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118-637: UE was one of the first unions to be chartered by the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and grew to over 600,000 members in the 1940s. UE was founded in March 1936 by several independent industrial unions which had been organized from the ground up in the early and mid-1930s by workers in major plants of the General Electric Company , Westinghouse Electric , RCA , and other leading electrical equipment and radio manufacturers. In 1937

236-492: A black international representative and former rank-and-file factory worker, as secretary of the UE Fair Practices Committee. In essence the union's affirmative action officer, Thompson met with the leadership of UE locals around the country to develop and implement action plans to force employers to hire more black workers, and to give African Americans opportunities to advance into skilled trades jobs. In

354-775: A city ordinance to prevent labor meetings in public places and stop the distribution of literature pertaining to the CIO's cause. District and circuit courts ruled in favor of the CIO. Hague appealed to the United States Supreme Court , which held in 1939 that Hague's ban on political meetings violated the First Amendment right to freedom of assembly. The UAW was able to capitalize on its stunning victory over GM by winning recognition at Chrysler and smaller manufacturers. It then focused its organizing efforts on Ford, sometimes battling company security forces as at

472-589: A collective endeavor. The UE constitution states: "No representative of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) shall negotiate alone with the employer." UE feels that its open and participatory approach to bargaining results in better contracts than bargaining methods which restrict member involvement. Illustration of how UE negotiates with employers can be seen in the union's detailed web reports on its 2011 national bargaining with GE. Fighting for workers over day-to-day injustices on

590-678: A committee within the American Federation of Labor (AFL) by John L. Lewis , a leader of the United Mine Workers (UMW), and called the Committee for Industrial Organization . Its name was changed in 1938 when it broke away from the AFL. It focused on organizing unskilled workers, who had been ignored by most of the AFL unions. The CIO supported Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal coalition , and membership in it

708-486: A disputed election. Carey's departure eventually opened the way for the co-ordinated bargaining which partially healed the two decade old division in the industry. Congress of Industrial Organizations The Congress of Industrial Organizations ( CIO ) was a federation of unions that organized workers in industrial unions in the United States and Canada from 1935 to 1955. Originally created in 1935 as

826-505: A frequency rare in organized labor; the union's conventions are now biannual. The five-day convention, consisting of elected delegates from UE locals across the country, is the highest decision-making body of the union. It discusses and approves policy resolutions submitted by locals and regions, on matters ranging from the union's bargaining and organizing strategies to domestic and foreign policy issues. Convention delegates participate in workshops and other educational and cultural events; elect

944-540: A group of local unions in the machine shop industry, led by James J. Matles , left the International Association of Machinists (IAM), objecting to that union's policies of racial discrimination , and joined the young UE. UE withdrew from affiliation with CIO in 1949 over differences related to the developing Cold War , during the early stages of which UE was referred to as one of the basic sources of anti-American propaganda both inside and outside

1062-488: A local by the national union) is not provided for in the UE constitution, and has therefore never occurred. From its founding through 2005 UE had an intermediate structure of geographic districts. In 2005 the districts were replaced by three regions, Western, Eastern and Northeast. Each region holds meetings two or three times a year, composed of delegates from local unions. The regions elect their own officers and representatives to

1180-539: A massive rearmament program after Germany defeated France in spring 1940, and factory employment soared. The UAW finally organized Ford in 1941. The SWOC, now known as the United Steel Workers of America , won recognition in Little Steel in 1941 through a combination of strikes and National Labor Relations Board elections in the same year. In addition, after the west coast longshoremen organized in

1298-474: A modest wage increase and a grievance process . CIO unions signed multiyear contracts, often complicated and long, with GM, U.S. Steel, and other corporations in order to minimize strikes and also make sure employers took care of the work process. The CIO also won several significant legal battles. Hague v. Committee for Industrial Organization 307 U.S. 496 (1939), arose out of events late in 1937. Jersey City, New Jersey Mayor Frank "Boss" Hague had used

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1416-590: A national basis, while restraining local unions from striking, also tended to accelerate the trend toward bureaucracy within the larger CIO unions. Some, such as the Steelworkers, had always been centralized organizations in which authority for major decisions resided at the top. The UAW, by contrast, had always been a more grassroots organization, but it also started to try to rein in its maverick local leadership during these years. The CIO also had to confront deep racial divides in its own membership, particularly in

1534-528: A national strike to regain economic ground lost by workers during the war, when wages had been frozen but industrial profits had risen significantly. The United Auto Workers shut down the auto plants of General Motors; UE struck GE, Westinghouse, and the GM electrical division, and the United Steelworkers stopped work in the basic steel industry. The 1946 strikes were successful, but the outcome stiffened

1652-454: A number of AFL affiliates who now sought to organize industrial workers. The competition was particularly sharp in the aircraft industry, where the UAW went head-to-head against the International Association of Machinists , originally a craft union of railroad workers and skilled trade employees. The AFL organizing drives proved even more successful, and they gained new members as fast or faster than

1770-418: A number of company unions at U.S. Steel and elsewhere, but did not attempt the sort of daring strike that the UAW had pulled off against GM. Instead, Lewis was able to extract a collective bargaining agreement from U.S. Steel, which had previously been an implacable enemy of unions, by pointing to the chaos and loss of business that GM had suffered by fighting the UAW. The agreement provided for union recognition,

