United Public Workers of America
Encyclopedia
The United Public Workers of America was an American
labor union
representing federal, state, county, and local government employees which existed from 1946 to 1952. The union challenged the constitutionality
of the Hatch Act of 1939
, which prohibited federal executive branch employees from engaging in politics
. In United Public Workers of America v. Mitchell, 330 U.S. 75 (1947), the Supreme Court of the United States
upheld the Hatch Act, finding that its infringement on the Constitutional rights
was outweighed by the need to end political corruption. The union's leadership was Communist
, and in a famous purge the union was ejected from its parent trade union federation, the Congress of Industrial Organizations
, in 1950.
The union is sometimes confused with the United Federal Workers of America
(a predecessor union) and the United Office Professional Workers of America (a union of white-collar, private-sector office workers which also belonged to the Congress of Industrial Organizations).
(AFL) acted to bring the various local unions together to form a single national union, the National Federation of Federal Employees
, in September 1917.
In December 1931, NFFE disaffiliated from the AFL, its national trade union center
. The break occurred over the AFL's refusal to abandon its support for craft unionism
and cease its attacks on industrial unions. The AFL responded by chartering a new federal employees union, the American Federation of Government Employees
(AFGE), in October 1932 from several units of the NFFE which did not wish to leave the labor federation.
In 1936, the AFL chartered the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees
(AFSCME) to represent non-federal government workers in the United States.
In the early 1930s, a fundamental dispute occurred within the U.S. labor movement
over whether to organize workers by craft
or on an industry-wide
basis. After a contentious AFL convention in October 1935 (during which union leaders came to blows), eight unions engaged in industrial union organizing formed the Committee for Industrial Organizing. The AFL accused them of engaging in dual unionism
, and on September 10, 1936, suspended them from the national labor federation. Efforts to reunify the two groups failed, and the Committee reconstituted itself as the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) on November 9, 1936. The CIO quickly began forming unions to compete with their counterpart unions in the AFL.
(SCMWA), and charged the new organization with competing with AFSCME at the state and local levels for membership. Most of the leaders and many of the members of these local unions were strongly sympathetic to the beliefs and goals of the Communist Party USA
. Former AFSCME executive board member Abram Flaxer was appointed the new union's president, and former AFSCME Secretary-Treasurer David Kanes held the same post in SCMWA. SCMWA membership grew quickly: It more than doubled the number of local unions (from 12 to 28) in a year, and its members rose from 25,000 in 1937 to more than 48,000 in 1946. In comparison, AFSCME's membership grew from 13,259 in 1947 to more than 73,000 in 1946.
In 1937, the CIO formed a new union for U.S. government employees, the United Federal Workers of America (UFWA), from elements of the AFGE. The UFWA's membership, however, remained static (as did the membership of nearly all federal government unions in the 1930s). Like SCMWA, the UFWA leadership was leftist. The leadership was militant in its advocacy of the rights of its members and most of the national and local union leadership advocated leftist ideals; associated with left-wing intellectuals, activists, and political people; and supported left-wing organizations. This led many politicians and others to believe the organization was Communist-controlled.
The political leanings of the UWFA led to passage of two pieces of legislation intended to restrict its political activities. In June 1938, Congress passed a rider
to appropriations legislation with prevented the federal government from making payments (such as salaries) to any person or organization which advocated the overthrow of the federal government (as many communist organizations at the time proposed). In 1939, Congress passed the Hatch Act of 1939
, which restricted political campaign activities by federal employees. A provision of the Hatch Act made it illegal for the federal government to employ anyone who advocated the overthrow of the federal government. The UFWA immediately hired lawyer Lee Pressman
to challenge the constitutionality of the Hatch Act.
(AFT) for being communist-dominated. The impetus for the merger was the relative failure of the UFWA to attract new members, and SCMWA essentially absorbed the smaller federal union. The new union said its mission was to organize new members as well as raid the AFGE (the AFL affiliate) and the NFFE (now independent) for members. With a membership of more than 100,000 (out of six million public-sector workers at all levels nationwide), UPWA claimed to be the largest public employee union in the nation. About 7,000 of UPWA's members were welfare caseworkers. while the rest worked in private nonprofit hospitals, public utilities
(such as water companies
), and local government. The hospital workers numbered in the several thousand, and were primarily located in New York City. The union hired Elliot Godoff as a hospital organizer; after the collapse of UPWA, Godoff became a key organizer and leader for Local 1199 of the Drug, Hospital, and Health Care Employees Union
.
The new union's president was Abram Flaxer, and its secretary-treasurer was Panama
nian immigrant and scholar Ewart Guinier. The new union also began publishing a 16-page, tabloid-sized membership magazine, The Public Record. The UPWA formed a teachers division, and affiliated several local teachers unions which had been expelled from the American Federation of Teachers during an anti-communist purge in 1941. Among these were the Los Angeles Federation of Teachers, Local 430; the Philadelphia Teachers Union, Local 192; New York City Teachers Union, Local 5 (then the largest local union in the AFT); New York City College Teachers, Local 537; University of Washington, Local 401 (expelled in 1948, not 1941). Its teacher organizing efforts were particularly strong in New York City.
The union adopted a number of policies early on which were, at the time, considered militant and/or leftist (even communist). Although initially the union had a no-strike
policy, it soon rescinded this in favor of the right of public employees to walk off the job. It proposed a collective bargaining law for federal public employees modeled on the National Labor Relations Act
, and in 1949 began supporting legislation (the Rhodes
-Johnston
bill) which would implement such a system. Founded at the end of World War II
, the union promoted policies designed to minimize the impact of economic conversion
on women, African Americans, and other minorities. It also adopted a resolution applauding the foreign policy of the Soviet Union, which nearly led to an investigation of the union by the Civil Service Commission. These won the union significant support from leftists in the entertainment industry. Actor and singer Paul Robeson
and classical pianist Ray Lev
both played concerts which benefitted the union, and novelists Dashiell Hammett
, Howard Fast
, and others spoke at union rallies about being persecuted for their leftist political beliefs. The union, in turn, helped its allies. Secretary-Treasurer Ewart Guinier managed Henry A. Wallace
's 1948 presidential campaign
in New York City.
In the two years immediately following World War II, the UPWA threatened repeatedly to have its federal workers strike. A fearful Congress passed legislation in 1946 depriving federal workers of their salaries if they belonged to any union which advocated the right of federal workers to strike, and which required them to sign affidavits that they did not belong to any union which did. In 1947, Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act
, which made it illegal for federal employees to strike and penalized them with immediate dismissal. A third federal law, passed in 1955, made it illegal for federal workers to strike, advocate the right to strike, or belong to any organization which advocated the right for them to strike.
Congress repeatedly investigated the union for violations of the Hatch Act and prohibitions on advocacy of the right to strike. In January 1947, the House of Representatives Committee on Campaign Expenditures reported that it had found evidence that the UPWA (and other unions) had violated the Federal Corrupt Practices Act
by failing to report expenditures in support of various political parties and candidates for federal office.
. Unlike many unions of the era, the UPWA insisted that Caucasian and African American
employees receive the same wages, benefits, and workplace rights. The union's racial integration policies were among the strongest of any American union of the day. and the UPWA was the most integrated CIO union (by race and gender). The union's anti-discrimination efforts were a key part of its new member organizing strategy, and in time almost a third of the union's members were African American. The union also focused on organizing worksites which employed large numbers of black workers. In June 1947, it organized the faculty and services workers at Howard University
, a historically black college. The first African American woman to lead a union in New York state was UPWA's Eleanor Godling (who also served on executive board of the New York State CIO). The UPWA made the federal government a primary target for its equality in employment efforts. In early 1947, UPWA accused nine federal agencies and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development
of blatantly refusing to hire African Americans. The Veterans' Administration
and State Department
were the agencies most resistant to the UPWA on racial issues. UPWA was also the only union to make a significant effort at integrating the United States Post Office Department
. In August 1949, UPWA members (accompanied by actor and singer Paul Robeson
) picketed the White House to protest racially discriminatory hiring and employment practices and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing
.
