UE was founded by workers who understood how the economic system we work under — capitalism — actually works, how it functions to allow bosses (them) to make money off of workers (us), and how bosses maintain their power by trying to divide workers. Profits come from the products and services that we produce with our labor. The less employers pay us, or the faster they make us work, the more profits they make. That understanding is why UE has been able to win gains for our members, resist employer attacks, and play a leading role in the broader labor movement. It is why working people need unions like UE now more than ever.

Capitalism divides society into two main groups. One is those who live by owning, either directly or through financial instruments like stocks or private equity, the factories, land, buildings, vehicles, machines, intellectual property, mineral and drilling rights, and other types of property that are used to produce the goods and services we need to live. This small group can be called the capitalist class, “the 1%,” or the billionaire class.

The other is those of us who live by working, popularly referred to as the working class or “the 99%.” This far larger group must sell our labor in order to pay for food, clothing, and the other necessities of life. Not all members of the working class are working at any given time, but those who are not — children, the unemployed, and retirees, as well as people with disabilities that prevent them from working — rely on wages earned by family members, retirement benefits or savings earned from working, or social programs won by the working class through political action.

Through creativity, skill, intelligence, and hard work, workers turn the property owned by capitalists into products and services. We are paid a wage for our time working, but the capitalist sells the product or service for more than what it costs to create and keeps the difference as profit. The lower the wage paid to the worker, the more profit made by the capitalist. This conflict of interest is a permanent feature of our economic system.

This understanding of the economic system has allowed UE to develop the key organizational approaches needed to take on the bosses and win real gains for workers. The preamble to the UE constitution contains the core UE principles of aggressive struggle, rank and file control, and uniting all workers. Over decades of experience taking on some of the most powerful corporations in the world, UE members have also learned the crucial importance of political independence and international solidarity. It is these five core principles that make UE so effective and consistent at leading struggles for justice for working people both in the workplace and in society more broadly.

Despite attacks from employers, the government, and even other unions, UE has survived because the working people who founded UE, who kept UE alive, and who make up UE today know which side they are on.

We, the Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers (UE) realize that the struggle to better our working and living conditions is in vain unless we are united to protect ourselves collectively against the organized forces of the employers.

Realizing that the old craft form of trade union organization is unable to defend effectively the interests and improve the conditions of the wage earners, WE THE ELECTRICAL, RADIO AND MACHINE WORKERS (UE) form an organization which unites all workers on an industrial basis, and rank-and-file control, regardless of craft, age, sex, nationality, race, creed, or political beliefs, and pursue at all times a policy of aggressive struggle to improve our conditions.

We pledge ourselves to labor unitedly for the principles herein set forth, to perpetuate our union and work concertedly with other labor organizations to bring about a higher standard of living of the workers.

—Preamble to the UE Constitution

Watching UE’s founders today, we might think they were crazy. Forty-three workers from as far away as Fort Wayne, Indiana and Camden, New Jersey plowed through a March 1936 snowstorm to meet in Buffalo, New York. Their goal was to set up a national union to organize the hundreds of thousands of workers in the electrical, radio, and, soon, machine tool industries into a new union, which came to be known as UE.

The workers who undertook this gigantic task were inspired by the need to build an industrial organization (meaning all workers could be part of the union), controlled by the members, with complete equality for all who worked in that industry. Many of these workers were also inspired by their experiences organizing with radical unions like the Industrial Workers of the World and the socialist and anarchist ideas that were widespread in working-class communities in the early 20th century.

UE’s founders were determined to avoid the bureaucratic, top-down control that was characteristic of the existing craft unions (where only skilled workers could belong). And, this group of workers was just as determined to bring into their movement the hundreds of thousands of workers whose need for organization had been, up to that time, ignored — or who were explicitly excluded from existing unions because of their race, gender, political beliefs or religion.

UE is now in our ninth decade, and counts among our members workers from many industries and sectors. We build electrical equipment and machines, and we run machines to make auto parts, locks, plastic products and many other goods. We are also social workers, healthcare technicians, clerical workers and education paraprofessionals. We work for schools and universities, state and municipal governments, and federal contractors. We process, distribute and market food, and serve lunch to school children. UE members repair roads, transport railroad workers, and build locomotives. UE has truly become a “Union for Everyone.”