1888-616: A premium on membership involvement. In preparation for contract bargaining, UE locals solicit ideas for contract changes from their members, and most locals then conduct a membership vote to approve the full slate of union proposals. UE bargaining committees regularly report back to members, both orally and through publications, during the course of bargaining. UE routinely rejects management pleas for bargaining "blackouts," gag rules which prohibit open communication to rank-and-file union members during negotiations. The union frequently calls on its members to collectively demonstrate their support for

2006-474: A single plant into a number of different crafts represented by separate organizations, each with its own agenda, would weaken the workers' bargaining power and leave the majority, who had few traditional craft skills, completely unrepresented. While the AFL had always included a number of industrial unions, such as the United Mine Workers and the Brewery Workers , the most dogmatic craft unionists had

2124-402: A slighting comment about a rubber worker who was delivering an organizing report. Lewis responded that Hutcheson's comment was "small potatoes," and the 6-foot-3-inch (1.91 m) Hutcheson replied, "I was raised on small potatoes, that is why I am so small." After some more words, during which Hutcheson called Lewis a "vile name", Lewis punched Hutcheson. The two men collapsed a table and fell on

2242-701: A stronghold on power within the federation by the 1930s. They used that power to quash any drive toward industrial organizing. Industrial unionism became even more fierce in the 1930s, when the Great Depression in the United States caused large membership drops in some unions, such as the United Mine Workers and the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union . A number of labor leaders, particularly John L. Lewis of

2360-513: A union's commitment to its fundamental purpose. From the local to the national level, UE has a strong ethic of accountability and transparency in all its financial practices, and opposes any trace of what it calls "petty corruption" among union officials. UE leaders at all levels are taught that union funds belong to the members, and that members are entitled to detailed reports on union finances at all levels, and to democratically decide on major spending. UE's approach to collective bargaining places

2478-486: A variety of industries, UE continues actively organizing private and public sector workers, and its democratic structure and practices have attracted several small independent unions to affiliate. Over the past two decades the union has built a strategic alliance with the Authentic Labor Front , an independent Mexican union, and UE is broadly active in international labor outreach and solidarity. Today UE

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2596-401: Is deeply rooted in UE's philosophy of unionism. UE sees unionism as a movement and unions as independent organizations of workers. When union leaders live in the same income bracket as rank-and-file workers, it helps them to stay in touch with the outlook and needs of workers. In UE's view, salaries for union officers and staff that are comparable to those of corporate executives tend to undermine

2714-479: Is its strong emphasis on frugality and financial responsibility. Since UE's founding, its constitution has limited the pay of its officers to "a salary not to exceed the highest weekly wage paid in the industry." Linked to the pay rates of production workers at GE, the annual salaries of UE's three national officers are currently $ 62,072 – a fraction of what other unions pay their officers. The salaries of UE regional officers, staff, and those local officers who work for

2832-430: Is regarded as one of the most democratic and politically progressive national unions in the United States, and its philosophy and principle of democratic unionism is summed up in its longstanding slogan, "The members run this union." On August 27, 2019, UE endorsed the 2020 presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders . The fundamental unit of UE is the local union. Because UE was founded by existing independent local unions,

2950-716: The Battle of the Overpass on May 26, 1937. At the same time, the UAW was in danger of being torn apart by internal political rivalries. Homer Martin , the first president of the UAW, expelled a number of the union organizers who had led the Flint sit-down strike and other early drives on charges that they were communists . In some cases, such as Wyndham Mortimer , Bob Travis and Henry Kraus , those charges may have been true; in other cases, such as Victor Reuther and Roy Reuther , they were probably not. Those expulsions were reversed at

3068-663: The Catholic Radical Alliance . The steelmakers offered workers the same wage increases that U.S. Steel had offered. In the Memorial Day Massacre on May 30, 1937, Chicago police opened fire on a group of strikers who had attempted to picket at Republic Steel, killing ten and seriously wounding dozens. A month and a half later police in Massillon, Ohio fired on a crowd of unionists, resulting in three deaths. The CIO became more comfortable with

3186-758: The ILGWU , Thomas McMahon , head of the United Textile Workers ; John Sheridan of the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Union ; Harvey Fremming, of the Oil Workers Union ; and Max Zaritsky , of the Hatters, Cap and Millinery Workers . They discussed the formation of a new group within the AFL to carry on the fight for industrial organizing. The creation of the Committee for Industrial Organization

3304-630: The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). While foes of UE in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s charged the union with "communist domination," recent studies have demonstrated that UE was and remains one of the most democratic US labor unions and that its policies differed markedly from those of the US Communist Party on a number of major issues during those decades. Following the outbreak of World War II , UE joined with other unions in

3422-643: The National Maritime Union , made up of sailors based on the east coast, and the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers . The AFL continued to fight the CIO, forcing the NLRB to allow skilled trades employees in large industrial facilities the option to choose, in what came to be called "Globe elections," between representation by the CIO or separate representation by AFL craft unions. The CIO now also faced competition, moreover, from

