Them and us: struggles of a rank-and-file union

by James J. Matles, James Higgins

Book by Matles, James J

Genres: Labor, Nonfiction, History

311 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1974

Reviews

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

This account, co-written by an ex-machinist and UE organizer Mattles and a Harvard graduate Higgins, was in 1974 one of the first accounts of the militant, highly democratic, activist union in the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE). The book helped center later histories of the UE, that of its rise from the red unions of the TUUL that provided the cadre of organizers to winning huge contracts in GE, Westinhouse, and RCA, to its successes beating off the corporate-funded counter-offensives and then its struggle for survival during the Cold War purges of radical unions, and finally its rebounding in the 1960s to build back to around 100,000 members. Since the book was written, more robust accounts of highly democratic practices and rank and file control of UE have led to a lot of what-ifs about the nature of the CIO as an alternative labor federation, even as UE survives today, militant as ever but greatly reduced from its strength of the late 1940s (as is much of the labor movement.)

One looking to read a general history of the UE could start here before moving onto more recently written histories.