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The 1893 industrial depression made clear that only well-organized labor unions with large treasuries could survive economic bad times. This realization motivated Montana’s two central labor bodies, the Butte Industrial Conference and the State Trades and Labor Assembly (Helena), to meet in 1895 to merge into one organization sufficient in size and financial resources to advocate for workers’ economic and political interests in the state. The organization became the State Trades and Labor Council of Montana (MSTLC). The federation officially changed its name to the Montana Federation of Labor (MFL) in 1903.

The state federation initially rejected the conservative policies of the craft-oriented American Federation of Labor (AFL), instead allying with the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) in 1898 to create the Western Labor Union (WLU). The WLU affiliated with unions “committed to organizing all workers regardless of craft, skill, race, gender, or ethnic origin.”

By 1902, the MFL openly endorsed the Socialist Party of Montana. However, electoral failures in 1904 and 1908 eroded support for Socialism within the federation. A growing number of federation members disagreed with the MFL’s close association with the Socialist Party and local unions increasingly began to endorse candidates within the Democratic and Republican Parties who pushed for labor legislation.

A fight over chartering unions unaffiliated with either the AFL or the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) weakened the MFL in 1906, when the WFM ordered 29 of their affiliates to withdraw from the federation. A year later MFL president Alex Fairgrieve attended the national AFL convention in an attempt to shore up the state federation. While there, he assured the delegates that the MFL differed little in policy and procedure from the AFL. Fairgrieve recognized that “In the past the Montana Federation has been controlled by those who rebelled against the other States and against the American Federation of Labor,” but promised a different future. Upon his return to Montana, Fairgrieve completed the necessary paperwork for AFL affiliation and the state federation received its AFL charter on January 2, 1908.

Beginning in 1914, Montana went through a twenty-year period of “open shops,” which severely undercut unions in the mining and lumber industries. This changed in 1934 with the establishment of the National Labor Relations Act. NLRA regulations guaranteed workers the right to organize “without fear of discrimination or discharge.” With labor’s hands untied for the first time in two decades, industrial organizing swept the state. The union shop was once again re-established in the labor strongholds of Butte, Anaconda, and Great Falls.

In 1935, the Committee for Industrial Organization formed within the AFL in response to the growing number of industrial unions comprised of unskilled workers. A rift between the AFL and the CIO soon resulted in the expulsion of the CIO from the AFL and the establishment of the Congress of Industrial Organizations. The Montana State Industrial Union Council affiliated with the national CIO on November 16, 1938. The two state federations operated without much of the bitterness that engulfed their two national organizations, helping to prepare the way for their eventual merger in 1956 as the Montana AFL-CIO.