3540-774: The President Roosevelt's administration. He broke with Roosevelt over foreign policy and endorsed Wendell Willkie for president in 1940. Lewis promised to drop his CIO role if Roosevelt was reelected. Murray was elected to replace him shortly after Roosevelt won the election. Roosevelt won reelection in a landslide in 1936, and by a closer margin in 1940. Labor unions gave strong support in 1940, compared to very strong support in 1936. The Gallup Poll showed CIO voters declined from 85% in 1935 to 79% in 1940. AFL voters went from 80% to 71%. Other union members went from 74% to 57%. Blue collar workers who were not union members went 72% to 64%. The Roosevelt administration launched

3658-686: The Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany , the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact , which would later be broken by the Nazis . Many Communists in Western parties repudiated this action and resigned their party membership in protest. American Communists took the public position of being opposed to the war against Germany. The Mine Workers led by Lewis, with a strong pro-Soviet presence, opposed Roosevelt's reelection in 1940 and left

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3776-548: The Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC) signed a collective bargaining agreement with U.S. Steel . Those two victories, however, came about very differently. The CIO's initial strategy was to focus its efforts in the steel industry and then build from there. The UAW, however, did not wait for the CIO to lead it. Instead, having built up a membership of roughly 25,000 workers by gathering in federal unions and some locals from rival unions in

3894-605: The UAW responded to these attacks by purging their own unions of Communists, and by attacking those CIO unions, such as UE, that were viewed as Communist dominated. Investigations by the House Un-American Activities Committee and criticism from groups such as the Association of Catholic Trade Unionists , which actively organized dissenters within UE into an opposition faction, put UE leaders on

4012-648: The strike led by Harry Bridges in 1934 split from the International Longshoremen's Association in 1937 to form the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union , the ILWU joined the CIO. Bridges became the most powerful force within the CIO in California and the west. The Transport Workers Union of America , originally representing the subway workers in New York, also joined, as did

4130-524: The 1934 Toledo Auto-Lite strike , which was led by the American Workers Party . Victorious industrial unions with militant leaderships were the catalyst that brought about the rise of the CIO. The AFL authorized organizing drives in the automobile, rubber, and steel industries at its convention in 1934 but gave little financial support or effective leadership to those unions. The AFL's timidity succeeded only in making it less credible among

4248-528: The AFL suspended all 10 CIO unions (two more CIO unions had joined the AFL during the previous year). In 1938, these unions formed the Congress of Industrial Organizations as a rival labor federation. Section 504 of the Taft–Hartley Act of 1947 required union leaders to swear that they were not Communists, which some CIO leaders refused to do; they were expelled. In 1955, the CIO rejoined the AFL, forming

4366-418: The AFL; in 1933, it proposed to use them to organize workers on an industrial basis. The AFL did not, however, promise to allow the unions to maintain a separate identity indefinitely. That meant the unions might be broken up later to distribute their members among the craft unions that claimed jurisdiction over their work. The AFL, in fact, dissolved hundreds of federal unions in late 1934 and early 1935. While

4484-797: The CIO in 1942. After June 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the Communists became fervent supporters of the war and sought to end wildcat strikes that might hurt war production. The CIO, and in particular the UAW, supported a wartime no-strike pledge that aimed to eliminate not only major strikes for new contracts, but also the innumerable small strikes called by shop stewards and local union leadership to protest particular grievances. That pledge did not, however, actually eliminate all wartime strikes; in fact, there were nearly as many strikes in 1944 as there had been in 1937. But those strikes tended to be far shorter and far less tumultuous than

4602-527: The CIO in urging a no-strike pledge and higher productivity for the duration of the war, which UE viewed as a struggle against world fascism and therefore worthy of labor's support. The UE also supported expanded use of piecework systems in industry, which it defended as both necessary to boost production and a way to improve workers' earnings under the wartime wage control systems imposed by the War Labor Board. This appears, in fact, to be largely true:

4720-473: The CIO stop the UAW and other CIO unions from raiding UE. To defend the union from future raids, UE reversed its refusal to sign Taft-Hartley affidavits, enabling the union to again appear on the ballot in NLRB representation elections. When the CIO refused to take action to stop CIO-affiliated unions from raiding other CIO unions, UE boycotted the CIO's national convention in 1949 and withheld its per capita dues payments, effectively resigning its affiliation to

4838-415: The CIO, however, only increased the stature of the CIO and Lewis in the eyes of the industrial workers who were keen on organizing and were disillusioned with the AFL's ineffective performance. Lewis continued to denounce the AFL's policies, and the CIO offered organizing support to workers in the rubber industry who went on strike and formed the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC) in defiance of all of

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4956-532: The CIO. The unemployment problem ended in the United States with the beginning of World War II, as stepped-up wartime production created millions of new jobs, and the draft pulled young men out. The war mobilization also changed the CIO's relationship with both employers and the national government. Having failed to ally with capitalist countries against fascism in the eves of the World War II , in August 1939

5074-581: The CIO. The CIO responded by announcing the expulsion of UE as well as that of the United Farm Equipment Workers (FE); the following year the CIO expelled nine other unions believed to be Communist dominated. Of the 11 "left wing" unions that were expelled or resigned from the CIO in 1949–50, only UE and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union remain in existence a of 2020. All of the others were broken by

5192-528: The Communist-led unions that had attempted to organize the industry earlier in the 1930s - to sign up members. Lewis was not particularly concerned with the political beliefs of his organizers, so long as he controlled the organization; as he once famously remarked, when asked about the "reds" on the SWOC staff, "Who gets the bird? The hunter or the dog?". The SWOC signed up thousands of members and absorbed

