THE LAST DAYS OF THE UE
Finnegan, Les
The Last Days of the UE By LES FINNEGAN WASHINGTON THE COMMUNIST PARTY'S last major stronghold in American trade unionism is evaporating. In the Ave months since it was expelled from...
...UE UNDERTOOK a similar line of harrassing actions and delaying tactics to prevent the NLRB from holding representation elections for a new bargaining agent...
...was for self-defense in organizing work and for rebuttal before Congressional investigating committees...
...IUE received 27,904 votes to UE's 6,127, a margin of better than four to one...
...The industry just laughed at it...
...UE'b swift decline has produced a number of desperation contracts, signed quickly with an employer to forestall the local's transfer of affiliation to IUE...
...Last but not least...
...UE was already getting panicky and was casting about for every legal harrassment it could lay hands on...
...The totals showed 21,167 for IUE, 2,528 for UE...
...your-houses" votes for "no union" in the forthcoming NLRB elections...
...A recently published history of UE demonstrates in appalling detail how the union has echoed every twist and turn of the Communist line and Soviet foreign policy...
...IUE, knowiqg that it already represented an overwhelming majority throughout the entire industry, pushed for the earliest possible balloting...
...The elections, however, have proved to be only one of a number of setbacks suffered by UE in February and March The huge General Electric Corp., pivotal to IUE's ambitions, at first decided it would no longer turn over checked-off dues to UE...
...Two of the GM plants gave IUE majorities of 12 to one and 15 to one...
...THE lUE'S MARGIN of victory was a surprise even to James B. Careychairman of the IUE administrative committee, who had estimated that UE might take one vote out of every seven Turning immediately to the two big fights ahead in GE and Westinghouse, Carey commented, "We know that the workers in Westinghouse and General Electric are no more Communistic than those in GM and that they will repudiate Kremlin dictation over their economic lives as thoroughly as did the GM employees...
...In other Communist-dominated unions, such as the United Public Workers and the United Office & Professional Workers, it is now established that the party sanctioned the idea of a certain percentage of the leadership not having any connection with the party or even l)eing friendly...
...v Carey and bis colleagues on the IUE -administrative committee are also confronted with the fact that in Instances where UE has been so thoroughly repudiated it cannot obtain a place on the ballot, it has encouraged the entrance of the International Association of Machinists, independent, or the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers-AFL into NLRB representation contests...
...One of these was a Cgreni sell-out of f.SN worker* at the Wesnogrtouse JOr Irak* pfau* near Pittsburgh...
...Surprisingly soon, though, a body of precedent was formed...
...Repeatedly, in cases decided over the past two months, local and federal judges have held that the compact between UE and its membership was based on the compact UE itself held with the national CIO...
...The local and federal courts were deluged with suits brought by UE to prevent secession, to declare the new union illicit, to prohibit local meetings, to stop the IUE from using the letters "UE," to tie up local union funds, to force solvent locals into involuntary bankruptcy, and to halt the holding of representation elections...
...Thus draws to a close communism's greatest field day in an American labor union...
...Auto Workers...
...In addition to that fnerc is the huge problem of organizing the great number of unorganized In the Industry...
...In 1W9, average hourly rates in the electrical industry were $1.44, compared with $1.70, in auto, $1.64 in steel, $1.68 in .the transportation equipment induetry.and $1.54 in the aircraft industry...
...Perhaps it was feared that a rank-and-file numbering a halfmillion couldn't be trusted as could 30,000 in the United Public Workers Whatever the reason, UE leaders from the level of the smallest local to the top international executive board were required to be Communists either before they were "elected" or hired or immediately after they were placed on the payroll...
...UE offered the Kremlin's sabotage and espionage agencies potential access to classified and secret weapon production up to and including atomic developments * * * UE WAS the Communist party's pride and joy...
...Carey, who with infinite patience and determination maintained a cohesive core of right wingers in UE through the darkest years, is aware that resentment against UE can produce many "plague-on-both...
...Lei Flnnegan is a columnist for Labor Press Association...
...As a result, While millions of steel, auto, rubber, oil and other workers were winning a fourth round contract, a half million, workers supposedly represented by UE won nothing...
...This judicial reasoning has come to prevail in practically all recent cases, and as a result UE has not won a single major court test...
