The records of the Education Department of the URCLPWA are intermittent files of publications, handouts and other printed materials, and a few letters. They relate to the department's educational function, and document the organizing efforts of the union in the 1940s, the controversy in various states concerning right-to-work legislation (1954-1958), the 1954 Goodyear strike and especially the 1957-1958 O'Sullivan strike. The collection's paper records are arranged in an alphabetical subject file and chronologically thereunder.
Included are copies of three constitutions of the union (1946, 1964, 1966); convention materials which consist of the published proceedings of four conventions (1944, 1953, 1962, and 1964), published reports of union officers to six conventions held between 1937 and 1964, and published resolutions adopted at the conventions of 1956 and 1960; and three items of correspondence (1954-1959) including a routine letter from Hubert Humphrey (May 26, 1959). Filed here also are minutes of the council meetings of District #7, New York (1958) and District #1, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (1964); and miscellaneous materials (1934-1968), which include pamphlets, reports, agreements, guidelines, and questionnaires.
The focus of the records is in the publications and printed materials, which reflect primarily the activities of the department under Joe Glazer and William Abbott (a graduate of the University of Wisconsin) in the late 1950s and early 1960s. This file contains histories of the United Rubber Workers, a union songbook, a shop steward's manual, and other materials providing information to union members on the national economy and politics, as well as union procedures. Of interest in this file also is the transcript of a taped interview (undated) with John D. House, first president of Goodyear Local 2, the “first CIO union.”
The staff conference manual is the agenda and related materials for a conference held January 11-14, 1961. Topics under consideration at the conference included organizing, legal problems, contracts, communication and leadership, automation, pensions and insurance, and the URW skilled trades program.
The O'Sullivan Rubber Corporation (Winchester, Virginia) strike is the most substantially documented union activity in the collection. Included are periodic reports to the media, newspaper articles, fact sheets on the progress of the strike, and materials used in promoting a national boycott in support of the O'Sullivan strikers.
The disc recordings contain 1958 vote spots and union songs by Joe Glazer and Ruby McDonald. They are listed below after the subject file.
