UE History

Seventy-five years ago today, what was perhaps the most dramatic national convention in UE history opened in Cleveland.

In the months leading up to the convention, the corporate and government forces that sought to wipe out UE’s brand of militant, rank-and-file unionism were gathering steam. The UAW and the Steelworkers had been taking advantage of the anti-union Taft-Hartley Act, passed in 1947, to raid UE shops. And within the union, a faction that wanted to abandon UE’s principles of aggressive struggle, rank-and-file control, political independence, international solidarity, and uniting all workers were preparing to try to wrest control of the union at the upcoming convention by accusing the union of being “communist-dominated.”

August 27 marks the 75th anniversary of the Peekskill Riots, two attacks by right wing mobs on concert-goers in Peekskill, in upstate New York. The audience was composed of union members, including UE members, and civil rights activists, and they had gathered to watch popular Black singer and actor Paul Robeson perform.

A new radio documentary produced by New England Public Media tells the story of how a UE local in a “deeply conservative rural county” in Massachusetts not only survived but grew during the red-baiting attacks on UE in the early 1950s. The 50-minute documentary “At Sword’s Point” first aired on May 4 and 5, but can be streamed from the NEPM website. Produced and narrated by public historian Tom Goldscheider, the documentary includes interviews with retired UE District Two President Judy Atkins and International Representative David Cohen.

Fifty years ago today, 3,200 women gathered in Chicago to found the Coalition of Labor Union Women to fight for equality in their unions and in society. Amy Newell, who served as UE General Secretary-Treasurer from 1985 to 1994, recalled that “It was really terrific to have an organization that was raising issues of women in their unions, as well as issues of women in the workplace.” But perhaps the most important legacy of CLUW is that it encouraged women not only to run for office in their unions, but also to fight for recognition that women’s issues are union issues.

We are republishing this article written by retired UE Political Action Director Chris Townsend about our union’s history, principles and importance to the broader labor movement.

In late March of 1936, a stalwart group of unionists in the electrical and radio manufacturing industries gathered in snowy Buffalo, New York, to found what quickly became the third largest union in the CIO upsurge. The various streams of unionism that converged in Buffalo represented the grizzled union diehards in the manufacturing shops of some of the biggest corporations in the country; General Electric, General Motors, Westinghouse, and RCA among them. It also included new faces, young militants, workers energized by the overall left-wing growth in response to the catastrophe of the Great Depression.

UE’s 78th Convention was held in Pittsburgh, a city that is not only home to the union’s national office but also to a rich history of worker organizing and strikes. From the 1840s to today, the women and men whose labor built this city struggled — and often struck — to reclaim a share of the wealth their labor produced.

Monday marked the 60th anniversary of the NLRB election that brought Local 123, in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, into UE. UE Director of Organization Robert Kirkwood called it “one of [UE’s] most significant organizational victories since the Union was split in 1949.”

Today marks the 75th anniversary of one of the most violent attacks on a UE picket line in history. On August 3, 1948, 1,500 national guards, armed with tear gas, machine guns, and tanks, arrived in Dayton, Ohio to suppress a strike by 600 UE members at the Univis Lens plant. The workers voted to strike after their employer refused to offer even a single cent in wage increases during contract negotiations.

In their attacks on President Biden’s much-needed proposals to invest in physical and human infrastructure, the American Jobs Plan and the American Families Plan, many Republican politicians have derided applying the term “infrastructure” to programs that support working families. They dismiss child care, elder care and paid family leave as “liberal social programs” as opposed to the “real infrastructure” of buildings, roads, and bridges.

The experience of UE members during World War II, when millions of women took jobs in manufacturing, tells a different story.

July 2019 marks the 75th anniversary of UE's first contract in Vermont, with the Jones and Lamson Machine Company in Springfield. Chartered in October 1943 to organize Springfield's machine tool industry, Local 218 won its first NLRB elections, at Vermont Foundries and Jones and Lamson, early in 1944, concluding first contracts with both companies in July.