...A New York judge slapped down this maneuver, however, and ordered the money held in escrow...
...Despite their incessant tubthumping UE'* Communist leaders were never able to match for the electrical industry the wage levels and other contract benefits woo is steal and etrto...
...For the most part thi...
...clare, must necessarily carry 'sweetheart" understandings with employers ¦Mi represent the lost of an increasing ¦mount of economic ground for UE members...
...Never before in American labor history was a union born, as was IUECIO last November, already servicing 200,000 members...
...Matles, as UE director of organisation, and Julius Emspak, secretary - treasurer, have records dating back to the early thirties, not merely as Communist party members but as Important functionaries...
...UE was a priceless transmission belt for recruits into the Communist party: likewise it was (and stil...
...For the IUE this meant, at worst, the further tying up of local union treasuries and a damming up of checked-off dues which are the lifeblood of any large modern union...
...Carey predicted that the Westinghouse election, for which the NLRB has not yet set a date, will give IUE 83 per cent of the vote...
...1996 to four in the Frigidaire Division in Dayton...
...In contrast, the militant young IUE in its first major contract with Philco obtained a $100 a month non-contnbutcry pensim plan plus severance pay an-) death benefits...
...With UE's expulsion from the CIO, the relationship between UE and its members has become valueless, the courts have found, adding the logical conclusion that local treasuries and real property belong to the members and not to the national UE...
...Future UE contracts...
...With $2,507,398 in assets last September, UE was ;i continuing bonanza for the party and lor such fronts as the Civil Rights Congress...
...In thii agreement UE reversed it* proclaimed pee it ion against contributory pension plana and surrendered to the company, accepting a contributory iorrairia which •lice...
...Its immediate effect has been to free local fUE treasuries and release funds which in some instances range up to $180,000...
...Never in American labor history was any major union so thoroughly and relentlessly operated as an adjunct of that party...
...Perhaps one of the most astonishing features of UE's political captivity is the extent to which the Communist party insisted that UE leaders on all levels be card-carrying party members...
...fromoeO t* tiai* yean out of the take-home pay of the company's employees...
...This impressive testimony to the rule-or-ruin policies of UE's Communist leadership is, however, only a prelude...
...The gap has increased since then...
...General Motors was IUE's biggest victory but by no means its only one In 22 elections held by the NLRB, IUE has won 17 and UE Ave...
...unanimously at Packard Electric Division, Warren, Ohio...
...Out of a staff of 330 (an extraordinary number of payrollers for a union its sue) more than 3Cu of UE's employees have been conclusively identified as Communist party members at one time or at.other while working for UE...
...The voluminous record of NLRB hearings on the simple question of holding elections in the Westinghouse and General Electric chains, shows that UE's attorneys resorted to every permissible and impermissible device to prevent the elections from being held and then to defer them a* long as possible...
...Rubber Workers, Oil Workers and other unions were demanding and getting noncontributory pensions, UE signed a contract that cuts It an hour from the pay of several thousand Air Brake employees and 3* an hour from the wajoi of the remainder...
...never has a successful libel suit been brought by s UE official after being named as a Communist...
...CIO records show that the fastdeclining Mine, Mill & Smelter Union has 44.000 members...
...While the CIO Steelworkerj...
...Later, in a move that Carey charged "obviously reeked of collusion with the Communist-controlled minority," GE agreed to honor a new batch of check-off cards which UE had signed in Schenectady and Erie...
...In May 1949, Matles and Emspak announced that UE would win a "$500 package" of benefits for every worker in the electrical, radio and machine industry...
...Not so, however, with UE...
...is) an invaluable source of employment and income for party hacks and functionaries...
...COMMUNISM'S 10-YEAR ROMP in the UE has wound up in an ignominious rout...
...These demands came to $38Q—a cut of f 129 from the original "package" without the employers even asking for it...
...it had made no inroads in steel...
...Before Congressional committees, at UE conventions, in the daily and labor press, Matles and Emspak have been cited as Communists literally hundreds of times...
...Needless to add: never in UE's history have its conventions, its leaders or its publications mumbled a word of criticism of Soviet Russia or the Stalinist conspiracy in the United States...
...With the vast majority of NLRB representation elections yet to come, there is sound reason for believing that by the end of 1950 UE's dues-paying membership will have dwindled to the level of two other unions ousted from the CIO for the same ideological reasons...
