Labor, Civil Rights, and the Hughes Tool Company

Chapter Five: Jim Crow Wearing Steel-Toed Shoes and Safety Glasses: Hughes Tool’s race-based unionism, 1940–1943

chapter five Jim Crow Wearing Steel-Toed Shoes and Safety Glasses hughes tool’s race-based unionism, 1940–1943 LABOR RELATIONS AT HUGHES TOOL entered a transitional period following the Labor Board’s dissolution, in October, 1941, of its company unions, the Employees Welfare Organization and Hughes Tool Colored Club. The company lost two allies in its campaign against the CIO, but company union loyalists formed the Independent Metal Workers Union to replace them. The IMW, a single-firm union associated with the Confederated Unions of America (CUA), established a strong foothold at Hughes Tool in late 1940. Though it distanced itself from management, many CIO loyalists regarded it as merely a new version of the defunct EWO and HTC.1 More importantly for the CIO, the IMW stood as the only obstacle in its way to eventually securing the collective bargaining rights at Hughes Tool. IMW unionists claimed they spurned the CIO because they believed that “big shot labor dictators and their stooges” dominated the union.2 They trumpeted the IMW’s loose affiliation with the CUA and its unique status as a union that existed only at Hughes Tool. As such, the IMW was supposedly keenly aware of employees’ needs, attitudes, and customs, and was best suited to represent them. IMW officers promised strong union representation that would bring fair and equitable labor agreements without introducing radical notions such as the CIO’s interracial unionism.3 The IMW’s constitution established two racially segregated locals. It mandated that “Local No. 1 shall have complete, final and exclusive authority to negotiate [for] all white employees. . . . Local No. 2 shall have complete, final and exclusive authority to negotiate [for] all colored employees. Each Local shall have full authority to handle its own affairs without interference from the other Local.”4 108 The Wagner Act allowed the IMW to maintain Hughes Tool’s traditional Jim Crow unionism, while at the same time empowering it to democratically seek the bargaining rights through a Labor Board certification election. Although the IMW and the CIO discriminated, to varying degrees, against blacks at Hughes Tool, African Americans represented an important voting bloc and had the power to determine the outcome of any election. Both unions lobbied hard for their support. Former EWO president Clarence Ramby formed a steering committee to organize IMW Local No. 1. Between August and December, 1940, it worked to “form a union of their own choice for the purpose of collective bargaining, grievances, wages, working conditions, and so forth.” Local No. 1 quickly attracted a loyal following; by early 1941 it had recruited more than 1,300 members. Many had been members of the EWO.5 Richard Guess, former HTC president, volunteered to form a committee and organize IMW Local No. 2, the Jim Crow local. On November 10, 1940, more than 200 blacks, out of the 806 employed by Hughes Tool at the time, attended an organizational meeting, formed a union, and agreed to affiliate with the white local.6 It is unclear how many of the HTC’s former 611 members joined Local No. 2.7 Local No. 1’s steering committee decided to affiliate with the Confederated Unions of America, which was a loose confederation of independent unions. The CUA was modeled after the CIO and AFL but had several important differences: it maintained no full-time staff, did not provide help to its affiliated unions in negotiating contracts, had no legal department, did not have a strike fund, and collected a 2 percent per capita tax to fund itself. The CUA’s tax system allowed 98 percent of Local No. 1’s dues money to remain in its Houston bank account.8 In comparison, the highly bureaucratic International CIO collected a 75 percent per capita tax from Hughes Tool Local No. 1742. Only 25 percent of Local No. 1742’s dues money stayed in its Houston bank account; the balance was transferred to the International CIO’s Pittsburgh treasury to fund national organizing campaigns, legal counsel, salaries, and a strike fund.9 The CUA was segregated and refused to charter IMW Local No. 2 or allow it an affiliation. African Americans in Local No. 2 voted to affiliate with the Confederation of Independent Unions. The Confederation of Independent Unions was a Jim Crow labor organization similar to the CUA.10 Led by Ramby and Guess, the IMW’s steering committees came out in support of Hughes Tool’s Jim...