by Dave Coker

Union S.W.A.G., the stuff we all get, at conventions, events, meetings, and new member orientations. It comes in the form of pens, stickers, buttons, keychains, and pretty much anything else you can slap a union logo on. I’ve seen these small, seemingly innocuous, items carry a greater weight than any of us would imagine.

Matthews, North Carolina is a suburb of Charlotte situated in the southeast corner of Mecklenburg County. In 2003, factory workers in the Intellicoat plant were organizing with the Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 3603. At that time there were three USIntellicoat plants, one in the pacific northwest, one in New England, and the Matthews plant. Not surprisingly, the plants outside of the south were already organized. The workers in Matthews knew their counterparts in the other plants made better wages, had better benefits, and were treated with more respect than was offered in their corner of the world. After some time, they made the decision to get organized.

The workers in Matthews were highly motivated and, in the days before social media was a tool,maintained an engaged organizing committee that built an effective worker-to-worker communications network. Although CWA staff and the leadership of Local 3603 played a role, the real energy came from the rank-and-file. They embarked on a campaign of strategic union S.W.A.G. distribution that simultaneously infuriated management and caused delight among their ranks. CWA key chains showed up on every forklift in the factory and management almost lost their mind. They wore CWA buttons, slapped CWA stickers on personal items, and wore thebrightest highlighter-yellow trucker hats ever to be produced by a union. This energy carried them to victory, and they won their union with about 93% of the workers voting yes. 

Almost 20 years later, I bet there are a handful of workers who still have those original CWA keychains in a drawer somewhere and that little item means something. It means something because it represented the collective power they exercised to make their job better in a tough environment. It means something because it made the bosses toenails curl up every time they saw one of those CWA keychains dangling from a forklift ignition switch. It means something because it was a tool that planted a flag for their union, a humble physical manifestation of “which side are you on?” 

In the right context, usually an organizing context, union S.W.A.G. holds power. 

That’s why this digital exhibit of UMWA items, mostly stickers, is so special. It’s an archive that provides a snapshot of not only the daily work of the union, represented by numerous health and safety related stickers, for instance, but also the union’s larger political engagement on issues beyond their own industrial borders. Viewers of the exhibit will likely be as surprised as I was to see the “Stop Apartheid Boycott Shell” branded UMWA sticker. They’ll likely be even more surprised to know that the UMWA established an office to cultivate solidarity between UMWA miners in the U.S. and miners in South Africa. 

Campaigns like the Shell Boycott by an international union are easily lost to history. Even more so are local and district campaigns, like the District 17, Sub-District 3, UMWA Food Relief sticker. When I view this exhibit, I wonder what could the campaigns that bore these stickers teach us today? What would the union members who made these campaigns live and breatheoffer us? Strategy, tactics, wisdom, inspiration? Chances are, only the members who did the work will know the whole truth. But I certainly like to think that each one of these stickers played the same role, at least in some small way, as those humble CWA key chains. I like to believe that each one was used as a tool to plant a flag for the union and served to say, “I know which side I’m on.”

Do you have United Mine Workers ephemera like stickers, buttons, pamphlets, or other kinds of “swag” that you’d like to donate to the museum’s growing collection? If so, please get in touch with us using this contact form!