Correspondence between the UE national office and CIO national headquarters

Correspondence between the UE national office and CIO national headquarters comprises the bulk of the UE National Office Files. Moreover, this series contains important minutes of UE Executive Board (1948-1949) meetings regarding the union's protest against CIO-sanctioned raiding and its eminent expulsion from the labor congress. Principal correspondents include: James B. Carey, James Matles, Julius Emspak, and Allan S. Who'd, John Brophy, John L. Lewis, and Philip Murray of the CIO. Ralph Hetzel and Walter Smethurst (executive assistants to the CIO Chairman and President respectively) answered the bulk of the correspondence addressed to the CIO national office.

A sizeable portion of the series contains letters to the CIO's national office from local union officers and rank and file UE members. These were forwarded to Carey because they touched upon some facet of the UE's jurisdiction, particularly correspondence dealing with regional and local assessments of organizational opportunities for the union. Carey's and Matles' correspondence with Allan Who'd (CIO Director of Organization) is especially insightful for documenting the complexity of the UE's jurisdictional problems with the IBEW and its rivalry with other CIO unions (SWOC particularly) in carving out bargaining units within overlapping industries such as metal and machinery, automobile, and rubber. Matles and Who'd corresponded frequently with regard to the allocation of CIO resources and coordinated efforts of CIO-affiliated unions in furthering organization work within the mass production industries. Other topics include: the UE's endorsement of President Roosevelt's National Defense Policies; Carey and Who'd's work with the CIO's Unemployment Committee; UE and IBEW unity within the electrical industry; and communism.