Our Union Heroes: James McGill

EDITOR'S NOTE: This post is taken from Craig's book, True Tales of OId-Time Kentucky Politics: Bombast, Bourbon & Burgoo (Charleston, S.C.: The History Press, 2009)  Bill Londrigan stepped down as Kentucky State AFL-CIO president in December, 2023, and was succeeded by Dustin Reinstedler.

A national AFL-CIO website says "the AFL-CIO works to achieve one goal: A better life for working people." This story continues "Our Union Heroes" series which will highlighting outstanding Kentucky trade unionists whose careers reflected that goal. It is hoped that one day the Kentucky State AFL-CIO can create a Kentucky Labor Hall of Fame to permanently honor our union heroes.    

By BERRY CRAIG

Alliance for Retired Americans

If the Kentucky labor movement had a founding father, it probably was James McGill. 

The Louisville union official and labor newspaper publisher started the Kentucky State Federation of Labor and and was the organization's first president. "McGill recognized that Kentucky workers needed a statewide organization to deal with their problems, especially in lobbying for labor legislation," explains Labor History in Kentucky, a book that the state Department of Education published for school teachers in 1986. 

McGill, whose paper was called The Journal of Labor, traveled the state, meeting with local unions and urging them to band together. But Covington and Louisville labor groups emerged as rivals for a charter from the American Federation of Labor, whose president was the famous union leader, Samuel Gompers. 

in January 1900, the United Trades and Labor Assembly and its supporters founded a state body in Covington. Soon after, 40 delegates "from various labor organizations throughout the state" joined the Louisville Central Labor Union and started their own federation, the Louisville Courier-Journal reported. 

"National president Gompers, according to McGill, has written a letter, saying that the body formed at Louisville will be the only one to receive his charter," the Courier-Journal said. "At any rate, a lively controversy between the rival bodies is very certain to ensue." Besides electing McGill president, the new KSFL voted to hold its first state convention at Central city in October, 1901. 

Delegates also establish the KSFL's headquarters in Louisville and approved a resolution "denouncing the labor men who recently formed a State Federation at Covington," the Courier-Journal said. In addition, KSFL leaders urged Gompers to acknowledge their assembly "as the legal body in Kentucky." 

Though Gompers recognized the KSFL, internal strife continue to plague the organization. "At one point, the charter was revoked by the national AFL, and then reissued in 1905, but by 1910, the disputes been resolved and the organization was finally established," according to Labor History in Kentucky. As a result, wrote Joseph Krislov in the Kentucky Encyclopedia, the KSFL "became the voice of organized labor in Kentucky."

The basic principles upon which the KSFL was founded still guide its eventual successor, the Kentucky State AFL-CIO, according to President Bill Londrigan. "We strive for more than better pay, benefits and working condition for union members," said Londrigan, who is based in Frankfort. "We in the union movement want to help make a better world for everybody who works for living."