The union also played a significant role within the CIO in lobbying for the strengthening of the Fair Employment Practices Commission
, a federal agency established in 1941 to ensure that companies with government contracts did not discriminate on the basis of race or religion. When the FEPC was in danger of losing much of its power and being dismantled, UPWA introduced a successful resolution at the 1949 NAACP
convention to hold an FEPC National Emergency Mobilization to push for legislation that would make the FEPC permanent. But the advent of the Korean War
led to the defeat of legislation. These policies were not accepted by all UWPA locals, however. Ten UPWA locals disaffiliated partly because of the parent union's stand on racial equality.
In one case, a UPWA effort on behalf of black workers led to important political change. In 1947, the UPWA engaged in a campaign to save 2,200 African American jobs at an Internal Revenue Service
(IRS) processing center in the Bronx in New York City
. IRS Commissioner Ernest Campbell believed that the percentage of black employees among IRS workers should be the same as the percentage of blacks in the general population, and began an active campaign to fire African American workers (who constituted a majority of IRS employees at the center) until this lower percentage was reached. The UPWA quickly formed a "black popular front
" known as the Citizens Committee for the Job Security of Bronx IRS Employees to protest Campbell's actions. The movement was successful: In the spring of 1947, the U.S. Civil Service Commissioner ruled that Campbell's actions were illegal. Campbell managed to fire the black workers anyway by moving the processing center to Kansas City
. The Bronx IRS fight garnered national headlines, and UPWA vice president Thomas Richardson testified in mid-1947 before the President's Committee on Civil Rights
in reference to Bronx case. This and other testimony led to the adoption of a to civil rights plank in the political platform of the Democratic Party
.
.
For decades, workers in the Canal Zone had been classified as high-skilled, long-seniority, high-wage "Gold" workers or low-skilled, low-seniority, low-wage "Silver" workers. In practice, "Gold" workers regardless of skill, seniority or wage were white and non-white native Panamanians and workers of Africa
n descent always classified as "Silver" workers. Under this blatantly racist system, "Gold" workers received numerous privileges and rights (such as unrestricted access to the Canal Zone, and the right to shop at American-owned stores) that "Silver" workers did not, as well as much higher pay.
In 1939, the CIO began organizing "Silver" workers into a union, and established the Canal Zone Workers Organizing Committee. The UPWA sent several militant, leftist organizers to the area to assist with the organizing effort. In July 1946, the "Silver" workers formally established the Canal Zone Workers' Union, UPWA Local 713. Local 713 also incorporated elements of the old AFT Local 29 (a union of teachers chartered in 1918 that became inactive in the early 1920s). Within a year, Local 713 had nearly 16,000 members. In 1946, the House Un-American Activities Committee
accused UPWA of conspiracy to sabotage U.S. military operations by organizing workers in the Panama Canal Zone. But Local 713 members said that if their union leaders or UPWA officials in the U.S. ordered them to do anything which would harm the Canal Zone, they would refuse. The union began holding large rallies to encourage organizing and win improvements to working conditions. Several thousand people attended a rally in January 1947. Paul Robeson traveled to Panama on May 25, 1947, to perform four concerts to support UPWA Local 713. One concert attracted 10,000 people; another was attended by the President of Panama, Enrique Adolfo Jiménez. By June 1947, Local 713 had won wage and overtime pay improvements, more vacation time, equal admission to civil service exams for non-whites, and removal of signs barring "Silver" workers from "Gold" facilities.
The Panama Canal Company, the private company which ran Canal operations (whose president was also Governor of the Panama Canal Zone and the head of the U.S. territorial government), began a campaign to have the UPWA ousted. Under pressure from the company, the government of Panama expelled UPWA regional director Max Brodsky in March 1949. Brodsky fled into the Canal Zone (then a U.S. territory, and not part of the nation of Panama), but the Governor of the Canal Zone ordered him deported from there as well. Brodsky returned to the U.S., and the Panama Canal Company successfully had the UPWA ousted as the representative of Local 713 in 1950.
's loyalty oath program. President Truman was deeply concerned about the rising tide of anti-communist feeling in the United States. Seeking to cut off what he saw as impending hysteria, he established the Temporary Committee on Employee Loyalty in 1946 to investigate allegations of communist political views among federal employees (and fire those found to be insufficiently patriotic, democratic, and capitalist), and in February 1947 announced the Truman Doctrine
(under which the U.S. would support democratic regimes facing armed insurrection or interference in their political processes by outside parties). On March 21, 1947, Truman issued Executive Order 9835, which barred members of the Communist Party or anyone in "sympathetic association" with it from federal employment, required all federal employees to sign affidavits that affirmed they were not communists and did not seek the overthrow of the U.S. government, and authorized the Federal Bureau of Investigation
and the Civil Service Commission
to investigate allegations of disloyalty. The UPWA had continued to criticize the Hatch Act, the purpose of which (it felt) was to repress leftists rather than clean up the civil service (a purpose the head of the U.S. Civil Service Commission confirmed). The loyalty oaths were particularly vexing for the UPWA because only the most left-wing unions and organizations tended to support collective bargaining and the right to strike for public employees, and to strongly oppose racism in public employment. It was common for anyone who demanded equal rights for blacks and other minorities to be branded disloyal. On November 24, 1948, Flaxer sent a letter to Truman decrying the tendency to brand a person disloyal simply because they advocated for improvements in civil rights.
As the loyalty oath issue came to the fore, the UPWA's long-standing lawsuit (initiated by Lee Pressman under the auspices of the old UFWA) finally reached the Supreme Court. In the 19th century, American courts had established the doctrine of privilege. This legal doctrine concluded that public employment was a privilege, not a right, and subsequently significant restrictions could be placed on public employees that could not be constitutionally tolerated in the private sector. By the middle of the 20th century, however, the doctrine of privilege had been markedly weakened. Abuse of the privilege had led to widespread corruption; the tolerance of sexual harassment
, racism, religious discrimination
, and gender discrimination; and workplace abuse (such as forcing employees to buy goods and services from a supervisor, or forcing employees to run errands for the supervisor). The courts were becoming less and less tolerant of the doctrine of privilege. But in United Public Workers v. Mitchell, the Supreme Court upheld the doctrine of privilege. Writing for the majority, Associate Justice
Stanley Forman Reed
argued that the Hatch Act did not infringe on the First Amendment guarantees of free speech and free association
but rather on rights guaranteed by the Ninth Amendment
(guaranteeing non-enumerated rights to the people) and Tenth Amendment
(guaranteeing non-enumerated rights to the states). These rights were not absolute, and could be subordinated to the "elemental need for order" without which all rights ceased to function. Additionally, the non-enumerated rights of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments were subordinate to the enumerated rights granted to the federal government by the Constitution. Reed upheld the Hatch Act as a legitimate exercise of the enumerated rights of the federal government. United Public Workers v. Mitchell was the last gasp of the doctrine of privilege. The Supreme Court openly rejected the doctrine in Wieman v. Updegraff
, and a wide number of high court decisions in areas such as nonpartisan
speech, due process
, search and seizure
, the right to marry
, the right to bear children, equal protection
, education, and receipt of public benefits over the next two decades continued to undermine the doctrine. Although the Supreme Court later reaffirmed Mitchell in 1973 in Civil Service Comm'n v. Letter Carriers
, it did so on the grounds that permitting public employees to engage in political activity was dangerous.
, which, among other things, required union leaders to sign a non-communist affidavit. But by one estimate, half the CIO unions were communist-controlled, and the press reported that a third of the delegates at the CIO convention were communists or controlled by communist organizations. Although CIO President Philip Murray
had tolerated communist influence in the CIO and its unions, many influential leaders in the labor federation did not. Among these were Walter Reuther
, the newly elected head of the United Auto Workers
, who had achieved a razor-thin victory over incumbent president R. J. Thomas
by building an anti-communist coalition within the union. The AFL, which had largely abandoned craft unionism since 1935, was growing quickly and using the presence of large numbers of communists in the CIO as a way of turning workers away from the CIO. But, in part, the CIO was reacting to a change in foreign policy. The CIO had initially favored U.S.-Soviet cooperation in the post-war period (which communists within the CIO highly approved of), but the increasingly anti-Soviet foreign policies of the Truman administration left much of the CIO leadership advocating a break with this policy. This brought the anti-communist and communist factions within the CIO into conflict. The issue was exacerbated in late 1947 when the newly formed Cominform
(the international Communist Party organization) strongly denounced the United States and directed communists in the West to abandon liberal and socialist political parties and form new, communist third parties. This policy directly conflicted with CIO support for the Democratic Party.
