Margaret Darin was born in 1908. Darin grew up in Turtle Creek, Pennsylvania, a town east of Pittsburgh, and went to work for Westinghouse Electric in East Pittsburgh in c. 1929, as an assembler. Though she had not gone to high school, Darin was chosen to attend the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers and the Brookwood Labor College. These were experiences she valued highly in later years. Darin was heavily involved in the organizing campaign when the movement to create a union in the Westinghouse plant gathered force in the mid-1930's. The Westinghouse local union, once formed, went through several name changes and affiliation, before finally settling in more or less permanently as Local 601 of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers (UE). Darin was the Local's first Recording Secretary, a paid staff position she held for six years, and was active in the prolonged effort to obtain a signed, written contract from Westinghouse. Additionally she was active in organizing work in the local and in UE District 6, which covered Western Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Darin helped organize the First UE Women's Conference in District 6, a conference addressed specifically to the needs of women workers in the electrical industry. She took the last name Stasik in the 1940's after her marriage. In the early 1940's a reaction set in within the Local 601 and from forces outside it against the union's left wing leadership group. Darin, along with Charles Newell, lost union elections. Following this, Westinghouse refused to hire Darin when she sought to become re-employed there. Darin was taken on staff with the National union for a time in 1942 and helped the UE win an election in the Westinghouse Cleveland plant in December 1943. Darin left the UE staff in early 1944.
From the description of Papers of Margaret Darin Stasik, 1936-1945. (University of Pittsburgh). WorldCat record id: 30621455
