ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the history of the Federation of Architects, Engineers, Chemists, and Technicians (FAECT), a union organized by architects during the New Deal and lasting through World War II. The union was affective in not only gaining higher wages from the government (which most architecture firms were serving at that time) but made architectural education more affordable, prevented some of Robert Moses’s more aggressive anti-democratic infrastructural plans, and got the government to provide more affordable housing. The chapter argues that while circumstances favorable to architectural unionization have changed, many have not, and, as such, there is need for a contemporary architectural union to organize for many of the same enduring problems in our profession and the built environment.