There were serious signs of discontent with the UPWA's political views as early as 1946. The CIO executive board had already adopted new rules in November 1946 that prohibited CIO unions from "adopting an outside party's line". In late 1946, UPWA local unions of federal postal workers in Chicago
, Detroit, Duluth
, and Pittsburgh disaffiliated, unhappy about the parent union's left-wing political positions. During the January 1948 CIO executive board meeting, anti-communist union leaders argued bitterly and contentiously with left-wing union presidents about the nature and extent of Communist Party influence in the left-wing unions, and the conflict was exacerbated after the communist-influenced unions began backing the third party presidential candidacy of Henry A. Wallace.
The most serious attacks on the UPWA began in 1949, however. The UPWA was censured by the CIO executive board in May 1949 for violating the 1946 prohibitions on parroting the communist political line. CIO President Philip Murray began to vocally attack the communist-influenced CIO unions throughout the rest of 1949. He also blasted the UPWA's weak organizing efforts (the UPWA had about 82,000 members in August 1949). The UPWA countered in August that Murray and the CIO were committing fratricide and that his charges of undue influence were untrue. For a brief time in August the UPWA considered disaffiliating from the CIO because of these attacks, but did not. The CIO meanwhile, quietly established a new union—the Government and Civic Employees Organizing Committee (GCEOC)—to compete with the UPWA, and began organizing workers in the UPWA's stronghold in New York City.
The attack on the UPWA culminated at the CIO's November 1949 convention. The CIO passed resolutions barring members of the Communist Party from holding leadership positions in the labor federation, and barred its member unions from being controlled by the Communist Party or from adhering to the Party's program at the expense of the CIO. CIO convention delegates then charged 10 unions, the UPWA among them, of being communist-controlled.
A committee of anti-communist CIO vice presidents, chaired by Textile Workers Union of America
President Emil Rieve
, was established to try the union and (individually) Abram Flaxer on the charges. The UPWA immediately ceased paying its member dues to the CIO, and denounced the committee as biased due to the strong anti-communist feelings of its members. As the trial approached in January 1950, the UPWA issued a lengthy document which purported to show that it had not parroted the Communist Party line and had upheld the CIO political platform. When the informal trial opened on January 9, the UPWA attempted to bring more than 250 witnesses in its defense, but the crowd was barred on the grounds it would intimidate the committee. At the hearing, Transport Workers Union of America
President and communist Mike Quill
(who had broken with the Communist Party USA some years earlier but not abandoned his communist beliefs), testified that Flaxer had coordinated his organizing efforts and criticism of the CIO with CPUSA leaders.
The CIO executive board on February 16, 1950, voted 34-to-2 to expel the UPWA.
Dean Acheson
threatened to fire anyone in his department who retained membership in UPWA. Mayor of New York City
William O'Dwyer
refused to recognize any of the union's locals in New York City, and the city formally refused to bargain with the union in October 1951. Nine days after UPWA's expulsion, the CIO announced that the GCEOC would immediately begin raiding UPWA locals and organizing new members on the state and local level. The GCEOC's new member organizing failed conspicuously, but the AFL and CIO both heavily raided the UPWA's locals. By May 1950, the union had shed 22,000 members. The UPWA executive board sponsored a union-wide vote of confidence in Flaxer in May 1950, who easily secured a large majority. The UPWA considered forming a new national labor federation with the other expelled CIO unions in November 1950, but this effort never coalesced. The CIO announced the formation of a national teachers' union in September 1952 to compete with the UPWA in that jurisdiction. causing the Teachers Guild (one of UPWA's largest and most active locals) to disaffiliate and become independent in February 1953.
Flaxer personally faced additional legal trouble. Testifying before a one-man subcommittee of the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1952, he refused to turn over the union's membership lists to Congress. He was cited for contempt of Congress
in March 1952, and formally indicted four months later. A court overturned the indictment in November 1952, and was re-indicted three days later. He was convicted in March 1953 and ordered to serve two months in jail and pay a $1,000 fine. He appealed his conviction, but the appeal was denied.
The UPWA was dissolved in February 1953. In 1955, the AFL and CIO merged to form the AFL-CIO
. The policy of the new union was to promote the merger of AFL and CIO counterpart unions. Subsequently, the GCEOC (with 30,000 members) merged with AFSCME in 1956. A few former UPWA social work locals in New York City formed the Social Service Employees Union in 1961.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
labor union
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
representing federal, state, county, and local government employees which existed from 1946 to 1952. The union challenged the constitutionality
Constitutionality
Constitutionality is the condition of acting in accordance with an applicable constitution. Acts that are not in accordance with the rules laid down in the constitution are deemed to be ultra vires.-See also:*ultra vires*Company law*Constitutional law...
of the Hatch Act of 1939
Hatch Act of 1939
The Hatch Act of 1939 is a United States federal law whose main provision is to prohibit federal employees in the executive branch of the federal government, except the President and the Vice President, from engaging in partisan political activity...
, which prohibited federal executive branch employees from engaging in politics
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
. In United Public Workers of America v. Mitchell, 330 U.S. 75 (1947), the Supreme Court of the United States
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
upheld the Hatch Act, finding that its infringement on the Constitutional rights
United States Constitution
The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It is the framework for the organization of the United States government and for the relationship of the federal government with the states, citizens, and all people within the United States.The first three...
was outweighed by the need to end political corruption. The union's leadership was Communist
Communist Party USA
The Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....
, and in a famous purge the union was ejected from its parent trade union federation, the Congress of Industrial Organizations
Congress of Industrial Organizations
The Congress of Industrial Organizations, or CIO, proposed by John L. Lewis in 1932, was a federation of unions that organized workers in industrial unions in the United States and Canada from 1935 to 1955. The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 required union leaders to swear that they were not...
, in 1950.
The union is sometimes confused with the United Federal Workers of America
United Federal Workers of America
The United Federal Workers of America was an American labor union representing federal government employees which existed from 1937 to 1946. It was the first union with this jurisdiction established by the Congress of Industrial Organizations , and one of the unions which merged in 1946 to form...
(a predecessor union) and the United Office Professional Workers of America (a union of white-collar, private-sector office workers which also belonged to the Congress of Industrial Organizations).
Status of unions in the U.S. federal government
Workers in federal agencies had formed craft-based unions on the local level beginning in the early 1880s. The growing power of these and other unions in the federal government led President Theodore Roosevelt to issue two Executive Orders (in 1902 and 1906) essentially banning unions in the federal civil service. Under Congressional pressure, President William H. Taft made the Executive Orders less onerous in 1912. Unhappy with Taft's refusal to rescind the orders entirely, Congress passed the Lloyd-La Follette Act (§6, 37 Stat. 555, 5 U.S.C. § 7511) on August 24, 1912, declaring establishing the right of federal employees to join unions (albeit not the right for them to bargain collectively). Five years later, the American Federation of LaborAmerican Federation of Labor
The American Federation of Labor was one of the first federations of labor unions in the United States. It was founded in 1886 by an alliance of craft unions disaffected from the Knights of Labor, a national labor association. Samuel Gompers was elected president of the Federation at its...
(AFL) acted to bring the various local unions together to form a single national union, the National Federation of Federal Employees
National Federation of Federal Employees
The National Federation of Federal Employees is an American labor union which represents about 100,000 public employees in the federal government.NFFE has about 200 local unions, most of them agency-wide bargaining units...
, in September 1917.
In December 1931, NFFE disaffiliated from the AFL, its national trade union center
National trade union center
A national trade union center is a federation or confederation of trade unions in a single country. Nearly every country in the world has a national trade union center, and many have more than one. When there is more than one national center, it is often because of ideological differences—in some...
. The break occurred over the AFL's refusal to abandon its support for craft unionism
Craft unionism
Craft unionism refers to organizing a union in a manner that seeks to unify workers in a particular industry along the lines of the particular craft or trade that they work in by class or skill level...
and cease its attacks on industrial unions. The AFL responded by chartering a new federal employees union, the American Federation of Government Employees
American Federation of Government Employees
The American Federation of Government Employees is an American labor union representing over 625,000 employees of the federal government, about 5,000 employees of the District of Columbia, and a few hundred private sector employees, mostly in and around federal facilities...