5310-506: The Democratic Party. It rejected proposals for the creation of an independent labor party, apart from the small left-wing American Labor Party in New York. The CIO began its own newspaper. It featured articles that were written by big journalists, cartoons, and other political stories. The newspaper had spread to 40% of the CIO's members and had different stories for different areas. The CIO found organizing textile workers in

5428-479: The General Executive Board (the national board of UE), including a full-time regional president. The regions coordinate work among the locals in their area, including solidarity, political action and union education. Several times a year the regions organize training workshops and other educational events through sub-regions – smaller geographic subdivisions. Until 2003 UE held annual conventions,

5546-583: The IUE and other unions. The UE's membership dropped from 200,000 in 1953 to 58,000 in 1960. Some of the losses resulted from companies, including GE and Westinghouse, moving portions of their manufacturing from older plants in the Northeast to new plants in the South and West . The split of 1955-56 largely involved tactical disagreements over how to move the UE's progressive program and brand of unionism forward in

5664-563: The IUE as it had in UE. In 1965 he was defeated for the presidency of IUE by one of his own lieutenants, leaving him with the dubious distinction of being the only person in US labor history to be elected, and subsequently thrown out, as national president of two different unions. During World War II and continuing through the Cold War, UE took a more progressive position on women's rights than other unions, advocating "equal pay for equal work" during

5782-506: The IUE by highlighting its relative weakness in standing up to management, and derisively characterized the acronym IUE as standing for "Imitation UE." While the UE and the IUE won roughly equal number of elections through the first half of the 1950s, the IUE came away with larger numbers of members, particularly in the growing field of consumer electronics. Other unions, including the IBEW, the IAM,

5900-422: The IUE openly appealed for the votes of white workers on the basis of racial bigotry and by attacking UE's support for racial equality. By 1954, UE officers reported that 87 percent of all UE contracts contained no-discrimination clauses, an achievement that placed UE far ahead of other unions. A second wave of defections in the mid-1950s took several important UE locals, which had survived earlier raiding , into

6018-662: The Roosevelt Administration's tentative efforts to remedy racial discrimination in war industries through the Fair Employment Practices Commission . Those unions contrasted their relatively bold attack on the problem with the timidity and racism of the AFL. The CIO unions were less progressive in dealing with sex discrimination in wartime industry, which now employed many more women workers in nontraditional jobs. Some unions who had represented large numbers of women workers before

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6136-581: The Senate with support from" UE, which preferred McCarthy to the anti-communist Robert M. La Follette ), built their careers by conducting witch-hunts for imagined "Communist subversion" within the federal government, and by red-baiting their election opponents. The CIO itself was a prime target of the Republican red-baiters. CIO leaders such as Philip Murray of the Steelworkers and Walter Reuther of

6254-452: The South very difficult. As in steel, these workers had abundant recent first-hand experience of failed organizing drives and defeated strikes, which resulted in unionists being blacklisted or worse. In addition, the intense antagonism of white workers toward black workers and the conservative political and religious milieu made organizing even harder. Adding to the uncertainties for the CIO

6372-547: The Steelworkers, UE, and Packinghouse Workers struck in January 1946. Murray, as head of both the CIO and the Steelworkers, wanted to avoid a wave of mass strikes in favor of high-level negotiations with employers, with government intervention to balance wage demands with price controls. That project failed when employers showed that they were not willing to accept the wartime status quo, but instead demanded broad management rights clauses to reassert their workplace authority, while

6490-538: The Taft-Hartley labor board and agreed in principle that all would refuse to sign the affidavits. But few lived up to that pledge. Some union leaders, including Walter Reuther of the UAW, signed the Taft-Hartley affidavits and then proceeded to raid (attempt to replace) locals of UE and the Farm Equipment Workers (FE), whose leaders were still holding out and refusing to sign. This meant that

6608-484: The UAW as the exclusive bargaining representative of its employees for a six months period, UAW activists, rather than CIO staff, led the strike. The organizing campaign in the steel industry, by contrast, was a top-down affair. Lewis, who had a particular interest in organizing the steel industry because of its important role in the coal industry where UMW members worked, dispatched hundreds of organizers - many of whom were his past political opponents or radicals drawn from

6726-891: The UAW plants in Detroit where white workers sometimes struck to protest the promotion of black workers to production jobs. It also worked on this issue in shipyards in Alabama, mass transit in Philadelphia, and steel plants in Baltimore. The CIO leadership, particularly those in more left unions such as the Packinghouse Workers, the UAW, the NMU, and the Transport Workers, undertook serious efforts to suppress hate strikes, to educate their membership, and to support

6844-588: The UAW, the United Steel Workers of America , the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the Sheet Metal Workers International Association , also wedged in during these elections. The IUE, moreover, found itself divided, as the divergent groups that had allied to oppose the UE now found it hard to work with each other once in power. James Carey's arrogance eventually caught up with him within

6962-471: The UE had gotten in their negotiations; GM not only did not concede any of its managerial authority, but never even bargained over the UAW's proposals over its pricing policies. These strikes were qualitatively different from those waged over union recognition in the 1930s: employers did not try to hire strikebreakers to replace their employees, while the unions kept a tight lid on picketers to maintain order and decorum even as they completely shut down some of

