She Was One of Us by Brigid O'Farrell

Author:Brigid O'Farrell [O'Farrell, Brigid]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Women, Political Science, Labor & Industrial Relations, History, United States, 20th Century, Historical
ISBN: 9780801462450
Google: gb0EUkyDKy8C
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2012-01-15T04:27:23+00:00

The Cold War at Home

As ER fought for the human rights covenants, the country was once again gripped by fear of communism. The determination to contain the Soviet Union abroad was accompanied by a drive to purge dissent and enforce conformity at home. White working-class Americans, many of whom were union members, were moving to the suburbs, buying houses, and starting families. While they hoped to enjoy the “American dream,” their children were learning to duck under their desks in case of nuclear war, and some families were building bomb shelters in their backyards. In the name of national security, union leaders and members even vaguely suspected of communist affiliation were effectively attacked by a wide range of people using multiple tools. Charges of “un-American” activities were investigated by federal agencies and congressional committees, became the subject of articles and sermons, were pursued by employers as well as rival labor leaders, and led to courtrooms and ruined reputations. While Communist Party membership was not illegal, by 1954 three out of four Americans thought that members of the party should lose their citizenship.12

Under enormous legal, political, and public pressure the CIO moved away from its previous tolerance of left-wing unions. These unions had defied CIO policy by supporting Henry Wallace’s third party presidential campaign and refusing to comply with the Taft-Hartley Act’s requirement that unions file affidavits attesting that they had no communists in leadership positions. At the CIO executive board meeting in May 1949 Phil Murray began the effort to expel unions that did not file affidavits, and the convention that year established a series of three-man trial committees to assess charges of communist affiliation against member unions. Some leaders, including Carey, collaborated with federal agencies and congressional investigating committees. When the left-led unions went to court to argue that the affidavit requirement was unconstitutional, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against them. Simultaneously the CIO executive board voted to withdraw from the WFTU because of Soviet dominance and joined with the AF of L to form the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), which excluded unions in communist-led countries. The CIO came into compliance with federal law and helped lay the groundwork for the merger with the AF of L, but the price was high. By the time the CIO was finished, eleven unions had been expelled and it had lost almost one-third of its membership. Many of the left-wing members who were purged or chose to depart included African Americans, women, and white men who were effective shop floor organizers committed to equality in the workplace.13

During that summer the largest of the left-leaning unions, the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers (UE), withdrew from the CIO. Murray chartered a new union, the International Union of Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers (IUE), and appointed Jim Carey, longtime secretary of the CIO and former president of the UE, to head the organization. The UE refused to cede control, and bitter struggles for the allegiance of local unions broke out around the country.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.