(AFGE), in October 1932 from several units of the NFFE which did not wish to leave the labor federation.
In 1936, the AFL chartered the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees
The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees is the second- or third-largest labor union in the United States and one of the fastest-growing, representing over 1.4 million employees, primarily in local and state government and in the health care industry. AFSCME is part of the...
(AFSCME) to represent non-federal government workers in the United States.
In the early 1930s, a fundamental dispute occurred within the U.S. labor movement
Labor unions in the United States
Labor unions in the United States are legally recognized as representatives of workers in many industries. The most prominent unions are among public sector employees such as teachers and police...
over whether to organize workers by craft
Craft unionism
Craft unionism refers to organizing a union in a manner that seeks to unify workers in a particular industry along the lines of the particular craft or trade that they work in by class or skill level...
or on an industry-wide
Industrial unionism
Industrial unionism is a labor union organizing method through which all workers in the same industry are organized into the same union—regardless of skill or trade—thus giving workers in one industry, or in all industries, more leverage in bargaining and in strike situations...
basis. After a contentious AFL convention in October 1935 (during which union leaders came to blows), eight unions engaged in industrial union organizing formed the Committee for Industrial Organizing. The AFL accused them of engaging in dual unionism
Dual unionism
Dual unionism is the development of a union or political organization parallel to and within an existing labor union. In some cases, the term may refer to the situation where two unions claim the right to organize the same workers....
, and on September 10, 1936, suspended them from the national labor federation. Efforts to reunify the two groups failed, and the Committee reconstituted itself as the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) on November 9, 1936. The CIO quickly began forming unions to compete with their counterpart unions in the AFL.
The UFWA and SCMWA
In 1937, a number of AFSCME local unions, composed primarily of caseworkers, disaffiliated from that union and joined the CIO. The CIO allowed these local unions to form the State, County, and Municipal Workers of AmericaState, County, and Municipal Workers of America
The State, County, and Municipal Workers of America was an American labor union representing federal, state, county, and local government employees which existed from 1946 to 1952...
(SCMWA), and charged the new organization with competing with AFSCME at the state and local levels for membership. Most of the leaders and many of the members of these local unions were strongly sympathetic to the beliefs and goals of the Communist Party USA
Communist Party USA
The Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....
. Former AFSCME executive board member Abram Flaxer was appointed the new union's president, and former AFSCME Secretary-Treasurer David Kanes held the same post in SCMWA. SCMWA membership grew quickly: It more than doubled the number of local unions (from 12 to 28) in a year, and its members rose from 25,000 in 1937 to more than 48,000 in 1946. In comparison, AFSCME's membership grew from 13,259 in 1947 to more than 73,000 in 1946.
In 1937, the CIO formed a new union for U.S. government employees, the United Federal Workers of America (UFWA), from elements of the AFGE. The UFWA's membership, however, remained static (as did the membership of nearly all federal government unions in the 1930s). Like SCMWA, the UFWA leadership was leftist. The leadership was militant in its advocacy of the rights of its members and most of the national and local union leadership advocated leftist ideals; associated with left-wing intellectuals, activists, and political people; and supported left-wing organizations. This led many politicians and others to believe the organization was Communist-controlled.
The political leanings of the UWFA led to passage of two pieces of legislation intended to restrict its political activities. In June 1938, Congress passed a rider
Rider (legislation)
In legislative procedure, a rider is an additional provision added to a bill or other measure under the consideration by a legislature, having little connection with the subject matter of the bill. Riders are usually created as a tactic to pass a controversial provision that would not pass as its...
to appropriations legislation with prevented the federal government from making payments (such as salaries) to any person or organization which advocated the overthrow of the federal government (as many communist organizations at the time proposed). In 1939, Congress passed the Hatch Act of 1939
Hatch Act of 1939
The Hatch Act of 1939 is a United States federal law whose main provision is to prohibit federal employees in the executive branch of the federal government, except the President and the Vice President, from engaging in partisan political activity...
, which restricted political campaign activities by federal employees. A provision of the Hatch Act made it illegal for the federal government to employ anyone who advocated the overthrow of the federal government. The UFWA immediately hired lawyer Lee Pressman
Lee Pressman
Lee Pressman was a labor attorney and a US government functionary publicly exposed in 1948 for having been a spy for the Soviet foreign intelligence network during the middle 1930s...
to challenge the constitutionality of the Hatch Act.
Formation of the UPWA and its CIO history
On April 25, 1946, SCMWA merged with the UFWA to form the United Public Workers of America. Joining the new organization were several local unions which had been expelled from the American Federation of TeachersAmerican Federation of Teachers
The American Federation of Teachers is an American labor union founded in 1916 that represents teachers, paraprofessionals and school-related personnel; local, state and federal employees; higher education faculty and staff, and nurses and other healthcare professionals...
(AFT) for being communist-dominated. The impetus for the merger was the relative failure of the UFWA to attract new members, and SCMWA essentially absorbed the smaller federal union. The new union said its mission was to organize new members as well as raid the AFGE (the AFL affiliate) and the NFFE (now independent) for members. With a membership of more than 100,000 (out of six million public-sector workers at all levels nationwide), UPWA claimed to be the largest public employee union in the nation. About 7,000 of UPWA's members were welfare caseworkers. while the rest worked in private nonprofit hospitals, public utilities
Public utility
A public utility is an organization that maintains the infrastructure for a public service . Public utilities are subject to forms of public control and regulation ranging from local community-based groups to state-wide government monopolies...
(such as water companies
Water industry
The water industry provides drinking water and wastewater services to residential, commercial, and industrial sectors of the economy. The water industry includes manufacturers and suppliers of bottled water...
), and local government. The hospital workers numbered in the several thousand, and were primarily located in New York City. The union hired Elliot Godoff as a hospital organizer; after the collapse of UPWA, Godoff became a key organizer and leader for Local 1199 of the Drug, Hospital, and Health Care Employees Union
1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East
1199SEIU is a local union of the Service Employees International Union. With a membership of 360,000 it claims to be the largest local union in the world.-History:...
.
The new union's president was Abram Flaxer, and its secretary-treasurer was Panama
Panama
Panama , officially the Republic of Panama , is the southernmost country of Central America. Situated on the isthmus connecting North and South America, it is bordered by Costa Rica to the northwest, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the south. The...
nian immigrant and scholar Ewart Guinier. The new union also began publishing a 16-page, tabloid-sized membership magazine, The Public Record. The UPWA formed a teachers division, and affiliated several local teachers unions which had been expelled from the American Federation of Teachers during an anti-communist purge in 1941. Among these were the Los Angeles Federation of Teachers, Local 430; the Philadelphia Teachers Union, Local 192; New York City Teachers Union, Local 5 (then the largest local union in the AFT); New York City College Teachers, Local 537; University of Washington, Local 401 (expelled in 1948, not 1941). Its teacher organizing efforts were particularly strong in New York City.
The union adopted a number of policies early on which were, at the time, considered militant and/or leftist (even communist). Although initially the union had a no-strike
Strike action
Strike action, also called labour strike, on strike, greve , or simply strike, is a work stoppage caused by the mass refusal of employees to work. A strike usually takes place in response to employee grievances. Strikes became important during the industrial revolution, when mass labour became...
policy, it soon rescinded this in favor of the right of public employees to walk off the job. It proposed a collective bargaining law for federal public employees modeled on the National Labor Relations Act
National Labor Relations Act
The National Labor Relations Act or Wagner Act , is a 1935 United States federal law that limits the means with which employers may react to workers in the private sector who create labor unions , engage in collective bargaining, and take part in strikes and other forms of concerted activity in...
, and in 1949 began supporting legislation (the Rhodes
George M. Rhodes
George M. Rhodes was a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania.George M. Rhodes was born in Reading, PA. During the First World War he served in the United States Army. He worked as a printer for the Reading Eagle Co. from 1913 to 1927, and business manager for...
