IATSE Local #2 came into existence on Mar. 3, 1887 making us six years older than our International which was founded back in 1893 as the National Alliance. Both of us have since grown and prospered in the intervening 100 plus years. That, of course, didn't happen without great personal sacrifice on the part of those that went before us. You see, in our early years we were not all that different from our brethren working in the stockyards, steel mills, and coal mines who had to cope daily with management/owners willing to exploit their desperate circumstances. Those standing up in defiance of such ruthless tactics were swiftly crushed and forgotten. Uprisings quelled, businessmen would revert back to their business-as-usual tactics. What finally changed all that was the advent of great numbers of workers uniting into forceful, cohesive units thrust in motion by a common goal. We are the successful byproduct of those myriad struggles.