The bosses understand the class nature of our society and will do everything they can to protect their end.

—Boris Block,
UE Secretary-Treasurer, 1981

The preamble to the UE constitution declares that “the struggle to better our working and living conditions is in vain unless we are united to protect ourselves collectively against the organized forces of the employers.”

UE recognizes that working people are overworked, underpaid and treated poorly at work not just because individual employers are greedy — though many are — but because they operate in a system that demands ever-increasing profits. Corporations are under constant pressure from their shareholders to maximize profit, and even more so from competitors. If one employer opts to pay their workers a decent wage, they will be undercut in the marketplace by another which does not.

Corporate domination of society also affects those of us who don’t work directly for corporations. Capitalists constantly attempt to privatize any part of the public sector that they think they can turn into a source of profit, and to starve those parts they can’t by cutting taxes. They oppose the public sector not only because they want to evade taxes but also because a robust and successful public sector demonstrates the possibility of a different way of organizing society. This is why capitalists constantly pressure the public sector, nonprofit organizations and cooperatives to be “run like a business.”

Though employers compete against each other for profits, they organize and act in unity against any challenges to their interests as a class, such as workers organizing unions or laws that give more power to workers. In the early twentieth century, this took the form of “blacklists,” where employers would agree among themselves not to hire any workers known to be union activists or sympathizers. When workers did organize and strike, employers used their political power to enlist courts, police, the national guard and hired thugs to break up picket lines, jail leaders and in some cases murder strikers and their families.

After the growth and success of UE and other industrial unions in the mid-20th century, corporations attempted to limit the scope of unionism to wages and benefits. Corporations worked with the government and compliant unions in an attempt to crush unions like UE that insisted on contesting management’s power in the workplace and maintaining independent political positions.

Although most unions accepted this “truce,” the companies merely bided their time, because even a “loyal” union that doesn’t directly challenge corporate rule still limits the amount of profit employers can extract from workers, and represents a threat to their power. Beginning in the 1970s, corporations attacked unions by moving production (often to countries where unions were repressed by U.S.-funded military dictatorships), stoking a “taxpayer revolt” against the public sector, and funding the rise of a multi-million-dollar industry of professional unionbusting.

The “organized forces of the employers” extend beyond the workplace as well, into government, media, and even culture. Corporations and the wealthy spend enormous sums to buy politicians and otherwise influence political decisions. Most of our media is owned by large corporations, and “public” media is reliant on large donations from corporations and the wealthy. Movies, television shows and most other forms of culture are produced and controlled by entertainment conglomerates.

This corporate influence on all levels of society has a direct impact on our working and living conditions. Laws are passed to weaken existing unions and make it harder for workers to organize new ones. Wars are fought and trade agreements are negotiated to ensure corporations have access to cheap overseas labor. The media cover celebrity scandals and political horse races, not issues of importance to working people, and popular culture encourages us to pursue individual success — and feel guilty when we fail to achieve it — instead of collective struggle.

It is we who plowed the prairies,
built the cities where they trade

Dug the mines and built the workshops,
endless miles of railroad laid

Now we stand outcast and starving,
mid the wonders we have made

But the union makes us strong

— “Solidarity Forever” by Ralph Chaplin

What does it mean, then, to “protect ourselves collectively against the organized forces of the employers”?

For UE it has meant, above all, building and maintaining an organization that is independent of the employers. Unlike other unions, UE does not engage in “partnerships,” or “win-win bargaining” with the boss because we understand that labor and capital have opposing interests that cannot be brought into harmony and that only through struggle against those who control the economy can workers improve our conditions.

UE also emphasizes that we must protect ourselves collectively — that “the struggle to better our working and living conditions is in vain unless we are united.” The power of working people to advance our interests, resist employer attacks on our conditions, and reshape our society to serve the many, not only the few, can only be realized when we are united in purpose and action. Recognizing that employers are always seeking to divide us, UE places special emphasis on maintaining unity across divisions of race, gender, sexuality, age and national origin, as well as skill and job classification.

