This is an acronym for the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steelworkers (usually shorted to simply “Amalgamated Association”). The AA was an American organized labor union formed in 1876 to represent primarily white, skilled, English-speaking iron and steel workers. In 1887, it joined the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and played a key role in the famous Homestead Steel Strike of 1892. In 1935, the AA joined the newly formed Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and regained much of the strength it lost in the preceding decades. Once the AA joined the CIO, the Steel Workers' Organizing Committee (SWOC) largely took it over, and the AA ceased to be an independent organization.
AA Quotes in Out of This Furnace
The Out of This Furnace quotes below are all either spoken by AA or refer to AA. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Part 4, Chapter 5
Quotes
There were few who didn't find something brave and hopeful in its mere presence, the soiled curtains across the windows of what had been a vacant store as heart-lifting as a flag in the wind.
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AA Term Timeline in Out of This Furnace
The timeline below shows where the term AA appears in Out of This Furnace. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Part 4, Dobie: Chapter 7
Organizing efforts experience another setback when Tighe, the “ancient” president of the Amalgamated Association (AA) expels striking workers from the Weirton lodges. Dobie bristles over the incident, but Walsh insists...
(full context)
Part 4, Dobie: Chapter 8
...veterans from the Weirton and Clairton strikes to approve a program to present to the AA convention in April. Their central demand is “that the convention authorize all lodges to ask...
(full context)
...over the radio that there will be no strike, but he is puzzled that the AA has voted to accept the AFL’s proposal for a special “Labor Board,” supposedly endorsed by...
(full context)
Part 4, Dobie: Chapter 11
...for the steelworkers. An enraged Tighe revokes their charters and demands that police protect the AA headquarters, claiming to have discovered “proof” that the delegates were hardcore Bolsheviks hatching a plot...
(full context)
