In this installment of the Melville House Live Book project, Kari Lydersen supplies some relevant labor history behind the takeover of Republic Windows & Doors …

Legendary United Mine Workers of America president John Lewis

Chicago, December 19, 2008 — As the Republic Windows & Doors story moves forward, I will post a series of “backgrounders” on different key players and individuals, including in the future the company itself, Bank of America, various community organizations and individual workers and organizers.

For starters, here we get some of the vitals on the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, otherwise known as the UE. (Information is drawn from the UE’s website, but the larger context and analysis is my own.)

The UE was formed in 1936 by a conglomeration of independent local unions and workers committees in radio and electrical manufacturing. Their request for a charter was denied by the American Federation of Labor (AFL), and they became the first union chartered by the newly-formed CIO (originally called the Committee of Industrial Organizations, later changed to Congress of Industrial Organizations). The CIO was started by legendary United Mine Workers of America president John Lewis to organize previously un-represented mass production industries and was more radical and militant than the AFL. (Read about this history here.)

The UE organized workers at major employers including General Electric and RCA in the 1940s, as their industries were booming. By the end of World War II, it was the third largest union in the CIO with half a million members. But political machinations including the growing war on Communism were infecting the CIO bureaucracy, and in 1949 the UE withdrew from the CIO shortly before it expelled 10 other unions representing about a million members, smearing them as “communist.”

During the anti-Communist hysteria of the 1950s, politicians, CIO leaders and business owners attacked and smeared the UE in various ways, even trying to deport leader James Matles. Shop leaders were blacklisted and jailed, and the union ultimately lost about half its members. It slowly began to rebuild in the 1960s and ‘70s, but then was hit hard by outsourcing of manufacturing and deindustrialization in the 1980s. Even though those trends were still in full force in the 1990s, the UE began to increase its membership and log significant victories, including the affiliation of the Ohio Turnpike workers’ independent union in 1991 and the Iowa United Professionals in 1993, which the UE’s website says, “paved the way for a dramatic diversification of union membership by economic sector and job.”

Now the UE, still independent of the AFL-CIO, represents about 35,000 workers nationwide in private and public sector jobs including a continued high concentration in manufacturing and specifically electrical manufacturing, metalworking and plastics. Hence their base is still the type of skilled manual labor that built the strong union movement of its hey day, and continues to be an important though shrinking sector of the American workforce. The union’s website says, “UE members work as plastic injection molders, tool and die makers, sheet metal workers, truck drivers, warehouse workers and custodians. We build locomotives, repair aircraft engines, assemble circuit boards, manufacture metal cabinets, produce industrial scales and make machine tools.”

Like most unions the UE has also branched out to workplaces beyond their traditional jurisdictions, and also represents teachers, speech pathologists, nurses, clerical workers, graduate instructors and researchers, librarians, day care workers and even scientists. In many cases these members chose to organize with the UE because of its progressive and independent nature, making it a good fit for workers who may feel they don’t fit into or have larger political goals than the traditional union movement.

The UE defines itself as “rank and file unionism,” meaning members run the union in a democratic and collective nature. Many unions are run this way, but many others have strict hierarchal structures where regular workers feel abandoned and betrayed by their own supposed union representatives, especially when those representatives are corrupt and in bed with company management or other parties for their own self interest. The democratic, collective nature of the UE was on full display during the Republic Windows & Doors factory occupation, where every decision was made in a group meeting — including the powerful decision not to accept Bank of America’s original offer as described in previous posts. Unlike some unions, the officers of UE locals are also drawn from the workforce — worker Melvin Maclin is president of Local 1110 at Republic Windows & Doors.

The UE’s website quotes union organizer Ernie DeMaio describing their rank and file style: “the members elect the union’s officers (local, district and national) who in turn are required to report on their stewardship of the union concerning its policies, programs, expenditures and contract negotiations which must have the prior consent of the members and their approval on all the actions taken, and contracts negotiated, on their behalf. The essence of rank-and-file unionism is not democratic rhetoric, but democratic practice. The members run the union.”

There are about 140 UE locals in the country, and the top three elected officers have salaries limited to the top wage in that industry, per the UE Constitution, meaning a cap of about $51,000 per year currently. “It’s hard to think (or act) like a big shot on a worker’s wage,” says their website. “We believe it’s too easy for workers to develop boss-like points of view if they’ve become comfortable with boss-size salaries.”

The union holds annual national conventions to elect leadership and vote on resolutions submitted by various locals.

As described in the Republic Windows and Doors struggle, the UE also favors “strong workplace organization and militant action over legal maneuvering.” At the height of the union movement, direct action tactics like factory takeovers, spontaneous strikes, walkouts and even clashes with police and management were commonplace. But in recent decades, many unions have swayed more toward a business model (a situation which may be changing in the current economic climate), working congenially with management on the theory that working together to increase profits is better for everyone concerned. In economic crunches politicians, business owners and union reps themselves often argue that a company or industry can only be saved by union members agreeing to take pay, benefits or job cuts. This approach may have its merits in certain cases, but overall the trend has often led to a situation where top union officials protect the interests of management at the expense of their own members, and the union becomes practically neutered or torn by internal conflict and disillusionment.

The UE says it has always bucked these trends. “In the 1980s, UE was the first union to resist the employers’ drive for concessions and the first union to sound a warning about ‘quality circles’ and other phony ‘labor-management cooperation’ schemes,” according to the website. The UE was also among the first unions to place its member organizing in a larger political context, fighting for women’s rights, an end to racial discrimination and opposing the Vietnam War. It was also one of the first unions to embrace undocumented immigrant workers, who in decades past (and still to some extent) had faced outright hostility from organized labor who saw them as “stealing jobs” and as potential scabs. Along these lines the UE has a strategic partnership with Mexico’s independent FAT (Authentic Labor Front, or Frente Autentico del Trabajo).

This alliance grew out of both unions’ opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) which took effect in 1994 and, as the unions predicted, has decimated jobs in the U.S. and wreaked havoc on the Mexican economy. (See the Public Citizen summary.) The UE has also been involved in other international union solidarity efforts including the rampant murder of unionists in Colombia.

UE members hope their approach and willingness to take action and take risks will be more attractive and necessary than ever in the current economic climate. But the economic crisis also raises the stakes for short-sighted employers desperate to cut costs as low as possible, even though this race to the bottom will hurt everyone in the long run. We will see how this all plays out in 2009…stay tuned.

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