United Furniture Workers of America contracts and agreements collection

Prior to 1937, most organized workers in the furniture industry were members of either the United Brotherhood of Carpenters & Joiners Union or the Upholsterers' International Union (UIU), both of which were affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. Disagreements over political ideology and organizing tactics, fueled by the new emphasis by the fledgling Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) on the organization of all workers in a plant into a single industrial, rather than craft, union, led a group of UIU dissidents to leave the union and affiliate with the CIO as the United Furniture Workers.

The two unions competed for membership among the same group of workers during the 1940s and 1950s. Shortly after the AFL and CIO merged in December of 1955, however, the two unions formed a "confederation for common union action." In this ad hoc organization, each of the unions retained its autonomy but established a joint board to coordinate organizing drives, direct political activities, conduct research, and police the use of the union label. It was seen by some as a first step toward a possible full-fledged merger of the UFWA and the UIU.

The hoped-for merger, however, never materialized. In 1985, rather, the UIU merged its 35,000 members into the vastly larger United Steel Workers of America, and in 1986 the UFWA acted similarly when it merged its 20,000 members into the much larger International Union of Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers (IUE), which subsequently changed its name to the International Union of Electronic, Electrical, Salaried, Machine & Furniture Workers.