The Operative Bricklayers' Society merged in, and its former chair, Jimmy Briggs, became the union's first chairman.
Its branches in Transvaal and the Orange Free State only accepted white workers, but those in Natal and the Cape also organised coloureds and Indians.
Some white members objected to this policy, especially outside the Cape, and there was also no effort to organise black Africans.
[3] However, efforts to make the union for whites-only were consistently defeated, and it retained a mixed membership.
It remained predominantly English-speaking, but the Afrikaner communist Piet Huyser served as its national organiser of the union from 1948 onwards.