of the following series: correspondence, financial, membership, minutes, and miscellany dealing with the union activity of the local internally, as part of the Gallatin County Trades and Labor Assembly, within the context of labor relations with Montana Flour Mills Company, and interaction with the Montana AFL-CIO.
Files are arranged by series.
Collection is open for research.
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Item description and date. Collection Title. Collection Number. Box and Folder numbers. Montana Historical Society Research Center, Archives, Helena, Montana.
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