-Johnston
Olin D. Johnston
Olin DeWitt Talmadge Johnston was a Democratic Party politician from the US state of South Carolina. He served as the 98th Governor of South Carolina, 1935–1939 and 1943–1945, and represented the state in the United States Senate from 1945 until his death in 1965.-Early Life, Military Involvement,...
bill) which would implement such a system. Founded at the end of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, the union promoted policies designed to minimize the impact of economic conversion
Economic conversion
Economic conversion, defence conversion, or arms conversion, is a technical, economic and political process for moving from military to civilian markets. Economic conversion takes place on several levels and can be applied to different organizations...
on women, African Americans, and other minorities. It also adopted a resolution applauding the foreign policy of the Soviet Union, which nearly led to an investigation of the union by the Civil Service Commission. These won the union significant support from leftists in the entertainment industry. Actor and singer Paul Robeson
Paul Robeson
Paul Leroy Robeson was an American concert singer , recording artist, actor, athlete, scholar who was an advocate for the Civil Rights Movement in the first half of the twentieth century...
and classical pianist Ray Lev
Ray Lev
Ray Lev was an American classical pianist. One year after her birth in Rostov na Donau, Russia, her father, a synagogue cantor, and mother, a concert singer, brought her to the United States.-Life:...
both played concerts which benefitted the union, and novelists Dashiell Hammett
Dashiell Hammett
Samuel Dashiell Hammett was an American author of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories, and political activist. Among the enduring characters he created are Sam Spade , Nick and Nora Charles , and the Continental Op .In addition to the significant influence his novels and stories had on...
, Howard Fast
Howard Fast
Howard Melvin Fast was an American novelist and television writer. Fast also wrote under the pen names E. V. Cunningham and Walter Ericson.-Early life:Fast was born in New York City...
, and others spoke at union rallies about being persecuted for their leftist political beliefs. The union, in turn, helped its allies. Secretary-Treasurer Ewart Guinier managed Henry A. Wallace
Henry A. Wallace
Henry Agard Wallace was the 33rd Vice President of the United States , the Secretary of Agriculture , and the Secretary of Commerce . In the 1948 presidential election, Wallace was the nominee of the Progressive Party.-Early life:Henry A...
's 1948 presidential campaign
United States presidential election, 1948
The United States presidential election of 1948 is considered by most historians as the greatest election upset in American history. Virtually every prediction indicated that incumbent President Harry S. Truman would be defeated by Republican Thomas E. Dewey. Truman won, overcoming a three-way...
in New York City.
In the two years immediately following World War II, the UPWA threatened repeatedly to have its federal workers strike. A fearful Congress passed legislation in 1946 depriving federal workers of their salaries if they belonged to any union which advocated the right of federal workers to strike, and which required them to sign affidavits that they did not belong to any union which did. In 1947, Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act
Taft-Hartley Act
The Labor–Management Relations Act is a United States federal law that monitors the activities and power of labor unions. The act, still effective, was sponsored by Senator Robert Taft and Representative Fred A. Hartley, Jr. and became law by overriding U.S. President Harry S...
, which made it illegal for federal employees to strike and penalized them with immediate dismissal. A third federal law, passed in 1955, made it illegal for federal workers to strike, advocate the right to strike, or belong to any organization which advocated the right for them to strike.
Congress repeatedly investigated the union for violations of the Hatch Act and prohibitions on advocacy of the right to strike. In January 1947, the House of Representatives Committee on Campaign Expenditures reported that it had found evidence that the UPWA (and other unions) had violated the Federal Corrupt Practices Act
Federal Corrupt Practices Act
The Federal Corrupt Practices Act was a federal law of the United States enacted in 1910 and amended in 1911 and 1925. It remained the nation's primary law regulating campaign finance in federal elections until the passage of the Federal Election Campaign Act in 1971. Created by President William H...
by failing to report expenditures in support of various political parties and candidates for federal office.
Opposition to racism
The UPWA also adopted policies and engaged in activities to oppose racismRacism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
. Unlike many unions of the era, the UPWA insisted that Caucasian and African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
employees receive the same wages, benefits, and workplace rights. The union's racial integration policies were among the strongest of any American union of the day. and the UPWA was the most integrated CIO union (by race and gender). The union's anti-discrimination efforts were a key part of its new member organizing strategy, and in time almost a third of the union's members were African American. The union also focused on organizing worksites which employed large numbers of black workers. In June 1947, it organized the faculty and services workers at Howard University
Howard University
Howard University is a federally chartered, non-profit, private, coeducational, nonsectarian, historically black university located in Washington, D.C., United States...
, a historically black college. The first African American woman to lead a union in New York state was UPWA's Eleanor Godling (who also served on executive board of the New York State CIO). The UPWA made the federal government a primary target for its equality in employment efforts. In early 1947, UPWA accused nine federal agencies and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development
The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development is one of five institutions that compose the World Bank Group. The IBRD is an international organization whose original mission was to finance the reconstruction of nations devastated by World War II. Now, its mission has expanded to fight...
of blatantly refusing to hire African Americans. The Veterans' Administration
United States Department of Veterans Affairs
The United States Department of Veterans Affairs is a government-run military veteran benefit system with Cabinet-level status. It is the United States government’s second largest department, after the United States Department of Defense...
and State Department
United States Department of State
The United States Department of State , is the United States federal executive department responsible for international relations of the United States, equivalent to the foreign ministries of other countries...
were the agencies most resistant to the UPWA on racial issues. UPWA was also the only union to make a significant effort at integrating the United States Post Office Department
United States Post Office Department
The Post Office Department was the name of the United States Postal Service when it was a Cabinet department. It was headed by the Postmaster General....
. In August 1949, UPWA members (accompanied by actor and singer Paul Robeson
Paul Robeson
Paul Leroy Robeson was an American concert singer , recording artist, actor, athlete, scholar who was an advocate for the Civil Rights Movement in the first half of the twentieth century...
) picketed the White House to protest racially discriminatory hiring and employment practices and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing
Bureau of Engraving and Printing
The Bureau of Engraving and Printing is a government agency within the United States Department of the Treasury that designs and produces a variety of security products for the United States government, most notable of which is paper currency for the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve itself is...
.
The union also played a significant role within the CIO in lobbying for the strengthening of the Fair Employment Practices Commission
Fair Employment Practices Commission
The Fair Employment Practices Commission implemented US Executive Order 8802, requiring that companies with government contracts not to discriminate on the basis of race or religion. It was intended to help African Americans and other minorities obtain jobs in the homefront industry...
, a federal agency established in 1941 to ensure that companies with government contracts did not discriminate on the basis of race or religion. When the FEPC was in danger of losing much of its power and being dismantled, UPWA introduced a successful resolution at the 1949 NAACP
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, usually abbreviated as NAACP, is an African-American civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909. Its mission is "to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to...
convention to hold an FEPC National Emergency Mobilization to push for legislation that would make the FEPC permanent. But the advent of the Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
led to the defeat of legislation. These policies were not accepted by all UWPA locals, however. Ten UPWA locals disaffiliated partly because of the parent union's stand on racial equality.
In one case, a UPWA effort on behalf of black workers led to important political change. In 1947, the UPWA engaged in a campaign to save 2,200 African American jobs at an Internal Revenue Service
Internal Revenue Service
The Internal Revenue Service is the revenue service of the United States federal government. The agency is a bureau of the Department of the Treasury, and is under the immediate direction of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue...
(IRS) processing center in the Bronx in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. IRS Commissioner Ernest Campbell believed that the percentage of black employees among IRS workers should be the same as the percentage of blacks in the general population, and began an active campaign to fire African American workers (who constituted a majority of IRS employees at the center) until this lower percentage was reached. The UPWA quickly formed a "black popular front
Popular front
A popular front is a broad coalition of different political groupings, often made up of leftists and centrists. Being very broad, they can sometimes include centrist and liberal forces as well as socialist and communist groups...
" known as the Citizens Committee for the Job Security of Bronx IRS Employees to protest Campbell's actions. The movement was successful: In the spring of 1947, the U.S. Civil Service Commissioner ruled that Campbell's actions were illegal. Campbell managed to fire the black workers anyway by moving the processing center to Kansas City
Kansas City, Missouri
Kansas City, Missouri is the largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri and is the anchor city of the Kansas City Metropolitan Area, the second largest metropolitan area in Missouri. It encompasses in parts of Jackson, Clay, Cass, and Platte counties...
