Cold War in the Working Class: The Rise and Decline of the United Electrical Workers

by Ronald L. Filippelli, Mark McColloch

This book tells the story of the rise and decline of the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (UE) from 1933 to 1990. Once the third-largest industrial union in the United States, the UE was the most powerful left-wing institution in U.S. history and arguably the most significant victim of the anti-communist purges that marked post-World War II America. This is an institutional study of the formation of the UE and the struggle for its control by left-wing and right-wing factions. Unlike most books on unions during the Cold War, this study carries the story up to the present, showing the long-term effects of the ideological battles.

Genres: Labor

296 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 1994

Reviews

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this history of the United Electrical Workers, focusing on the ever popular factional and ideological battles so common in labor history, Filippelli and McColloch argue that the UE was probably the most successful left-wing organization in the history of the United States, peaking at 600,000 members. Being a union, its members were certainly not all leftists, and its early history is marked by long standing feuds by its rightwing of James Carey's business unionism and the left-wing sociali unionism. At its peak, it was the third of the three foundational transformative industrial CIO unions along with the UAW and the United Steelworkers, but with a high emphasis on democracy, autonomy of locals, low dues, low overhead, and rank and file deliverance. UE was largely founded by veterans of the Communist-fronted TUUL unions from the early 1930s, but rose quickly through the late 30s-early 40s to represent most workers wall-to-wall in major electrical appliance manufactorers like RCA, GE, and Westinghouse.

When the Popular Front crumbled by 1947, anti-Communists targeted UE as the leading "Communist dominated" union, though many in the ruling administration were actually "fellow travelors" and not actually Communist Party members, and by all accounts exceptionally good unionists who delivered for the rank and file membership. It was first expelled by the CIO and then heavily raided by both the CIO sponsored right-wing union in the International Union of Electrical Workers (IUE) and the older craft union of the AFL affiliated IBEW, as well as the UAW and USW. Coupled with heavy FBI surveillance, Catholic trade unionist hostility, and local harassment of officials, and then the defection of many locals and districts to other unions, and finally the Communist Party's attempts to get the UE to drop its defense against these raids, the UE lost the majority of its membership by the end of the 1950s. However, throughout the 1960s it slowly rebuilt as the onslaught slowed and Red Scare disappated. The UE continued to win in the places it still represented, and consistently maintained progressive stances, opposing the Vietnam War from the beginning and speaking out strongly in favor of Civil Rights. By 1970, its rival unions had agreed to cooperate with UE to re energize organizing in the electrical industry, with the big strike win at GE. By then, it was too late, as big manufactorers began shifting overseas and electrical unions were too divided to stop them. Still, UE survives today with a militant history and commitment to social justice in the workplace, outspokenly progressive.

One of the accusations leveled against UE was that Communists dominated the union. Did they? Only because they and independent leftists were elected and kept there by rank and file members, and consistently delivered strong contracts for the workers. The rival IUE and IBEW's contracts were usually much weaker since they relied on patronage, toned down actions, and corrupt unaccountable leadership. Despite the heavy attacks by clergy, government, and anti-Communist unions, the UE somehow survived, even if crippled from its former power, and that probably is largely because they had a sizeable amount of support amongst workers. Much as seen in other unions, Communist labor unionists tended to either keep their membership secret, or in cases of open membership, left the party when ordered to do anything that would hurt the UE. In essence, they were pretty autonomous unionists who if the CP tried to assert themselves over the union, the union activists would tell them to go to hell, or ignore them. It did several times, such as refusing to vote for James Carey, opposing the war labor draft bill, and finally ignoring the CP's direction to have the UE merge with the James Carey IUE, because at the end of the day, the rank and file workers rejected these lines. The authors argue quite successfully that though the UE was caught between very powerful forces, its overall commitment to its members led it to miraculously survive, because its leadership were committed to the vision of a United States that served the workers, not corporations. Without those principles, the UE and other unions like it like the ILWU, would have been destroyed totally.