General Electric Company

Founded 1892. Corporate interests include: Broadcasting; Electric Components; Household Appliances; Lighting Equipment; Motors; Telecommunications; Electromedical Industry.

Founded 1892.

Schenectady, NY.

General Electric Co. was founded 1892. Corporate interests include: broadcasting; electric components; household appliances; lighting equipment; motors; telecommunications; electromedical industry.

At the time of these negotiations, General Electric Company was the fourth largest industrial corporation in the United States. It manufactured over 200,000 individual products ranging from toasters to turbines.

Approximately 120,000 of its 250,000 employees were represented by labor organizations. There were no nationally certified unions or multi-plant units in the company, each union being represented on a plant by plant basis. The company conducted national bargaining with three of the one hundred odd unions representing it's workers, these being the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, (UE), the Pattern Makers League of North America, and the International Union of Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers, (IUE). The latter union was certified as bargaining agent for approximately 70,000 G.E. employees in 1950 as a result of the expulsion of the UE from the Congress of Industrial Organizations for alleged communist activities. One year contracts were successfully negotiated between the company and the IUE between 1950 and 1955. In 1955 the parties entered into a five year agreement which included a wage escalator clause and provisions for a reopening of the contract in 1958 on the question of employment security. The contract terms set forth by the company in the 1955 agreement were apparently regretted during the period of economic decline that began in 1957. This attitude was reflected in the hard economic line taken by the company in the 1958 bargaining session, which ended in a stalemate. The stage was thus set for the 1960 contract negotiations, the company intending to keep costs down while the union hoped to recoup the losses it suffered in 1958.

Preparations for the negotiations commenced at meetings between company and union officials on January 26, April 1 and April 26 at which time the company supplied the union with information and materials deemed vital to the impending negotiations. It was agreed at these meetings that negotiations of the employment security issue would open on June 13, approximately two months before the contract date for the opening of formal negotiations. The union presented the full slate of its demands at the June 13 meeting and requested that full negoitations commence at an earlier date than scheduled.

Formal negotiations between the parties opened on July 19 and continued through 45 meetings, ending on October 22, after a three week strike. The I.U.E. filed charges against the company before the National Labor Relations Board on September 21, October 4, October 14, 1960 and March 16, 1961 charging the company with unfair labor practices under sections 8(a) 1, 3 and 5, and sections 2 (6) and (7) of the National Labor Relations Act.

The specific charges against the company under Section 8 (a) (7) (to interfere with, restrain or coerce employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed in Section 7), stemmed from the company's policy of bargaining with local units in derogation of the union's status as national bargaining agent. Section 8 (a) (5) (to refuse to bargain collectively with representatives of the employees) was allegedly violated by the company's refusal to supply vacation and pension information to the union during the course of negotiations. Section 8 (a) (3) (discrimination in regard to hire or tenure of employment or any term or conditions of employment to encourage or discourage membership in any labor organization) was con- sidered to have been violated when the employer refused to reinstate twenty workers who had been replaced during the strike. These violations were incurred by the employer as defined under sections 2 (6) and (7) of the N.L.R.A.

On April 1, 1963 N.L.R.B. trial Examiner Arthur Leff issued an intermediate report finding the company guilty of the aforementioned violations and recommended that the company cease and desist from such further activities. In addition to specific charges, the examiner criticized the company's overall approach to and conduct of bargaining. In finding such, he attached the cease and desist order to the bargaining tactics, thereby ruling that the Bulwaristic strategy was not in the interest of true collective bargaining. The ruling of the trial examiner was upheld by a majority decision of the NLRB in its decision on December 6, 1964.

The General Electric Company (GE) was founded in 1892 as the result of a merger between Edison General Electric Company and the Thomas-Houston Company. GE competed in the lighting, transportation, industrial products, power transmission, and medical equipment industries, as well as producing heating and cooking devices, plastics, and fans.

In 1956 GE won a bid against 28 other companies to produce the ERMA (Electronic Recording Machine Accounting) computer system for Bank of America, despite President Ralph Cordiner’s strong objections to GE’s entrance into the commercial computer market. The $31 million ERMA contract was the largest non-government computer contract given at the time. Prior to 1956, GE’s involvement in the then-fledgling computer industry was limited to the production of vacuum tubes, relays, small motors, and other components for IBM.

ERMA was to be a checking account bookkeeping system consisting of computers and automated check-handling and sorting equipment. The prototype had been conceived by the Stanford Research Institute in 1950.

As a result of the Bank of America contract, the GE Computer Department was established in 1956 in Phoenix, Arizona to implement the ERMA program. It was later formally renamed the Information Systems Equipment Division and on October 1, 1970 was sold to Honeywell and became Honeywell Information Systems (HIS). HIS was initially owned 18 ½ percent by GE and 81 ½ percent by Honeywell. Though it appeared to be a joint venture with Honeywell, GE was required to divest itself of all HIS or Honeywell stock acquired as a result of the transaction within ten years. In addition, GE would receive $110 million in notes and Honeywell stock valued at $125 million.

Homer R. (Barney) Oldfield is credited for the successful Bank of America contract bid. Oldfield had received his B.S. and M.S. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1938 and l939 in Aeronautical Engineering (Instrumentation). While a research associate at MIT, Oldfield was called to active duty with the U.S. Army in 1941 where he helped develop microwave antiaircraft devices. After he was relieved from active duty in 1945, Oldfield found employment with GE as a sales manager and later as operations manager in the Electronics Division, and in 1951 became director of the GE Advanced Electronics Center at Cornell University.

In 1953 Oldfield set up and then managed the GE Microwave Laboratory at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, where he was at the time of the Bank of America ERMA proposal. In 1956 he became the general manager of GE’s Computer Department in Phoenix. In 1958 Oldfield left the GE Computer Department and conducted a three-month study program to explore the applications of new electronic technology projected over the next 5-10 years for GE at their Lynn River, Massachusetts location. At the end of the study, Oldfield left GE to work at Raytheon as General Manager of the Equipment Division.

Oldfield continued to follow stories about the GE Computer Department well after the division’s sale to Honeywell. Oldfield reconnected with several Computer Department alumni in the 1990s and used their recollections to construct his history of the Department’s development and demise. His interest culminated in the publication, in 1996, of King of the Seven Dwarfs: General Electric's Ambiguous Challenge to the Computer Industry .