7080-507: The UE in some plants. Fissures within UE that appeared around the 1941 convention (when James Carey had been defeated as UE president by Albert J. Fitzgerald , a GE worker from Lynn, Massachusetts ) reopened in the late-1940s national political environment of anti-communist hysteria. Up-and-coming Republican politicians, such as Congressman Richard Nixon of California and Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin (who, according to Journalist Arnold Beichman , "was elected to his first term in

7198-541: The UE national organizing director had immigrated from Romania as a youth. Other similar prosecutions, harassment by the FBI, vicious attacks in local newspapers, and denunciation by politicians, kept UE under siege for years. The red-baiting attacks on UE during the McCarthy era did tremendous damage to the union, but were eventually shown, even in the prevailing atmosphere of anti-red hysteria, to have no legal merit. Most of

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7316-483: The US. It suffered significant losses of membership through the 1950s to raids by other unions , in particular the International Union of Electrical Workers (IUE) which was set up by the CIO in 1949 with the goal of replacing UE. The UE and IUE were fierce rivals for many years, but in the 1960s began to cooperate in bargaining with General Electric and other employers. Now representing 23,000 workers in

7434-401: The United Mine Workers, came to the conclusion that their own unions would not survive while the great majority of workers in basic industry remained nonunion. They started to press the AFL to change its policies in this area. The AFL, in fact, responded and added even more new members than the CIO. The AFL had long permitted the formation of "federal" unions, which were affiliated directly with

7552-404: The bureaucratic leadership of the AFL was unable to win strikes, three victorious strikes suddenly exploded onto the scene in 1934. These were the Minneapolis Teamsters Strike of 1934 , the leadership of which included some members of the Trotskyist Communist League of America ; the 1934 West Coast Longshore Strike , the leadership of which included some members of the Communist Party USA ; and

7670-473: The clergy. What helped UE to weather these storms was its own democratic structure and manner of operation, and its superior record of representing members (when contrasted with the IUE, for example) in collective bargaining and in fighting for shop grievances. Both of these attributes engendered fierce loyalty to UE among many of its members, even as the union was being slandered by powerful forces as some sort of national security threat. UE loyalists counteracted

7788-511: The conflict by expelling the CIO unions, prominent among which were John L. Lewis of the United Mine Workers (UMW) and Sidney Hillman , president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA). Over the next few years a dramatic wave of strikes and mass organizing by industrial workers rapidly built the membership of the CIO and of newly formed industrial unions such as UE, the United Auto Workers (UAW), United Rubber Workers, and United Steelworkers (USW). The UE expanded greatly over

7906-413: The craft divisions that the AFL had required in past organizing efforts. In 1936, Lee Pressman , affiliated with the far left, became the union's general counsel until 1948. The first major industrial union to be chartered by the CIO, on November 16, 1936, was the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE). The subsequent explosive growth of the UE was instrumental for the survival in

8024-427: The decision whether to arbitrate a grievance is made by membership vote. In the UE national contract with GE, UE locals retain the right to strike over grievances. Such grievance strikes by UE-GE locals are infrequent and usually of short duration, but the existence of this option gives the union added clout and helps it to favorably resolve many grievances. The CIO granted UE the first charter on November 16, 1938. UE

8142-446: The defensive. Anti-communist raids by other unions removed some conservative members and locals from UE, thereby weakening the right-wing internal opposition. Nonetheless, oppositionists were confident that the national political atmosphere would enable them to seize power in UE at the union's 1949 convention. But the right-wing candidates were soundly defeated. UE's convention delegates instead backed their national officers' demands that

8260-413: The dies necessary to stamp automotive body parts and a companion facility in Cleveland, Ohio , but held on to those sites despite repeated attempts by the police and National Guard to retake them and court orders threatening the union with ruinous fines if it did not call off the strike. While Lewis played a key role in negotiating the one-page agreement that ended the strike with GM's promise to recognize

8378-488: The earlier ones, usually involving small groups of workers over working conditions and other local concerns. The CIO did not, on the other hand, strike over wages during the war. In return for labor's no-strike pledge, the government offered arbitration to determine the wages and other terms of new contracts. Those procedures produced modest wage increases during the first few years of the war, but, over time, not enough to keep up with inflation, particularly when combined with

8496-491: The early days of the CIO. By the end of 1936, the UE had organized the General Electric plant at Schenectady, New York , and the UE went on to organize 358 more local unions with contracts covering over 600,000 workers, at 1375 plants. The CIO met with dramatic initial successes in 1937, with the UAW winning union recognition at General Motors Corporation after a tumultuous forty-four-day sit-down strike , while

8614-585: The elections of 1946 had brought a much more conservative Congress to Washington, with a determination to curb labor. The Taft-Hartley Act , drafted in large part by lobbyists for the National Association of Manufacturers , General Electric, Inland Steel and other industrialists, represented a major revision of the Wagner Act that significantly weakened labor's ability to organize and effectively negotiate. Among its many anti-union provisions

8732-399: The employer; and decide whether to strike, and when to end a strike, by majority vote. Most UE locals hold monthly membership meetings. Field representatives from the national union assist local unions with bargaining and other activities, but UE's constitution forbids the staff "to interfere with UE rank-and-file control, including election processes." Trusteeship of local unions (takeover of