. The Bronx IRS fight garnered national headlines, and UPWA vice president Thomas Richardson testified in mid-1947 before the President's Committee on Civil Rights
President's Committee on Civil Rights
The President's Committee on Civil Rights was established by Executive Order 9808, which Harry Truman, who was then President of the United States, issued on December 5, 1946. The committee was instructed to investigate the status of civil rights in the country and propose measures to strengthen...
in reference to Bronx case. This and other testimony led to the adoption of a to civil rights plank in the political platform of the Democratic Party
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
.
Panama Canal Zone union
One of the union's most significant and historically important organizing campaigns occurred in the Panama Canal ZonePanama Canal Zone
The Panama Canal Zone was a unorganized U.S. territory located within the Republic of Panama, consisting of the Panama Canal and an area generally extending 5 miles on each side of the centerline, but excluding Panama City and Colón, which otherwise would have been partly within the limits of...
.
For decades, workers in the Canal Zone had been classified as high-skilled, long-seniority, high-wage "Gold" workers or low-skilled, low-seniority, low-wage "Silver" workers. In practice, "Gold" workers regardless of skill, seniority or wage were white and non-white native Panamanians and workers of Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
n descent always classified as "Silver" workers. Under this blatantly racist system, "Gold" workers received numerous privileges and rights (such as unrestricted access to the Canal Zone, and the right to shop at American-owned stores) that "Silver" workers did not, as well as much higher pay.
In 1939, the CIO began organizing "Silver" workers into a union, and established the Canal Zone Workers Organizing Committee. The UPWA sent several militant, leftist organizers to the area to assist with the organizing effort. In July 1946, the "Silver" workers formally established the Canal Zone Workers' Union, UPWA Local 713. Local 713 also incorporated elements of the old AFT Local 29 (a union of teachers chartered in 1918 that became inactive in the early 1920s). Within a year, Local 713 had nearly 16,000 members. In 1946, the House Un-American Activities Committee
House Un-American Activities Committee
The House Committee on Un-American Activities or House Un-American Activities Committee was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives. In 1969, the House changed the committee's name to "House Committee on Internal Security"...
accused UPWA of conspiracy to sabotage U.S. military operations by organizing workers in the Panama Canal Zone. But Local 713 members said that if their union leaders or UPWA officials in the U.S. ordered them to do anything which would harm the Canal Zone, they would refuse. The union began holding large rallies to encourage organizing and win improvements to working conditions. Several thousand people attended a rally in January 1947. Paul Robeson traveled to Panama on May 25, 1947, to perform four concerts to support UPWA Local 713. One concert attracted 10,000 people; another was attended by the President of Panama, Enrique Adolfo Jiménez. By June 1947, Local 713 had won wage and overtime pay improvements, more vacation time, equal admission to civil service exams for non-whites, and removal of signs barring "Silver" workers from "Gold" facilities.
The Panama Canal Company, the private company which ran Canal operations (whose president was also Governor of the Panama Canal Zone and the head of the U.S. territorial government), began a campaign to have the UPWA ousted. Under pressure from the company, the government of Panama expelled UPWA regional director Max Brodsky in March 1949. Brodsky fled into the Canal Zone (then a U.S. territory, and not part of the nation of Panama), but the Governor of the Canal Zone ordered him deported from there as well. Brodsky returned to the U.S., and the Panama Canal Company successfully had the UPWA ousted as the representative of Local 713 in 1950.
Loyalty oath issue and court case
UPWA also mounted the only organized opposition to President Harry S. TrumanHarry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman was the 33rd President of the United States . As President Franklin D. Roosevelt's third vice president and the 34th Vice President of the United States , he succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945, when President Roosevelt died less than three months after beginning his...
's loyalty oath program. President Truman was deeply concerned about the rising tide of anti-communist feeling in the United States. Seeking to cut off what he saw as impending hysteria, he established the Temporary Committee on Employee Loyalty in 1946 to investigate allegations of communist political views among federal employees (and fire those found to be insufficiently patriotic, democratic, and capitalist), and in February 1947 announced the Truman Doctrine
Truman Doctrine
The Truman Doctrine was a policy set forth by U.S. President Harry S Truman in a speech on March 12, 1947 stating that the U.S. would support Greece and Turkey with economic and military aid to prevent their falling into the Soviet sphere...
(under which the U.S. would support democratic regimes facing armed insurrection or interference in their political processes by outside parties). On March 21, 1947, Truman issued Executive Order 9835, which barred members of the Communist Party or anyone in "sympathetic association" with it from federal employment, required all federal employees to sign affidavits that affirmed they were not communists and did not seek the overthrow of the U.S. government, and authorized the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
and the Civil Service Commission
United States Civil Service Commission
The United States Civil Service Commission a three man commission was created by the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, which was passed into law on January 16, 1883...
to investigate allegations of disloyalty. The UPWA had continued to criticize the Hatch Act, the purpose of which (it felt) was to repress leftists rather than clean up the civil service (a purpose the head of the U.S. Civil Service Commission confirmed). The loyalty oaths were particularly vexing for the UPWA because only the most left-wing unions and organizations tended to support collective bargaining and the right to strike for public employees, and to strongly oppose racism in public employment. It was common for anyone who demanded equal rights for blacks and other minorities to be branded disloyal. On November 24, 1948, Flaxer sent a letter to Truman decrying the tendency to brand a person disloyal simply because they advocated for improvements in civil rights.
As the loyalty oath issue came to the fore, the UPWA's long-standing lawsuit (initiated by Lee Pressman under the auspices of the old UFWA) finally reached the Supreme Court. In the 19th century, American courts had established the doctrine of privilege. This legal doctrine concluded that public employment was a privilege, not a right, and subsequently significant restrictions could be placed on public employees that could not be constitutionally tolerated in the private sector. By the middle of the 20th century, however, the doctrine of privilege had been markedly weakened. Abuse of the privilege had led to widespread corruption; the tolerance of sexual harassment
Sexual harassment
Sexual harassment, is intimidation, bullying or coercion of a sexual nature, or the unwelcome or inappropriate promise of rewards in exchange for sexual favors. In some contexts or circumstances, sexual harassment is illegal. It includes a range of behavior from seemingly mild transgressions and...
, racism, religious discrimination
Religious discrimination
Religious discrimination is valuing or treating a person or group differently because of what they do or do not believe.A concept like that of 'religious discrimination' is necessary to take into account ambiguities of the term religious persecution. The infamous cases in which people have been...
, and gender discrimination; and workplace abuse (such as forcing employees to buy goods and services from a supervisor, or forcing employees to run errands for the supervisor). The courts were becoming less and less tolerant of the doctrine of privilege. But in United Public Workers v. Mitchell, the Supreme Court upheld the doctrine of privilege. Writing for the majority, Associate Justice
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States are the members of the Supreme Court of the United States other than the Chief Justice of the United States...
Stanley Forman Reed
Stanley Forman Reed
Stanley Forman Reed was a noted American attorney who served as United States Solicitor General from 1935 to 1938 and as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1938 to 1957. He was the last Supreme Court Justice who did not graduate from law school Stanley Forman Reed (December 31,...
argued that the Hatch Act did not infringe on the First Amendment guarantees of free speech and free association
First Amendment to the United States Constitution
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. The amendment prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering...
but rather on rights guaranteed by the Ninth Amendment
Ninth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Ninth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which is part of the Bill of Rights, addresses rights of the people that are not specifically enumerated in the Constitution.-Text:-Adoption:When the U.S...
(guaranteeing non-enumerated rights to the people) and Tenth Amendment
Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which is part of the Bill of Rights, was ratified on December 15, 1791...
(guaranteeing non-enumerated rights to the states). These rights were not absolute, and could be subordinated to the "elemental need for order" without which all rights ceased to function. Additionally, the non-enumerated rights of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments were subordinate to the enumerated rights granted to the federal government by the Constitution. Reed upheld the Hatch Act as a legitimate exercise of the enumerated rights of the federal government. United Public Workers v. Mitchell was the last gasp of the doctrine of privilege. The Supreme Court openly rejected the doctrine in Wieman v. Updegraff
Wieman v. Updegraff
Wieman v. Updegraff, 344 U.S. 183 , is a unanimous ruling by the United States Supreme Court which held that Oklahoma loyalty oath legislation violated the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution because it did not give individuals the opportunity to abjure...