...If ever, have the charges been denied...
...Almost the only exception to this is bumbling'Albert Fitzgerald UE's pliable president who is referred to by James Matles, the party's commissar in UE, as "a good Zombie...
...It probably will never be known how many hundreds of thousands of dollars, taken from the dues of UE members, have been diverted down the Communist party drain or handed to a score or more party front organizations...
...Meanwhile, another court has limited the amount that may be spent by the Communist UE leadership in Schenectady and the party apparatus is finding itself strapped for funds...
...To undo the ravages of 10 years of Communist disruption in the Industry Is an enor mous task in itself...
...UE left 150,000 unorganized in New" England alone and did little or nothing about the South or the West Coast where television manufacture is currently booming...
...and unanimously at Delco Appliance Division, New Brunswick, N. J. The NLRB leaned over backward in dealing with UE's dilatory maneuverings, but when the General Motors election date was Anally set, the result was a foregone conclusion...
...The problems which immediately confronted the new organization were multitudinous and unprecedented...
...UE even, sued the NLRB—the sUfch suit nrthe Board's history— for $100,000...
...UE was considered the party's chief "mass base,'' the only union with more than 100,000 members it controlled...
...UE provided the Communist party the means of interrupting or paralyzing an industry that is as crucially important to present-day military production as steel...
...In the Ave months since it was expelled from the CIO as a Communistcontrolled organization, the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers has lost more than 200,000 members, dropping from 331,000 just prior to the CIO's convention last November to approximately 105,000 today...
...But UE was the Communist party's complete and utter eaptive...
...The CIO's action in chartering the International Union of Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers-CIO, therefore, was on inevitable as it wai necessary...
...Too, IUE has found that where UE has somehow preserved its hold on a local union it has tried to negotiate employer contracts that will run for four and five years on the theory that such contracts will effectively prevent IUE's intervention...
...The $500 was never broken down, never defined...
...The accumulated dues, plun $140,000 already placed beyond UE's reach by court action, will be turned over to the union winning the NLRB election...
...Ten years of mounting restiveness and disgust could not be contained much longer...
...It was evident, however, that this was the beginning of a rear-guard action...
...Seldom...
...This somersault was reported on March 6 by a Pittsburg newspaper which summarized UE's bargaining position and its future in a single sentence lead: "UE, which failed to win a fourthround wage increase, announced resierday It would go after a fifth...
...It is highly probable that if the CIO's 11th convention last November had not expelled UE, there would have been an internal revolt which would have split the union in a dozen different directions...
...So has practically every Held organiser and international representative the two have placed on the UE's national payroll...
...For a short time there were temporary successes as various judges, conceding that there was no judicial precedents for many of the cases, ruled in UE's favor...
...in each case the allegations have been easy to document and prove...
...The IUE was not a day old before It was plunged into a flood of litigation suits in every city where the electrical, radio or machine workers had been organized...
...On March 5, 1950, without any negotiations going on with employers and without any consultation with the membership, UE*s leaders suddenly abandoned the "$500 package" fantasy and announced that they would seek a 10**an-hour pay increase,' $125-a-month pensions and a welfare plan...
...THE FIGHT AGAINST UE is only one front of the battle which IUE early discovered it has undertaken...
...IUE captured the first of the three big chains by more than eight to one...
...It pointed out that in the NLRB's own order in the General Motors case, the Board took official notice of the fact that in earlier affiliation elections IUE had beaten US by 999 to one at OM's Delco Products Division, Dayton, Ohio...
...It lost whatever tenuous grip it had on the United Auto Workers...
...the Food, Tobacco & Agricultural Workers, 22.000...
...The Westinghouse and GE chains involve about 180,000 workers...
...It got no farther than a knock on the door of the United Mine Workers...
...CIO officials de...
...UE's rank-and-file was ready to explode, for example, at the evidence of Communist "efficiency" in its huge Schenectady, N. Y., local, where the party-line officers acknowledged revenues of $271,700 in 1949 and still achieved a not operative deficit of $20,221 for the year...
...The evaporation of UE—during the war the CIO's third largest union with a membership tlrnt rose to 740,000—is the greatest disaster to strike the Communist party's painfully-erected labor apparatus in the past 30 years...
Vol. 33 • April 1950 • No. 13