8850-520: The end of World War II, UE was the third largest CIO union, with a membership of over 600,000. As in many of the new CIO unions organized in the 1930s, the membership and leaders of UE included a variety of radicals, including socialists and communists , as well as New Deal liberals and Catholics . Among the organizers and leaders of UE Local 107 at the Westinghouse South Philadelphia works were several former members of

8968-490: The eve of an NLRB election between UE and IUE at the major GE plant there. His grilling of UE members, in the guise of investigating "Communist subversion," made for sensationalist news headlines and helped the IUE eke out a narrow win. Several UE shop leaders, as well as UE Secretary-Treasurer Julius Emspak , were put on trial on contempt charges for refusing to cooperate with HUAC. The federal government tried unsuccessfully to take away James Matles's citizenship and deport him;

9086-473: The exemplary "UE Steward Handbook," and publishes a monthly publication, the UE Steward, that provides tactical tips to stewards and local officers for dealing with workplace problems. UE's approach to grievances includes careful investigation of the issue by the steward, being well-prepared for meetings with the employer, and strategies for organizing and mobilizing members to pressure management to resolve

9204-463: The face of the AFL-CIO merger. It proved a bitter disappointment to UE activists who had managed to bring the union successfully through the hardest years of the McCarthy period and the Cold War but who were now unable to keep the union together. Most locals in the UE's New York-north Jersey district (UE District 4) voted to go into the IUE reasoning that they had the strength and experience to influence

9322-620: The floor, throwing punches. The incident helped cement Lewis's image in the public eye as someone willing to fight for workers' right to organize. The standard scholarly history by Robert Ziegler provides the historical details. Shortly afterward, Lewis called together Charles Howard, President of the International Typographical Union ; Sidney Hillman , head of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America ; David Dubinsky , President of

9440-618: The incentive systems that management used were their loosest during World War II and represented an important, and generally popular, form of compensation for workers. UE continued to bargain aggressively for its members during the war, winning numerous improvements in contract language and benefits. Despite the War Labor Board's policy of freezing wages for the duration of the war, UE leaders devised creative strategies to win WLB approval of pay increases for many of their members. And despite

9558-627: The industry, the union decided to go after GM, the largest carmaker of them all, by shutting down its nerve center, the production complex in Flint, Michigan . The Flint Sit-Down Strike was a risky and illegal enterprise from the outset: the union was able to share its plans with only a few workers because of the danger that spies employed by GM would alert management in time to stop it, yet needed to be able to mobilize enough to seize physical control of GM's factories. The union, in fact, not only took over several GM factories in Flint, including one that made

9676-414: The injustices of " Jim Crow " racial segregation and denial of black voting rights. UE called for reinstating the federal Fair Employment Practices Committee , a wartime agency created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to stop discrimination in industry, which was disbanded after the war by President Harry Truman . Here again, UE's progressive position was used against it by its foes; in several instances

9794-531: The inquisition. GE fired John Nelson, president of UE's large Local 506 in Erie, Pennsylvania , on just such grounds. The stress resulting from his own firing and the unrelenting persecution of his union destroyed Nelson's health; he died in 1959 at the age of 42. McCarthy's "investigations" were sometimes carefully scheduled to help the IUE and the companies against UE. In 1953 he held a hearing in Lynn, Massachusetts on

9912-409: The job is, in UE's view, a central task of unions. The "first line of defense" in UE's workplace organization consists of elected shop stewards within each department or workgroup. Among unions UE has one of the highest ratios of stewards to members, and aims for a steward-to-supervisor ratio of at least one to one. UE has a strong training program for its stewards, distributes a Steward Kit that includes

10030-468: The largest enterprises in the United States. The CIO's major organizing drive of this era, Operation Dixie , aimed at the textile workers of the American South , was a complete failure. The CIO was reluctant to confront Jim Crow segregation laws. Although the Steelworkers' Southern outpost in the steel industry remained intact, the CIO and the union movement as a whole remained marginalized in

10148-545: The legal cases against UE leaders were eventually withdrawn or defeated in the courts, and in March 1959 the US Justice Department was forced to drop its prosecution of UE on charges that the union was "Communist-dominated." It seems a miracle that UE survived the 1950s at all, with attacks coming at it from all directions: the federal administration, Congress, Republicans and Democrats, news media, "mainstream" unions of both CIO and AFL, and even some members of

10266-592: The locals in the radio assembly and light manufacturing industries; the UE held on to much of its base in machine building. In the heavy electrical equipment plants, on the other hand, the two factions each had substantial strength. The resulting battles were fierce: in Local 601, which represented Westinghouse workers in East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and whose members had a tradition of radical politics dating back to Eugene V. Debs ' candidacy for president in 1912,

10384-422: The midst of the Cold War assaults on UE, the union's newspaper reported such success stories as the promotion of a black worker at Johnson Machine to lathe operator. The company had insisted that this worker was unqualified and refused to train him, so white union members had taught him the job during their lunch breaks. UE spoke out frequently against the racist government policies of the time, drawing attention to

