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Who We Are
What is a Millwright?
The term “millwright” dates back to the earliest days of industry, when highly skilled craftsmen were responsible for designing, building, installing, and maintaining the machinery that powered grist mills, sawmills, and water-driven manufacturing systems. Originating in Europe during the Middle Ages and expanding rapidly through the Industrial Revolution, millwrights were among the first precision mechanics in history. They combined the skills of carpenters, blacksmiths, engineers, and machinists to keep entire communities and industries operating.
As technology evolved, so did the trade. Steam power, electricity, turbines, conveyors, and automated production systems transformed the role of the millwright from traditional mill construction into advanced industrial machinery installation and maintenance. By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, millwrights became essential to factories, power plants, steel mills, refineries, and heavy industry throughout North America. Their expertise in alignment, rigging, precision measurement, rotating equipment, and mechanical systems made them indispensable to industrial growth.
Today, modern millwrights continue that legacy in some of the world’s most advanced facilities, including manufacturing plants, power generation stations, pharmaceutical facilities, food processing plants, and data centers. The trade now combines traditional mechanical knowledge with cutting-edge technologies such as laser alignment, predictive maintenance, robotics, and automated systems. Despite these advancements, the core of the profession remains unchanged: precision craftsmanship, problem-solving, and the ability to keep critical equipment running safely and efficiently.
Millwrights have long been known as “the craftsmen of industry” — skilled professionals trusted to assemble, maintain, and repair the machinery that keeps modern infrastructure moving. From the watermills of centuries past to today’s high-tech industrial facilities, the trade has remained a symbol of adaptability, technical excellence, and pride in workmanship.
Precision is a critical skill for millwrights, who sometimes work with specifications requiring tolerances to a thousandth of an inch. Ongoing UBC training and skill-enhancement classes ensure members are expert in the use of tools and instruments. Led by a national labor-management committee, the UBC’s millwright program actively seeks additional industry partners to ensure UBC millwrights continue to meet and exceed customer expectations.
Our Beginnings
Our Story
In 1954, the Philadelphia Millwright Local was formed, like all locals were, out of necessity. It's imperative that we remember where we came from and to thank the workers, who struggled, fought and even died for what we have today. We also need to be grateful to our unions for banding together and making a change in the work place not only for union members but for all who desire to make a decent wage with benefits in a forty hour week.
In the 19th and 20th centuries major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transport, and technology had a profound change in this country producing jobs needing a variety of skilled labor. Men, women and even children worked long hours each day and were forced to work in deplorable conditions. They were being paid low wages with no health benefits and were working in dangerous environments with no safeguard for them to prevent bodily harm or serve injuries. These workers had no rights or way of protecting their jobs and could be fired at the whim of the employer. At this time, unionization became crucial.
UBC History
Labor Omnia Vincit
The early 1880s brought change to the carpentry trade. The number of large building employers was rising, and contractors were increasingly used to coordinate and supervise construction. It was becoming harder and harder for the average carpenter to become an independent master.
As an experienced organizer, Peter J. McGuire believed that the trade of the carpenter could only be protected through the collective strength of workers. He spent 18 hours a day speaking, writing, and organizing to keep the union afloat, responding to one crisis after another—in St. Louis, Chicago, Toronto, Philadelphia, and New York. Slowly, the young union grew from 2,042 members in 1881 to 5,789 in 1885.
In 1886, 340,000 workers demonstrated for shorter hours in cities across the U.S.; historians labeled it “the year of the great uprising of labor.” Workers from every industry participated, but building tradesmen were the central force. UBC locals led marches around the country, inspiring others with their determination.
Strikes and demonstrations over hours and wages took place in Canada during this period. In 1887, 700 carpenters and 400 non-union men walked off the job in Toronto over demands for a nine-hour day and a raise from 22.5 to 25 cents per hour.
Not surprisingly, the Brotherhood’s top officer was one of the major North American spokesmen for the strikers. McGuire and UBC General President Gabriel Edmonston even devised a May 1 general strike that paid handsome dividends: Union carpenters won higher wages and better conditions in 53 cities.
Such successes attracted thousands of unorganized carpenters to the union, which swelled to 21,423 members by the summer of 1886. Four years later, membership topped 50,000. McGuire called the UBC “the largest and most powerful organization, numerically, of any special trade in the whole civilized world.”
The 20th century began with an aggressive, nationwide open-shop attack in the U.S. Employers locked out union carpenters in Chicago, New York, Pittsburgh, Louisville, Houston, Milwaukee, and several other cities. Even so, membership in the United Brotherhood of Carpenters reached 200,000 by 1910. A union card became as crucial to a self-respecting carpenter as a complete set of tools. For those who knew the industry, it was a matter of common wisdom that, “the craftsman without a card is a man without a trade.”
Local unions took advantage of the postwar prosperity to expand collective bargaining into new areas. In 1950, for example, the New York District Council of Carpenters negotiated a 3 percent payroll tax to support a Carpenters Welfare Fund. The idea of health and welfare funds became so attractive that the union’s Health and Welfare Committee, appointed in 1954, urged all locals to set up programs. Pension funds soon followed, as well as other contract gains, such as safety measures, travel time, and coffee breaks. The accomplishments of this period brought additional stability to working carpenters and their families.
Major changes at headquarters have launched the union into a new era of member service, professionalism, and industry prominence. In 2001, the UBC opened its new Washington, D.C., headquarters at 101 Constitution Ave., just across from the U.S. Capitol. The UBC also began a new era of training and education at its International Training Center (ITC) in Las Vegas. The facility offers instructor-training and direct member training in scores of UBC craft skills, as well as comprehensive leadership education for members in the building trades.
Much has changed in the more than 140-years since UBC was founded, but the union today continues its unwavering commitment to helping carpenters improve their lives, their futures, and their trade.
Peter J. McGuire
One of the great labor leaders of the 19th century, Peter J. McGuire helped found the UBC. He also served as the union’s first general secretary.
Born to Irish immigrants, McGuire grew up on New York City’s Lower East Side. He left school at 11 to become the family’s breadwinner and later became an apprentice in the Haines Piano Shop.
There McGuire was exposed to long hours, low wages, and difficult working conditions—reinforcing the pro-labor views he had absorbed as a sometime student at Cooper Union, a gathering spot for radicals.
McGuire went on to lead a successful fight against wage cuts at Haines.
Ultimately harassed out of his position, McGuire began moving from job to job as a journeyman. When work dried up during the 1870s depression, he began to march, speak, and rouse crowds of his fellow unemployed.
In August 1881, he organized a Chicago convention, where 36 carpenters from 11 U.S. cities united to form a union for carpenters, and the UBC was born. A few months later, carpenters in Hamilton, Ontario became the first Canadian UBC members, and Toronto Carpenters joined in early 1882.
McGuire spearheaded efforts that led to the eight-hour workday and the founding of the American Federation of Labor. During his UBC tenure, wages more than doubled, and by 1903 the North American UBC had grown to more than 167,000 members. McGuire’s legacy to American and Canadian workers lives on in Labor Day, a holiday he proposed.