The United Public Workers of America (1946–1952) was an American labor union representing federal, state, county, and local government employees.
The union challenged the constitutionality of the Hatch Act of 1939, which prohibited federal executive branch employees from engaging in politics.
[23] In 1937, the CIO formed a new union for U.S. government employees, the United Federal Workers of America (UFWA), from elements of the AFGE.
[18] The impetus for the merger was the relative failure of the UFWA to attract new members, and SCMWA essentially absorbed the smaller federal union.
[29] With a membership of more than 100,000 (out of six million public-sector workers at all levels nationwide), UPWA claimed to be the largest public employee union in the nation.
[46] It proposed a collective bargaining law for federal public employees modeled on the National Labor Relations Act, and in 1949 began supporting legislation (the Rhodes-Johnston bill) which would implement such a system.
[1][27][47] Founded at the end of World War II, the union promoted policies designed to minimize the impact of economic conversion on women, African Americans, and other minorities.
[52][53] In 1947, Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act, which made it illegal for federal employees to strike and penalized them with immediate dismissal.
Unlike many unions of the era, the UPWA insisted that Caucasian and African American employees receive the same wages, benefits, and workplace rights.
In early 1947, UPWA accused nine federal agencies and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development of blatantly refusing to hire African Americans.
[60] In August 1949, UPWA members (accompanied by actor and singer Paul Robeson) picketed the White House to protest racially discriminatory hiring and employment practices and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.
[61] The union also played a significant role within the CIO in lobbying for the strengthening of the Fair Employment Practices Commission, a federal agency established in 1941 to ensure that companies with government contracts did not discriminate on the basis of race or religion.
In 1947, the UPWA engaged in a campaign to save 2,200 African American jobs at a Bureau of Internal Revenue processing center in the Bronx in New York City.
[66] The UPWA quickly formed a "black popular front" known as the Citizens Committee for the Job Security of Bronx Internal Revenue Employees to protest Campbell's actions.
[69] In 1946, the House Un-American Activities Committee accused UPWA of conspiracy to sabotage U.S. military operations by organizing workers in the Panama Canal Zone.
[74] By June 1947, Local 713 had won wage and overtime pay improvements, more vacation time, equal admission to civil service exams for non-whites, and removal of signs barring "Silver" workers from "Gold" facilities.
Seeking to cut off what he saw as impending hysteria, he established the Temporary Committee on Employee Loyalty in 1946 to investigate allegations of communist political views among federal employees (and fire those found to be insufficiently patriotic, democratic, and capitalist), and in February 1947 announced the Truman Doctrine (under which the U.S. would support democratic regimes facing armed insurrection or interference in their political processes by outside parties).
On November 24, 1948, Flaxer sent a letter to Truman decrying the tendency to brand a person disloyal simply because they advocated for improvements in civil rights.
[82] As the loyalty oath issue came to the fore, the UPWA's long-standing lawsuit (initiated by Lee Pressman under the auspices of the old UFWA) finally reached the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court openly rejected the doctrine in Wieman v. Updegraff,[86] and a wide number of high court decisions in areas such as nonpartisan speech, due process, search and seizure, the right to marry, the right to bear children, equal protection, education, and receipt of public benefits over the next two decades continued to undermine the doctrine.
[87] Although the Supreme Court later reaffirmed Mitchell in 1973 in Civil Service Comm'n v. Letter Carriers,[88] it did so on the grounds that permitting public employees to engage in political activity was dangerous.
In 1947, Congress had overridden President Truman's veto of the Taft-Hartley Act, which, among other things, required union leaders to sign a non-communist affidavit.
[93] Among these were Walter Reuther, the newly elected head of the United Auto Workers, who had achieved a razor-thin victory over incumbent president R. J. Thomas by building an anti-communist coalition within the union.
[100] In May 1948, an "anti-communist faction" within the UPWA announced it would leave to set up a new Government workers union within the CIO; it claimed to speak for 10,000 Federal, state, and municipal members.
[115] As the trial approached in January 1950, the UPWA issued a lengthy document which purported to show that it had not parroted the Communist Party line and had upheld the CIO political platform.
[116] When the informal trial opened on January 9, the UPWA attempted to bring more than 250 witnesses in its defense, but the crowd was barred on the grounds it would intimidate the committee.
[126] The UPWA executive board sponsored a union-wide vote of confidence in Flaxer in May 1950, who easily secured a large majority.
[126] The UPWA considered forming a new national labor federation with the other expelled CIO unions in November 1950, but this effort never coalesced.
Testifying before a one-man subcommittee of the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1952, he refused to turn over the union's membership lists to Congress.
A number of notable people belonged to or worked from the United Public Workers of America during the union's short life.