, and a wide number of high court decisions in areas such as nonpartisan
Nonpartisan
In political science, nonpartisan denotes an election, event, organization or person in which there is no formally declared association with a political party affiliation....
speech, due process
Due process
Due process is the legal code that the state must venerate all of the legal rights that are owed to a person under the principle. Due process balances the power of the state law of the land and thus protects individual persons from it...
, search and seizure
Search and seizure
Search and seizure is a legal procedure used in many civil law and common law legal systems whereby police or other authorities and their agents, who suspect that a crime has been committed, do a search of a person's property and confiscate any relevant evidence to the crime.Some countries have...
, the right to marry
Marriage
Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture or subculture in which it is found...
, the right to bear children, equal protection
Equal Protection Clause
The Equal Protection Clause, part of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, provides that "no state shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws"...
, education, and receipt of public benefits over the next two decades continued to undermine the doctrine. Although the Supreme Court later reaffirmed Mitchell in 1973 in Civil Service Comm'n v. Letter Carriers
United States Civil Service Commission v. National Association of Letter Carriers
United States Civil Service Commission v. National Association of Letter Carriers, 413 U.S. 548 , is a ruling by the United States Supreme Court which held that the Hatch Act of 1939 does not violate the First Amendment, and its implementing regulations are not unconstitutionally vague and...
, it did so on the grounds that permitting public employees to engage in political activity was dangerous.
Expulsion from the CIO
In 1946, the Congress of Industrial Organizations began a push to purge communists from the ranks of its membership and leadership. In part, the CIO was reacting to and even part of the growing national hysteria over communism that swept the nation from 1946 until the late 1950s. In 1947, Congress had overridden President Truman's veto of the Taft-Hartley ActTaft-Hartley Act
The Labor–Management Relations Act is a United States federal law that monitors the activities and power of labor unions. The act, still effective, was sponsored by Senator Robert Taft and Representative Fred A. Hartley, Jr. and became law by overriding U.S. President Harry S...
, which, among other things, required union leaders to sign a non-communist affidavit. But by one estimate, half the CIO unions were communist-controlled, and the press reported that a third of the delegates at the CIO convention were communists or controlled by communist organizations. Although CIO President Philip Murray
Philip Murray
Philip Murray was a Scottish born steelworker and an American labor leader. He was the first president of the Steel Workers Organizing Committee , the first president of the United Steelworkers of America , and the longest-serving president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations .-Early...
had tolerated communist influence in the CIO and its unions, many influential leaders in the labor federation did not. Among these were Walter Reuther
Walter Reuther
Walter Philip Reuther was an American labor union leader, who made the United Automobile Workers a major force not only in the auto industry but also in the Democratic Party in the mid 20th century...
, the newly elected head of the United Auto Workers
United Auto Workers
The International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, better known as the United Auto Workers , is a labor union which represents workers in the United States and Puerto Rico, and formerly in Canada. Founded as part of the Congress of Industrial...
, who had achieved a razor-thin victory over incumbent president R. J. Thomas
R. J. Thomas
Roland Jay Thomas , aka R.J. Thomas, was born in East Palestine, Ohio. He grew up in eastern Ohio and attended Wooster College for two years. The need to help support his family caused him to leave college and go to work...
by building an anti-communist coalition within the union. The AFL, which had largely abandoned craft unionism since 1935, was growing quickly and using the presence of large numbers of communists in the CIO as a way of turning workers away from the CIO. But, in part, the CIO was reacting to a change in foreign policy. The CIO had initially favored U.S.-Soviet cooperation in the post-war period (which communists within the CIO highly approved of), but the increasingly anti-Soviet foreign policies of the Truman administration left much of the CIO leadership advocating a break with this policy. This brought the anti-communist and communist factions within the CIO into conflict. The issue was exacerbated in late 1947 when the newly formed Cominform
Cominform
Founded in 1947, Cominform is the common name for what was officially referred to as the Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers' Parties...
(the international Communist Party organization) strongly denounced the United States and directed communists in the West to abandon liberal and socialist political parties and form new, communist third parties. This policy directly conflicted with CIO support for the Democratic Party.
There were serious signs of discontent with the UPWA's political views as early as 1946. The CIO executive board had already adopted new rules in November 1946 that prohibited CIO unions from "adopting an outside party's line". In late 1946, UPWA local unions of federal postal workers in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, Detroit, Duluth
Duluth, Minnesota
Duluth is a port city in the U.S. state of Minnesota and is the county seat of Saint Louis County. The fourth largest city in Minnesota, Duluth had a total population of 86,265 in the 2010 census. Duluth is also the second largest city that is located on Lake Superior after Thunder Bay, Ontario,...
, and Pittsburgh disaffiliated, unhappy about the parent union's left-wing political positions. During the January 1948 CIO executive board meeting, anti-communist union leaders argued bitterly and contentiously with left-wing union presidents about the nature and extent of Communist Party influence in the left-wing unions, and the conflict was exacerbated after the communist-influenced unions began backing the third party presidential candidacy of Henry A. Wallace.
The most serious attacks on the UPWA began in 1949, however. The UPWA was censured by the CIO executive board in May 1949 for violating the 1946 prohibitions on parroting the communist political line. CIO President Philip Murray began to vocally attack the communist-influenced CIO unions throughout the rest of 1949. He also blasted the UPWA's weak organizing efforts (the UPWA had about 82,000 members in August 1949). The UPWA countered in August that Murray and the CIO were committing fratricide and that his charges of undue influence were untrue. For a brief time in August the UPWA considered disaffiliating from the CIO because of these attacks, but did not. The CIO meanwhile, quietly established a new union—the Government and Civic Employees Organizing Committee (GCEOC)—to compete with the UPWA, and began organizing workers in the UPWA's stronghold in New York City.
The attack on the UPWA culminated at the CIO's November 1949 convention. The CIO passed resolutions barring members of the Communist Party from holding leadership positions in the labor federation, and barred its member unions from being controlled by the Communist Party or from adhering to the Party's program at the expense of the CIO. CIO convention delegates then charged 10 unions, the UPWA among them, of being communist-controlled.
A committee of anti-communist CIO vice presidents, chaired by Textile Workers Union of America
Textile Workers Union of America
The Textile Workers Union of America was an industrial union of textile workers established through the Congress of Industrial Organizations in 1939 and merged with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America to become the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union in 1976. It waged a...
President Emil Rieve
Emil Rieve
Emil Rieve was a Polish American labor leader. He was president of the Textile Workers Union of America from 1939 to 1956, a vice president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations from 1939 to 1955, and a vice president of the AFL-CIO from 1955 to 1960.Emil Rieve was born in Poland and...
, was established to try the union and (individually) Abram Flaxer on the charges. The UPWA immediately ceased paying its member dues to the CIO, and denounced the committee as biased due to the strong anti-communist feelings of its members. As the trial approached in January 1950, the UPWA issued a lengthy document which purported to show that it had not parroted the Communist Party line and had upheld the CIO political platform. When the informal trial opened on January 9, the UPWA attempted to bring more than 250 witnesses in its defense, but the crowd was barred on the grounds it would intimidate the committee. At the hearing, Transport Workers Union of America
Transport Workers Union of America
Transport Workers Union of America is a United States labor union that was founded in 1934 by subway workers in New York City, then expanded to represent transit employees in other cities, primarily in the eastern U.S. This article discusses the parent union and its largest local, Local 100,...
President and communist Mike Quill
Mike Quill
Michael J. Quill was one of the founders of the Transport Workers Union of America , a union founded by subway workers in New York City that expanded to represent employees in other forms of transit, and the President of the TWU for most of the first thirty years of its existence...
(who had broken with the Communist Party USA some years earlier but not abandoned his communist beliefs), testified that Flaxer had coordinated his organizing efforts and criticism of the CIO with CPUSA leaders.
The CIO executive board on February 16, 1950, voted 34-to-2 to expel the UPWA.
Post-CIO history and dissolution
Within months after the expulsion from the CIO, the UPWA began to disintegrate. The Veterans' Administration and State Department both withdrew recognition of UPWA locals immediately. Secretary of StateUnited States Secretary of State
The United States Secretary of State is the head of the United States Department of State, concerned with foreign affairs. The Secretary is a member of the Cabinet and the highest-ranking cabinet secretary both in line of succession and order of precedence...
