Most workers in the United States worked over ten hours a day and wanted relief Their slogan was "eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep, and eight hours for what we will".

At 308's founding meeting, supporters from the community backed the carpenters call for a union. The carpenters had a choice, they could stand apart and take pauper pay or stand together and receive a living wage.

The choice was clear to the founding members of Local 308. Before the carpenters of Cedar Rapids could get shorter hours and higher wages they had to build a union. While the carpenters of 308 sought to advance the labor movement as a whole, they also fought to advance their own interests. They aggressively claimed new material and jobs for themselves and tried to bring other unions of woodworkers under Brotherhood jurisdiction.

During the late 1800's, factories began to replace skilled carpenters who once completed an entire job with their own tools both inside and outside their shop. Beams and pillars used to be "fashioned with the ax and adz." And window frames and doors were cut, fitted together, and put into place by the journeymen carpenter. After the Civil War, journeymen lost this indoor work to semi-skilled operatives using machines in mills and factories. The growth of factories also threatened carpenters position on outside work. As technology improved factories began to produce non-wood building material. Hollow steel, for example, replaced wood doors and trim. A carpenter from New York City wrote in the Carpenter that "wood in office buildings could become as extinct as the Dodo." Iron workers and sheet metal workers now began to claim jurisdiction over jobs once done by carpenters.

The journeymen carpenters did not' however, resist technological innovation. Instead they claimed the new work and materials for themselves. The UBCJ told carpenters to claim jurisdiction over work formerly done by them, even if the material was not wood. For instance, carpenters, including the members of 308, claimed jurisdiction over the erection of metal doors and trim because they made and hung them when they were wood. The carpenters also went about proving that the new material was carpenters' work by showing how it required the use of carpenters' tools.

While the carpenters in Cedar Rapids sought to advance their own interests, they also wanted to advance the entire labor movement. So, four months after the carpenters founded 308, they formed a committee to confer with the other construction unions in Cedar Rapids to form a building trade council that consisted of the Plumbers, Painters, Plasterers, Hod Carriers, and Carpenters. On Dec. 1, 1899, 308 elected its first slate of delegates to the trades council committee. Over the next four years, the building trades committee grew into a cohesive council that helped coordinate the activity of all the trades in Cedar Rapids and improved workers' lives. -BACK-NEXT-