We're Sticking by Our Union: The Battle for Baytown
Between June 1942, and November 1943, Baytown, Texas, became the backdrop to one of the most dramatic labor confrontations to rock the upper Texas Gulf Coast during World War II. In this prolonged conflict, workers at Humble Oil’s Baytown refinery battled one another over what union they wanted representing them. Nine years earlier such worker militancy was unheard of, but that all changed in 1933 when New Deal labor legislation and reforms energized the Texas labor movement fueling worker activism. Since 1933, refinery workers at Humble Oil had been battling management and warring among themselves over the kind of union they wanted representing them. It marked a new era in Texas labor relations. By 1942, Humble Oil & Refining Company grudgingly accepted the fact that it must deal with organized employees who demanded a voice over working conditions and pay. But employees split over the issue of representation pitting those loyal to the Baytown Employees Federation against their colleagues in the Oil Workers International Union of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).
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