The United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE), is an independent democratic rank-and-file labor union representing workers in both the private and public sectors across the United States.
UE was one of the first unions to be chartered by the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and grew to over 600,000 members in the 1940s. UE was founded in March 1936 by several independent industrial unions which had been organized from the ground up in the early and mid-1930s by workers in major plants of the General Electric Company, Westinghouse Electric, RCA and other leading electrical equipment and radio manufacturers.
In 1937 a group of local unions in the machine shop industry, led by James J. Matles, left the International Association of Machinists (IAM), objecting to that union's policies of racial discrimination, and joined the young UE. UE withdrew from affiliation with CIO in 1949 over differences related to the developing Cold War. It suffered significant losses of membership through the 1950s to raids by other unions, in particular the International Union of Electrical Workers (IUE) which was set up by the CIO in 1949 with the goal of replacing UE. The UE and IUE were fierce rivals for many years, but in the 1960s began to cooperate in bargaining with General Electric and other employers.
Now representing 35,000 workers in a variety of industries, UE continues actively organizing private and public sector workers, and its democratic structure and practices have attracted several small independent unions to affiliate. Over the past two decades the union has built a strategic alliance with the Authentic Labor Front, an independent Mexican union, and UE is broadly active in international labor outreach and solidarity.
Today UE is regarded as one of the most democratic and politically progressive national unions in the United States, and its philosophy and principle of democratic unionism is summed up in its longstanding slogan, "The members run this union."
Read more about United Electrical, Radio And Machine Workers Of America: Democratic Structure, Financial Practices, Bargaining and Grievances, Early History: Growth and Schism, UE Reshapes Itself, The Republic Plant Occupation of 2008
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