UE NEWS Features

Delegates to UE’s 11th Convention, held in September 1946, not only debated resolutions and elected officers, they also got to see the world premiere of a 37-minute film, one of the first films ever produced by a labor union.

Ninety years ago, on March 21, 1936, 43 delegates from 12 independent local unions gathered in Buffalo, New York. Their goal was ambitious: a new union to represent the hundreds of thousands of workers in the electrical and radio manufacturing industry.

The union they founded, UE, has changed a lot over the nine decades since then. The union survived vicious red-baiting attacks during the Cold War, only to see a wave of plant closings and de-industrialization decimate the industries that formed UE’s traditional base, especially in the 1980s.

Despite these setbacks, UE continued to organize the unorganized, diversified our membership, and became the “union for everyone” that we are now. Most importantly, UE has survived with our principles intact — the principles of aggressive struggle, rank-and-file control, political independence, international solidarity, and uniting all workers that continue to guide UE today.

This year marks fifteen years since the "Wisconsin Uprising,” when tens of thousands of public-sector workers and their allies occupied the state capitol building to stop the governor’s attempt to strip them of their collective bargaining rights. Beth White, the Financial Secretary of UE Local 1186, was an active participant in the peaceful action and recounted her story for the UE NEWS.

On November 20, 1975, 730 workers at the General Electric turbine plant just outside Charleston, South Carolina voted to join UE, forming Local 1202. It was the second large electrical manufacturing plant in the South to organize with UE in the 1970s, following the Tampa Westinghouse plant, where workers formed UE Local 1201 in 1972.