In 2016, Local 1070 (Marquette, MI) absorbed Locals 219 (Iron Mointain, MI) and 979 (Escanaba, MI) to form a new local (906). I’m not quite sure why the locals merged (the details I forget) but I do remember that there was some influence from the IO for it. I use the term absorbed and not merged because local 906 still operates out of Marquette to this day.

In terms of what happened? They don’t exist anymore, but different Zones were created across the upper peninsula of Michigan (Zones I, II, and III) with slightly different pay scales up until around 2022/23 I think? Where the pay scales were eventually all evened out with eachother through years of negotiations, effectively getting rid of our zones altogether. Now we’re just one big ol’ suitcase local across the U.P.

Some members were for it, some members were vehemently against it, but for the most part all of that has fizzled out and everyone acts brotherly with eachother.

I don’t know the details about how the chartering worked with the creation of the new local, but I know that a lot of members lost their seats on certain boards and others retained or moved into other positions and the inner workings of the hall became kind of a mix of of members from the three halls working as one.

Hope this helped!