On this day in labor history, the year was 1953.
That was the day Ralph Cordiner, president of General Electric issued his “Cordiner Doctrine.”
It was the height of McCarthyism and the Second Red Scare.
The House Un-American Activities Committee persisted in its witch hunting of trade unionists, labor militants and alleged communists.
It targeted many of the unions purged from the CIO in 1949.
The United Electrical Workers was one of those unions.
The UE had organized the electrical manufacturing industry, including General Electric.
Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy and HUAC each began investigating UE local 301 at the General Electric plant in Schenectady, New York.
GE didn’t like the militancy of the UE or the bad publicity McCarthy generated about the company harboring subversives.
So President Cordiner issued a memo, which stated that any employee called before a Senate or legislative committee hearing, who invoked the Fifth Amendment in response to inquiries regarding alleged Communist ties, shall be terminated.
When McCarthy came to Albany, New York to hold hearings on alleged subversive activities three months later, hundreds of UE members packed the room, booing and jeering the senator and cheering the defendants.
One African-American worker demanded “Why don’t you investigate subversion by GE of the Jim Crow system, of the profits taken from the sweat of my people?”
McCarthy abruptly ended the hearings.
But twenty-eight UE members would be fired at GE.
Other electrical manufacturers like Westinghouse followed suit.
It was a devastating blow to the union and to the fired members who had helped build the UE from ground up.
But the union persevered and remains a powerful representative for workers in the industry to this day.
October 22 - Pretty Boy Floyd Is Gunned Down
October 21 - Through Rain, Sleet, Snow & Anthrax
October 20 - Remembering Debs
October 19 - Tragedy on the Tracks
October 18 - Voice of an Era
October 17 - Fighting to End Poverty
October 16 - Thank A Farmer
October 15 - Too Little, Too Late for Radiation Sickness
October 14 - Marching for Equality
October 13 - We Whipped the Ivy League and You Can Too!
October 12 - Workers Begin to Come Together
October 11 - Remembering Mary Heaton Vorse
October 10 - With a Push of a Button, Oceans Are Joined
October 9 - The End of the Boom Boom RoOm
October 8 - The Great Chicago Fire
October 7 - Housing Now!
October 6 - Clinton Signs the Hatch Act
October 5 - Hollywood’s Black Friday
October 4 - A Chain Reaction of Human Misery
October 3 - Remembering Woody Guthrie
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