10502-603: The most effective way to represent workers was to defend the advantages they had secured through their skills. They focused on the hiring of skilled workers, such as carpenters, lithographers, and railroad engineers in an attempt to maintain as much control as possible over the work their members did by enforcement of work rules, zealous defense of their jurisdiction to certain types of work, control over apprenticeship programs, and exclusion of less-skilled workers from membership. Craft unionists were opposed to organizing workers on an industrial basis, into unions which represented all of

10620-404: The new Truman administration proved unwilling to intervene on labor's side. The UAW took a different tack: rather than involve the federal government, it wanted to bargain directly with GM over management issues, such as the prices it charged for its cars, and went on strike for 113 days over these and other issues. The union eventually settled for the same wage increase that the Steelworkers and

10738-434: The new entity known as the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL–CIO). The CIO was born out of a fundamental dispute within the United States labor movement over whether and how to organize industrial workers. The eight union chiefs who founded the CIO were not happy with how the AFL was unwilling to work with America's manufacturing combines. Those who favored craft unionism believed

10856-665: The next convention of the UAW in 1939, which expelled Martin instead. He took approximately 20,000 UAW members with him to form a rival union, known for a time as the UAW-AFL. The SWOC encountered equally serious problems: after winning union recognition after a strike against Jones & Laughlin Steel , SWOC's strikes against the rest of "Little Steel", i.e., Bethlehem Steel Corporation , Youngstown Sheet and Tube , National Steel , Inland Steel American Rolling Mills and Republic Steel failed, in spite of support from organizations like

10974-469: The next decade, organizing workers of the major corporations in the electrical equipment, radio and machine tool industries. The union won a contentious strike at RCA and organized additional plants of GE, Westinghouse, GM's electrical division and smaller companies in its base industries. The union signed its first national contract with GE in 1938; Westinghouse, which more stubbornly resisted unionization of its plants, did not sign an agreement until 1941. By

11092-511: The picket lines until GE agreed that women would receive the same raises as men. In the early 1950s, while the union was under attack from all directions, UE organized a series of district and national conferences on the problems of women workers. Local union leaders who opposed UE's policies on gender equality often bolted to the IUE, and took members with them. UE also stood out in that period for its advocacy of equality for African American workers. In July 1950 UE leaders appointed Ernest Thompson,

11210-521: The policies of the newer union. While this move was resented by UE activists elsewhere, especially in Pennsylvania and the midwest, the District 4 activists felt that the UE forces could soon have regained control of the re-united organization had the whole union followed their lead. By the mid-1960s, the former UE activists in IUE shops played a role in helping to bring about James Carey's ouster in

11328-474: The problem. UE warns its locals against excessive reliance on grievance arbitration, pointing out that the majority of arbitration decisions are in favor of management, and that an arbitrator's unfavorable interpretation of a contract clause can harm the union for many years. UE avoids arbitrating grievances that it believes it is unlikely to win and trains its staff and local officers to carefully prepare for those cases they do take to arbitration. In most UE locals,

11446-438: The production workers in a particular enterprise, rather than in separate units divided along craft lines. The proponents of industrial unionism , on the other hand, generally believed that craft distinctions may have been appropriate in those industries in which craft unions had flourished, such as construction or printing, but they were unworkable in industries such as steel or auto production. In their view, dividing workers in

11564-563: The raiding union, UAW, would appear on the NLRB ballot, but the incumbent union, UE or FE, could not. The CIO, under President Philip Murray , did nothing to discourage the United Auto Workers from poaching on UE shops in the arms and typewriter industries in the Connecticut River Valley ; other unions affiliated with the AFL, such as the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers , likewise displaced

11682-400: The relentless attacks of employers, the government and other unions through the period of McCarthyism . In the case of UE, the CIO went a step further, chartering a rival union, the International Union of Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers (IUE), that would attempt to destroy and replace UE. James Carey, the founding president of UE, was appointed president of the IUE. The IUE won many of

11800-461: The resolve of industrialists to break the power of the CIO through a strategy of divide-and-conquer. The brewing Cold War with the Soviet Union would provide the opportunity, and in October 1946 GE's Charles Wilson summarized the political program of big business when he declared that the problems of the United States could be summed up as "Russia abroad, labor at home." Republican victories in

11918-466: The slowness of the arbitration machinery. Yet even though the complaints from union members about the no-strike pledge became louder and more bitter, the CIO did not abandon it. The Mine Workers, by contrast, who did not belong to either the AFL or the CIO for much of the war, engaged in a successful twelve-day strike in 1943. But the CIO unions on the whole grew stronger during the war. The government put pressure on employers to recognize unions to avoid

12036-418: The sort of turbulent struggles over union recognition of the 1930s, while unions were generally able to obtain maintenance of membership clauses, a form of union security , through arbitration and negotiation. Workers also won benefits, such as vacation pay, that had been available only to a few in the past while wage gaps between higher skilled and less skilled workers narrowed. The experience of bargaining on

12154-412: The two factions were led by brothers Mike and Tom Fitzpatrick, who attacked each other personally as vigorously as the factions did on political issues. The IUE won a close election, with the semi-skilled workers supporting the IUE while more skilled workers favored the UE. Employers, the federal government, the news media and other establishment forces played major roles in the efforts to eliminate UE. UE

