December 9 - The Cordiner Doctrine

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.