Dean Acheson
Dean Acheson
Dean Gooderham Acheson was an American statesman and lawyer. As United States Secretary of State in the administration of President Harry S. Truman from 1949 to 1953, he played a central role in defining American foreign policy during the Cold War...
threatened to fire anyone in his department who retained membership in UPWA. Mayor of New York City
Mayor of New York City
The Mayor of the City of New York is head of the executive branch of New York City's government. The mayor's office administers all city services, public property, police and fire protection, most public agencies, and enforces all city and state laws within New York City.The budget overseen by the...
William O'Dwyer
William O'Dwyer
William O'Dwyer was the 100th Mayor of New York City, holding that office from 1946 to 1950.-Biography:O'Dwyer was born in County Mayo, Ireland and migrated to the United States in 1910, after abandoning studies for the priesthood...
refused to recognize any of the union's locals in New York City, and the city formally refused to bargain with the union in October 1951. Nine days after UPWA's expulsion, the CIO announced that the GCEOC would immediately begin raiding UPWA locals and organizing new members on the state and local level. The GCEOC's new member organizing failed conspicuously, but the AFL and CIO both heavily raided the UPWA's locals. By May 1950, the union had shed 22,000 members. The UPWA executive board sponsored a union-wide vote of confidence in Flaxer in May 1950, who easily secured a large majority. The UPWA considered forming a new national labor federation with the other expelled CIO unions in November 1950, but this effort never coalesced. The CIO announced the formation of a national teachers' union in September 1952 to compete with the UPWA in that jurisdiction. causing the Teachers Guild (one of UPWA's largest and most active locals) to disaffiliate and become independent in February 1953.
Flaxer personally faced additional legal trouble. Testifying before a one-man subcommittee of the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1952, he refused to turn over the union's membership lists to Congress. He was cited for contempt of Congress
Contempt of Congress
Contempt of Congress is the act of obstructing the work of the United States Congress or one of its committees. Historically the bribery of a senator or representative was considered contempt of Congress...
in March 1952, and formally indicted four months later. A court overturned the indictment in November 1952, and was re-indicted three days later. He was convicted in March 1953 and ordered to serve two months in jail and pay a $1,000 fine. He appealed his conviction, but the appeal was denied.
The UPWA was dissolved in February 1953. In 1955, the AFL and CIO merged to form the AFL-CIO
AFL-CIO
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, commonly AFL–CIO, is a national trade union center, the largest federation of unions in the United States, made up of 56 national and international unions, together representing more than 11 million workers...
. The policy of the new union was to promote the merger of AFL and CIO counterpart unions. Subsequently, the GCEOC (with 30,000 members) merged with AFSCME in 1956. A few former UPWA social work locals in New York City formed the Social Service Employees Union in 1961.
Notable members
A number of notable people belonged to or worked from the United Public Workers of America during the union's short life. Among these individuals were:- Alfred Bernstein was director of negotiations for the UPWA from 1946 to 1952. He later represented hundreds of government employees before loyalty-oath committees. Bernstein had previously been a high-ranking official in the Office of Price AdministrationOffice of Price AdministrationThe Office of Price Administration was established within the Office for Emergency Management of the United States government by Executive Order 8875 on August 28, 1941. The functions of the OPA was originally to control money and rents after the outbreak of World War II.President Franklin D...
during World War II. From 1942 to 1947 he was a member of the Communist Party, and between 1947 and 1951 he was forced to testify five times before Congressional committees about his Party activities. Alfred Bernstein is the father of the former Washington PostThe Washington PostThe Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
journalist Carl BernsteinCarl BernsteinCarl Bernstein is an American investigative journalist who, at The Washington Post, teamed up with Bob Woodward; the two did the majority of the most important news reporting on the Watergate scandal. These scandals led to numerous government investigations, the indictment of a vast number of...
. - Ewart Guinier was Secretary-Treasurer of the UPWA during its existence. Guinier later earned a master's degreeMaster's degreeA master's is an academic degree granted to individuals who have undergone study demonstrating a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice...
in history and a J.D.Juris DoctorJuris Doctor is a professional doctorate and first professional graduate degree in law.The degree was first awarded by Harvard University in the United States in the late 19th century and was created as a modern version of the old European doctor of law degree Juris Doctor (see etymology and...
, and became the first chair of the Department of Afro-American Studies at Harvard UniversityHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
. He was the father of lawyer, civil rights activist, and Harvard law professor Lani GuinierLani GuinierLani Guinier is an American lawyer, scholar and civil rights activist. The first African-American woman tenured professor at Harvard Law School, Guinier's work includes professional responsibilities of public lawyers, the relationship between democracy and the law, the role of race and gender in...
. - John Oliver KillensJohn Oliver KillensJohn Oliver Killens was a black American fiction writer whose novels of African American life received two Pulitzer Prize nominations.-Early life and education:...
, an African American organizer for the UPWA and business agent for Local 10 in Washington, D.C.Washington, D.C.Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
Killens would become a noted fictionFictionFiction is the form of any narrative or informative work that deals, in part or in whole, with information or events that are not factual, but rather, imaginary—that is, invented by the author. Although fiction describes a major branch of literary work, it may also refer to theatrical,...
writer and twice be nominated for the Pulitzer PrizePulitzer PrizeThe Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
. - Arthur Stein had helped co-found the United Federal Workers of American (one of the UPWA's two predecessor unions), was elected president of its Works Progress AdministrationWorks Progress AdministrationThe Works Progress Administration was the largest and most ambitious New Deal agency, employing millions of unskilled workers to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads, and operated large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects...
local, and later worked as a full-time organizer for the UPWA. He also knew Alfred Bernstein. He had joined the Communist Party some time in the late 1920s or early 1930s, and co-organized the 1932 Chicago Counter-Olympics (also known as the International Workers Athletic Meet, the first Olympic counter-protest). He later was an employee at the Works Progress Administration and then the War Production BoardWar Production BoardThe War Production Board was established as a government agency on January 16, 1942 by executive order of Franklin D. Roosevelt.The purpose of the board was to regulate the production and allocation of materials and fuel during World War II in the United States...
. In 1937, he helped Herbert FuchsHerbert FuchsHerbert Fuchs was a former Communist who became a professor of law at the American University in Washington, D.C. in 1949.In the McCarthy Era in the United States, Fuchs initially declined to name names to the House Committee on Un-American Activities, and then later recanted, explaining how he...
organize a secret cell of the Party within a subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Interstate and Foreign CommerceUnited States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and TransportationThe United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is a standing committee of the United States Senate in charge of all senate matters related to the following subjects:* Coast Guard* Coastal zone management* Communications...
, and later at the National Labor Relations BoardNational Labor Relations BoardThe National Labor Relations Board is an independent agency of the United States government charged with conducting elections for labor union representation and with investigating and remedying unfair labor practices. Unfair labor practices may involve union-related situations or instances of...
(where Fuchs had taken a job). His daughter, Eleanor SteinEleanor RaskinEleanor E. Raskin née Stein; was a member of Weatherman. She is currently an associate professor at Albany Law School, teaching transnational environmental law with a focus on catastrophic climate change.- Early life :Eleanor E...
, would marry (taking her husband's last name, Raskin), divorce, join the Students for a Democratic SocietyStudents for a Democratic SocietyStudents for a Democratic Society was a student activist movement in the United States that was one of the main iconic representations of the country's New Left. The organization developed and expanded rapidly in the mid-1960s before dissolving at its last convention in 1969...
, and become a leader in the Weather UndergroundWeather Underground (organization)Weatherman, known colloquially as the Weathermen and later the Weather Underground Organization , was an American radical left organization. It originated in 1969 as a faction of Students for a Democratic Society composed for the most part of the national office leadership of SDS and their...
domestic terrorist group. Eleanor would marry fellow Weatherman Jeff JonesJeff Jones (activist)Jeff Jones is an environmental activist and consultant in Upstate New York. He was a national officer in Students for a Democratic Society, a founding member of Weatherman, and a leader of the Weather Underground....
in 1981. Their son, Thai Jones (born in 1977), is a nationally known journalist. In 2004, Thai Jones published a history of his family's leftist political involvement, A Radical Line: From the Labor Movement to the Weather Underground, One Family's Century of Conscience.