Building collective power requires true democratic practice, so that workers feel ownership of their union. Democracy is more than just holding votes — it is an active commitment to make sure that as many members as possible are informed and participating in their union. High levels of membership participation, and the willingness of UE members to stand up for a union that they control, is what allows us to keep our organization independent of the bosses.

In addition to working to unite our own membership, we work constantly to bring the unorganized into our ranks through organizing. While some other unions have, over the past two decades, put increased emphasis on organizing, UE has held since our inception that organizing the unorganized is our primary task.

Beyond our own ranks, UE seeks to unify the greatest possible number of working people in our struggles by reaching out to other unions and the community. This means not only inviting others to join our struggles, but being there for other union and community struggles. Whenever there is a picket line or demonstration for issues of importance to working people in a UE community, UE signs can usually be found. This is the true meaning of solidarity: treating an injury to any member of the working class as an injury to the whole class.

UE also believes it is important for working people to contest the organized forces of the employers in the worlds of politics, media and culture. We engage in independent political action, based on what our members and working people actually need — not on what is expedient for particular politicians or political parties. This includes taking an independent stand on foreign policy, based on solidarity with working people in other parts of the world. The UE NEWS and UE social media provide not only news about UE, but independent, working-class analysis of news, politics, and culture.

Unfortunately, most of the U.S. labor movement moved sharply away from Them and Us Unionism after World War II, and this move was part of a coordinated strategy by the employers. Workplace leaders, elected officials, and whole unions such as UE who embraced the principles of Them and Us Unionism were labeled as “Communist” or “Un-American.” In 1947, with most unions offering only token opposition, Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act, which outlawed labor’s most effective tools and required loyalty oaths for union officials that could be used to attack militant unionists.

In 1949 and 1950, UE, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, and nine other unions were expelled from the Congress of Industrial Organizations for “communist domination.” The CIO then joined forces with employers, the government, and the craft unions in the American Federation of Labor to try to destroy Them and Us Unionism through firing and blacklisting of union leaders, government subpoenas and other forms of harassment, and raiding.

This witch-hunt against Them and Us Unionism was successful in taming the militancy and unity that had won the 1946 strikes in auto, steel and electrical manufacturing — the very strikes that consolidated industrial unionism. UE leaders at the time warned that the CIO had “lost its spark. We saw a change in our CIO associates from organizers and picket line leaders to labor statesmen.” The mainstream of the labor movement embraced the idea that workers and bosses share common interests, became even more tightly joined at the hip with the Democratic Party, and ceded the right to make all decisions about the economy and foreign policy to employers and the government.

When the employers ditched any pretense of a “labor-management accord” and launched all-out attacks on the labor movement in the 1970s and 80s, the mainstream of the labor movement had little idea how to respond. Without an accurate analysis of capitalism, or the ability to formulate an alternative vision, unions were unable to respond effectively or build public support for any kind of fightback. The only response many union leaders could muster was to offer deeper concessions.

Understanding the nature of our economic system and the need to consistently adhere to our core principles has been the basis of UE’s record of struggle going on nine decades.

For the past several decades labor leaders and academics have proposed a wide variety of strategies to rebuild the U.S. labor movement: from better communications work, to giving more money to politicians, to restructuring of the labor movement and its federations, to investments in staff-driven organizing efforts. But none of it has worked, because none of those strategies recognize that the core issue facing unions, today and throughout history, is the fundamental difference of interests between workers and employers in the capitalist system.

The tremendous problems that face working people in our country, and around the world, call for a labor movement that understands this fundamental difference of interest, and can carry out aggressive struggle against the organized forces of the employers on all fronts. This booklet represents the story of one union, and the conclusions that UE members have drawn from decades of aggressive struggle to improve our conditions, but we believe that our story has valuable lessons for all worker organizations.

The labor movement we need must be a militant movement, built from the bottom up, and it must be based on clear-cut principles: aggressive struggle, rank and file control, political independence, international solidarity and uniting all workers — in other words, Them and Us Unionism. UE is dedicated to helping achieve that kind of a labor movement.

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