6535 N Olmsted Ave.
Chicago, IL. 60631
phone: 773/267-5858
fax: 773/267-8805
Carpenters Local 58
Our Office Information:
Location & Hours:
6535 N Olmsted Avenue, Chicago, IL 60631
Monday - Friday: 8:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. (closed 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.)
Meetings: Are held the Second Tuesday of every month at 7:00 p.m. at the Carpenters Training Center, 1256 Estes Avenue, Elk Grove Village unless held by special called meeting
Installation July 9, 2024
Officers and Committee Members:
President: John Jarger
Vice President: Alejandro Perez
Financial Secretary/Treasurer: William J Murphy
Recording Secretary: Robert Piane
Trustees: John Patrick, Matt Oclon, Joe Kolofa
Warden: Joshua Close
Conductor: William Jordan
Delegates: John Jarger, Alejandro Perez, William Murphy, Robert Piane,
John Patrick, Matt Oclon, William Jordan, John Laspina, John Husnick, Greg Czajka, Ana Figueroa, Tamara Guilinger
Scroll down for information on:
- Our Mission
- Officers and Committee Members
- Our Story
- Political Jurisdiction
Our Mission
To organize workers for the economic, social and moral advancement of their condition and status.
Our Story......as far as we can tell.
The Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America was established at a small convention here in Chicago in 1881. This was after several years of lobbying carpenters around the county by Peter J. McGuire, the Brotherhood's first General Secretary to form a single international. There were many independent locals on the north side of Chicago in the mid to late nineteenth century. Many belonged to the Amalgamated Carpenters in Europe and carried their membership across the Atlantic. Others had joined the independent locals that were popping up in every neighborhood and still others joined branches of the Knights of Labor. Most local's included the carpenter contractors and general contractors. The north side of Chicago was being organized along ethnic lines as locals everywhere in the rest of Chicago. It didn't take long for the mostly immigrant Swedish carpenters to see that the Brotherhood was organizing nationwide like no International had before. We know that there were repeated attempts by different employer groups to eradicate unions in Chicago the most famous was the after the so-called "Haymarket Riot" a term the media of the day was able to use to whip the public into hysteria over "foreign anarchists" and "socialist agitators". This hysteria is similar to what we see playing out in the press and in Washington today.
The police of the day were little more that a private militia for the Citizens Committee (one of the predecessors to the Chicago Chamber of Commerce). They were ordered to break into union meetings and drag out attendees sometimes arresting them for "agitation" or "conspiracy". A young anarchist carpenter that emigrated from Germany by way of Switzerland named Louis Lingg was pulled from such a meeting and charged with conspiracy in the Haymarket affair. No proof was ever produce that he or any of the Haymarket Martyrs were involved. Lingg is said to have been an elected organizer for the newly formed Brotherhood of Carpenters. Barely in his twenties he was murdered in Cook County Jail by his keepers while awaiting execution. His remains are buried at Forest Home Cemetery (former Waldheim Cemetery) with the Haymarket Martyrs. Although known to be innocent of the charges Lingg is not generally referred to as a martyr as he was not hanged with the other martyrs and it is known that he did advocate violence.
There years of repression, strikes and organizing that followed the Haymarket affair. There lockouts of union men in 1900 and 1901 and there was "The Great Lock-out of 1914" when the employers attempted unsuccessfully to break the unions once and for all. We are told that it was during this time that the offices of Carpenters Local Union No. 58 suffered from a devastating fire and that all previous membership records and papers were lost.
Chartered
On February 22, 1896 in Lakeview Township (the area north of North Avenue was annexed to Chicago in 1889) Local 269 and Local 730 were Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners locals which may been consolidated from the old Amalgamated Carpenters Union, or perhaps the Knights of Labor. Many of the locals in Chicago came from branches of the old Local 21 which was Chicago's first Brotherhood of Carpenters local. The mostly ethnic Swedish carpenters and contractors consolidated into Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America as Carpenters Local Union No.58. Swedish and other Scandinavian carpenters got on well enough with the German carpenters that had moved north of the Chicago River. The German carpenters were also dedicated union men that had organized much of the work on the North Side of Chicago going north on the old Green Bay Road (now Clark Street) into the towns of Evanston and Gross Pointe and up Lincoln Avenue into Skokie. There were already many Swedish and German local unions on the south of the south branch of the Chicago River. The area we now know as "The Loop" or downtown had been heavily organized or contested at least since the end of the Civil War. Sometime during the building boom of the 1920's, Danish, Norwegian and Finnish carpenters joined the local as well. It wasn't long before Local 58 became a "mixed" local taking all who worked at the trade. The earliest recorded meetings were at the Lincoln Turners Hall located at 1005 W. Diversey just west of Sheffield. Local 58 also had a small office in the building until in the late 1930's, when a dispute over rent sent them to the Lincoln Auditorium at 4221 N. Lincoln Ave., ending a fifty year, sometimes antagonistic relationship with the Turners. Carpenters Local 58 later purchased the current hall and business office location in 1988, when the hall on Lincoln was sold.
Our Contribution to the Carpenters District Council of Chicago
At times Carpenters Local 58 members held several elected positions at the District Council simultaneously. Most worth noting is the large number of consecutive years the Office of Executive Secretary/Treasurer has been held by a Local 58 member. Charles Sand, President of Carpenters Local 58 was Secretary/Treasurer of the Carpenters District Council of Chicago and was charged with erecting first council building at 12 E. Erie Street, completed in 1925. He was followed by Charles Thompson, President of Carpenters Local 58 and then by Wesley Isaacson of the same office and shortly thereafter Jeffrey S. Isaacson, currently president. It could be argued that old country Swedish values enabled the Council to acquire several of the surrounding properties and eventually erect the tower that stands today at 12 E. Erie Street.
Our Working Relationship with other Carpenter Locals
Werner Johanson, Local 58 Business Representative in the 1920's and through the depression of the 1930's was "loaned out" or "directed" by the coucil to organize the "inside work" downtown with Carpenters Local 1, which at that time shared a border with Carpenters Local 58 along North Avenue.
In 1906 Carpenters Local 1307 was chartered to eight members of Local 58 and they eventually established an office in the Evanston Labor Temple. Carpenters Local Union 1307 has since merged into Local 250 of Lake/McHenry counties
The only Local Union known that "consolidated" into Carpenters Local 58 was Carpenters Local Union 980, chartered as the Chicago District Council's "Ship & Boat Builders". A couple of those contracts are still in force.
Local 58 is located in Chicago and must deal with the City politics in general but within our local jurisdiction we deal with specific wards and districts that include townships and commissioners as well as state senate and representative districts as well as a few congressional districts located in the northeast Chicago and northeast Cook County area. Local 58 strongly urges members to be active in their ward organization
City of Chicago;
Ward 33:
Ward 37:
Ward 39:
Ward 40:
Ward 44:
Ward 45:
Ward 46:
Ward 47:
Ward 48:
Ward 49:
Ward 50:
Political Jurisdiction
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