United Automobile Worker

Rank and File Doublecrossed as UE Delegates Violate Instructions

Rightwingers had the votes to beat the anti-CIO leadership of the United Electrical Workers if convention delegates had followed the instructions of local union memberships, James B. Carey, UE right-wing spokesman, charges. His statement followed a wave of UE membership meetings where delegates who violated membership instructions at the recent convention were suspended from their locals.

Carey, Secretary-Treasurer of the National CIO and leader of anti-Communist forces in the UE, was a convention delegate and floor leader for the pro-CIO forces. The actual vote which re-elected UE President Albert Fitzgerald was 2,335. His right-wing opponent, Ed Kelley of Lynn, Massachusetts, got 1,970. The contest for the other two top posts was about the same.

The vote for president would have put Kelley into the presidency with 1,957 votes and given Fitzgerald only 1,878, if some 400 odd votes from right-wing locals had gone as instructed by their membership.

NO SURPRISE

"It comes as no surprise that locals grossly misrepresented by left-wing delegates at the UE convention," says Carey, "are now repudiating those delegates and even suspending them from local membership.

"Such democratic rank-and-file action is clinching proof of what we have contended all along—that the Communist-dominated leadership definitely does not represent the membership of our union.

"We know that this kind of militant rank-and-file expression exposes the absurdity of left-wing claims to represent the UE's membership and we are certain that it means the death-knell of the Communist stranglehold that has been clamped on the UE for the past eight years."

The UE convention in Cleveland last month was the scene of sharp exchanges between right and left-wing groups. After years of futile efforts to regain control of the UE, the right-wing forces of the third largest CIO affiliate appeared this year to have a fighting chance to elect new officers.

Top UE leadership had been preaching a consistently anti-CIO program, attacking the national CIO policy on domestic and international issues. A showdown on the whole affair is due this month when the CIO national convention will be held in Cleveland. Right-wing forces with a program built around support of the national CIO are expected to ask for the UE charter, while the left-wing group in control of the UE has laid down a set of "conditions" to the CIO for staying in the parent group.

MEET BOLT THREAT

The rightwingers answered this threat to bolt the CIO by organizing a committee of their own. If the CIO expels the UE, this body will meet with CIO officers "to determine the best way to provide a CIO international union in the electrical industry free from the domination of the Communist Party."