Amalgamated Lithographers of America

The Amalgamated Lithographers of America (ALA) is a labor union formed in 1915 to conduct collective bargaining on behalf of workers in the craft of lithography.

After a series of subsequent organizational mergers, the core of the ALA remains in existence in the 21st Century as Local One-L of the Graphic Communications Conference of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

[1] Prior to the American Civil War, lithographers began to establish local trade unions in many of the larger cities of the United States of America.

[2] Originally conceived as a mutual benefit society, the ILAE rapidly moved into collective bargaining, attempting to use its clout to establish a minimum wage for artistic workers in the industry and to abolish the use of piece work.

[4] This battle was extended in 1906 by an even larger organization, the National Association of Employing Lithographers, which eliminated two decades of collective bargaining in the industry by successfully establishing an open shop.

[4] The Amalgamated Lithographers of America was the entity formed in response to this growing disparity in power between centrally organized employers and the fragmented and largely impotent small unions of their workers.

[4] The 1955 merger of the AF of L and the CIO to form the AFL-CIO brought the ALA within the large federation tent once again, but it soon found its old jurisdictional battles with the IPPAU once again renewed.

[4] From 1966 through 1975, the union's Local One in New York City under the leadership of Edward Swayduck (1911–1987) published 39 issues of the quarterly Lithopinion, intended as a showcase of the graphic arts.