United Steelworkers of America
Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
In the Grant Building here on June 17, 1936, the Steel Workers Organizing Committee was founded. Renamed in 1942, the USWA became one of the world's largest unions, embracing over a million workers. Philip Murray was its first president.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
In the depths of the Great Depression, organized labor was fighting to gain a foothold in America's mightiest industry. On June 17, 1936, in Pittsburgh's Grant Building, the Steel Workers Organizing Committee was formed to bring the men of the mills into one union. Under its first president, Philip Murray, the effort grew into the United Steelworkers of America, eventually representing more than a million workers across the continent.
Why it matters
The drive to organize steel was a turning point in the American labor movement, giving industrial workers a collective voice in the nation's economic life.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the 1930s, the United States was in the grip of the Great Depression, and nowhere was the strain felt more sharply than in its industrial heartland. Pittsburgh sat at the center of the nation's steel industry — the mills that shaped the beams, rails, and plate on which modern America was built.
Steel was the very definition of a mighty industry, and for a long time it had resisted the organized labor movement more fiercely than almost any other. Workers in the mills faced grueling hours and dangerous conditions, but efforts to unionize the giant steel companies had repeatedly run into powerful opposition.
Against that backdrop, the mid-1930s became a pivotal moment. New energy was flowing into the labor movement, and organizers set their sights on the toughest prize of all: bringing the men of the steel mills together into a single, powerful union.
People & events
The turning point came in Pittsburgh's Grant Building on June 17, 1936, when the Steel Workers Organizing Committee was founded. The choice of the steel city itself was fitting — the campaign to organize steel would be launched from the heart of the industry it aimed to transform.
Leading the effort as its first president was Philip Murray, whose name is tied to this marker and to the whole endeavor. Under his leadership, the committee set out to do what many had thought impossible: to unite steelworkers across the mills and give them a collective voice.
The effort took hold and grew. In 1942 the organization was renamed, becoming the United Steelworkers of America, which went on to become one of the largest unions in the world, eventually embracing well over a million workers. What began in a single downtown building had swelled into a labor force numbering in the millions.
Its place in the American story
The drive to organize steel was one of the great turning points in the American labor movement. Winning a foothold in an industry that had so long held out sent a signal that even the most formidable employers could be brought to the bargaining table.
More broadly, this was part of the era when industrial workers — not just skilled tradesmen, but the vast ranks of laborers on the factory floor — gained real collective power. That shift reshaped the relationship between American workers and the corporations that employed them.
The rise of a union representing over a million workers gave ordinary people a voice in the economic life of the nation. The story that began in the Grant Building helped define what work, wages, and dignity would mean for generations of American industrial workers.
If you visit
Come here and look up at the downtown Pittsburgh skyline, remembering that momentous decisions in American history aren't always made on battlefields or in capitol buildings — sometimes they happen in an office in a city building.
This is a place to reflect on the men of the mills: the heat, the danger, and the determination it took to organize an industry that had resisted for so long. Standing in the modern city, you can sense how deeply steel and labor are woven into Pittsburgh's identity.
It's a natural stop on any tour of Pittsburgh's industrial and labor heritage. Let it point you toward the wider story of the mills and the workers who ran them — and to the enduring question of how working people find a collective voice.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Philip Murray
Related events
- · Founding of the Steel Workers Organizing Committee
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Henry Clay Frick (1848-1919)
Pittsburgh, PA · est. 1946
Henry Clay Frick rose to become one of the titans of Gilded Age Pittsburgh, building a fortune in coke — the refined coal that fed the blast furnaces of the steel age — before helping lead Andrew Carnegie's steel empire. As chairman of Carnegie Steel, his hard line against organized labor helped ignite the violent 1892 Homestead Strike, in which workers and Pinkerton agents fought a deadly pitched battle. Frick later turned his wealth toward philanthropy and art collecting.
Allegheny County
Pittsburgh, PA
When Allegheny County was carved out of Westmoreland and Washington counties in 1788, its seat at Pittsburgh was already a generation old — laid out in 1764 at the strategic forks where the Allegheny and Monongahela join to form the Ohio, a gateway that had drawn soldiers, traders, and settlers pushing west. Incorporated as a city in 1816, Pittsburgh grew into one of the great engines of American industry, its furnaces and mills pouring out the iron and steel that earned the region its "Workshop of the World" reputation. The county's story runs straight from a frontier river junction to the smoke-and-fire heart of the nation's industrial age.
Founding of Ironworkers Union
Pittsburgh, PA · est. 1999
On February 4, 1896, sixteen delegates gathered at Moorheads Hall on this site to form the International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental, and Reinforcing Iron Workers. Meeting in Pittsburgh, the heart of America's steel and bridge-building boom, they organized to win better wages and, above all, safer conditions in one of the era's most dangerous trades. By its centennial in 1996 the union counted some 140,000 members.
Allegheny County
Pittsburgh, PA · est. 1982
Formed in 1788 and named for the Allegheny River, this county grew around Pittsburgh, a settlement laid out in 1764 at the strategic forks of the Ohio. As the 19th century advanced, the city's furnaces and mills made it a titan of iron and steel, earning it the boast "Workshop of the World." Immigrants poured in to feed the industry that armed and built modern America.