Jane R. Gust papers

The Jane R. Gust Collection consists of materials relating to the United Food and Allied Workers, Local 626 (formerly Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen). The national union, founded in 1897, represents retail butcher shops, chain stores, meat packing and food processing plants, the fur and leather industry, retail clerks, migratory agricultural workers and sheepshearer. A large number of printed agreements in the collection illustrate much of the work Gust performed for Local 626 as business representative. Conference and convention materials show that Gust was quite active in the national union, as well as the northwest Ohio local. Several conferences were sponsored by the Committee on Political Education in order to inform union members about national issues which effected them. Gust's file pertaining to the Farm Bureau Organizing Bill (H 536) of 1977 is an example of her political involvement. Among the correspondence, newsclippings and copies of the bill is a copy of Gust's testimony before a House Committee asking for defeat of the bill because of the detrimental effect it would have on the packing industry.

Gust was also interested in the plight of migratory laborers. Several reports and published articles are contained in the collection which outline the awful conditions under which these laborers existed and the need for unionization.

As secretary-treasurer of the Health and Welfare Fund of Local 626, Gust dealt with union members' problems and concerns in collecting insurance payments. Several years of Fund correspondence and a 1975 audit report detail the work Gust performed in administering the employees' insurance plan.

As an organizer for the national union, Gust was involved in organizing many companies in northwest Ohio as well as the Gerber plant in Asheville, North Carolina in 1964. An interesting report entitled "Typical Signs and Behavior Patterns Among Employees That There is Union Organizing Activity Occurring in a Small Business," written for the Toledo Small Business Association, is included within the miscellaneous printed materials.

Also included in the collection are two banquet programs autographed by Patrick E. Gorman, whom Gust greatly admired. Gorman was international secretary-treasurer of the National Union for over fifty years. Copies of "The Butcher Workmen" for 1960 through 1979 clarify some of the political and economic concerns facing members of the meat cutters' union. This periodical was edited by Patrick Gorman.

In 1968, the Amalgamated Meat Cutters merged with the rival United Packinghouse Workers of America. A copy of the agreement is found in the collection. This merger was to signal a new era for the Meatcutters' Union and solve such problems as declining membership and a job displacement due to increasing automation.

Of special interest are a series of taped interviews of Jane Gust by Paulette Weiser who was a graduate assistant at the Center for Archival Collections at the time the collection was donated. The interviews were conducted between November 1982 and April 1983. A subject listing of these tapes is included with the finding aid.