12272-441: The union full-time, follow the same principle and are somewhat lower. UE is the only national union in the US that explicitly limits the pay of officers to a pay level of members As noted above, all increases in the pay of UE national officers and staff must be approved by delegates to the national convention, as amendments to the union constitution, and then ratified by membership vote at local union meetings. UE's policy on salaries

12390-463: The union is structured to provide a higher degree of autonomy to locals than in many other national unions. Local union members elect their local officers, negotiators, stewards, and delegates to the regional council and national convention; set policies for their local, including financial decisions; suggest bargaining demands and vote to approve the union's full list of contract proposals; vote to ratify or reject contracts and supplemental agreements with

12508-418: The union's bargaining goals during contract talks, by wearing T-shirts, buttons or stickers with union insignia and slogans; speaking up to management on key bargaining issues; and through rallies, informational picketing and other actions. Some UE locals even insist on the right of rank-and-file members to attend negotiating sessions as observers. UE is very explicit in mandating that all union negotiations are

12626-458: The union's support for the no-strike pledge, UE leaders supported militant actions by their members, such as a strike by UE members at a Babcock & Wilcox plant in New Jersey . As a result of this aggressive organizing push, UE would claim over 200 locals at the peak of war production in 1944. Soon after the war ended, beginning in late 1945, the three largest unions of the CIO engaged in

12744-523: The union's three national officers as well as the national trustees; and debate and vote on all proposed amendments to the UE constitution. The salaries of the national officers and staff are specified in the UE constitution, so giving raises to UE's paid officials requires amending the constitution at convention. All amendments to the constitution approved by the convention (including the proposed pay increases) are then sent to all UE locals, to be ratified or rejected by members voting at local union meetings in

12862-490: The war in successful suits against GE and Westinghouse before the War Labor Board and, after the war, resisting employers' attempts to drive married women out of industry and to deny seniority and maternity leave to women workers. The 1946 strike at GE was prolonged by the company's insistence on giving a smaller wage increase to its women employees, whom GE president Charles E. Wilson contemptuously dismissed as "bobbysoxers." With all other strike issues resolved, UE held out on

12980-543: The war, such as the UE and the Food and Tobacco Workers, had fairly good records of fighting discrimination against women; others often saw them as merely wartime replacements for the men in the armed forces. The end of the war meant the end of the no-strike pledge and a wave of strikes as workers sought to make up the ground they had lost, particularly in wages, during the war. The UAW went on strike against GM in November 1945;

13098-472: The weeks following the convention. Every member therefore has a direct vote on whether or not the pay of their national officers and staff will be increased. Between conventions, decisions of the national union are made by the General Executive Board, consisting of the three national officers, the three regional presidents, and 12 additional rank-and-file representatives elected by the regions. One feature that has distinguished UE from many other US labor unions

13216-603: The workers that it was supposedly trying to organize. That was especially significant in those industries, such as auto and rubber, in which workers had already achieved some organizing success, at great personal risk. The dispute came to a head at the AFL's convention in Atlantic City in 1935. On October 19, the closing day of the convention, William Hutcheson , the President of the United Carpenters , made

13334-488: Was a clause requiring officers of all unions to sign "non-communist affidavits," swearing that they were not members of the Communist Party. Leaders of virtually all CIO and AFL unions denounced this new law, and in particular called the non-communist affidavit clause an intolerable government interference in internal union matters and an encroachment on freedom of speech and association. Union leaders vowed to boycott

13452-441: Was announced on November 9, 1935. Whether Lewis then intended to split the AFL over this issue is debatable; at the outset, the CIO presented itself as only a group of unions within the AFL gathered to support industrial unionism, rather than a group opposed to the AFL itself. The AFL leadership, however, treated the CIO as an enemy from the outset by refusing to deal with it and demanding that it dissolve. The AFL's opposition to

13570-492: Was founded at a March 1936 meeting of existing local unions in plants of the electrical equipment and radio industries, a few months the founding of the CIO. In September 1936 the AFL suspended its member unions that had started the CIO – originally called the Committee on Industrial Organization and formed by existing industrial unions within the AFL as a caucus to promote organizing industrial unions in mass production industries. The AFL, dominated by craft unions , soon escalated

13688-481: Was its own internal disarray. The CIO formally established itself as a rival to the AFL on April 13, 1938, renaming itself as the Congress of Industrial Organizations on November 16, 1938. The ILGWU and the Millinery Workers left the CIO to return to the AFL. Lewis feuded with Hillman and Philip Murray , his long-time assistant and head of the SWOC, over both the CIO's own activities and its relations with

13806-465: Was open to African Americans . CIO members voted for Roosevelt overwhelmingly. Both the CIO and its rival the AFL grew rapidly during the Great Depression . The rivalry for dominance was bitter and sometimes it was violent. In its statement of purpose, the CIO said that it had formed to encourage the AFL to organize workers in mass production industries along industrial union lines. The CIO failed to change AFL policy from within. On September 10, 1936,

13924-473: Was subjected to an endless barrage of inquisitions by Congressional committees, such as the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), Sen. Joseph McCarthy 's Subcommittee on Investigations, and a similar committee chaired by Sen. John Marshall Butler . In several instances, these committees used subpoena power to set up UE members to be fired by their employers, unless the subpoenaed worker cooperated by "naming names," and thereby subjected other workers to

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