IBM Workers United and the Alliance@IBM
- Updated March 10, 2025
By Colette Perold
The IBM union handed out their first pamphlet at the IBM factory in Endicott, New York, in 1976. A pre-majority union for all forty years of their existence, they called themselves IBM Workers United starting in 1976, then renamed as the Alliance@IBM when they affiliated with the Communication Workers of America (CWA) in 1999. They eventually closed in 2016 after IBM shed over 70% of its U.S.-based workforce, decimating the Alliance’s membership levels. But at its height, the Alliance@IBM had members in almost every state where IBM had factories and branch offices. The case study that follows describes their origins, several pivotal moments in their growth, their affiliation with the CWA, their orientation to pre-majority unionism (what some of the workers called “minority” unionism, and what CWA at the time was calling “member-based organizing,” plain and simple), challenges they faced, and wins they achieved over their 40-year history.
Pre-Majority Origins
IBM Workers United (IBM WU) began as a cohort of IBM manufacturing workers that IBM management called the “troublemaker generation.” Hired in 1973 and 1974, many were self-described radicals and anti-war activists — some, Vietnam War veterans themselves — who didn’t swallow the company line about IBM being a “family” as easily as their predecessors did.
They didn’t think of themselves as a union from the start. Lee Conrad, one of the original IBM WU members, told me: “It was just a small group of us that were a little ticked off at what the company was going through at the time.” They put out a flyer in Endicott and had local community activists hand it out. From there, they expanded to Poughkeepsie New York; Burlington, Vermont; San José, California; Charlotte and Raleigh, North Carolina; and other newer IBM plants in the South. Their initial campaigns were a mix of broader political interventions, like raising awareness of IBM’s role in South African Apartheid, and local environmental and shop-floor concerns. Chief among these were building broad ties with local community organizations in Endicott to force IBM to clean up and compensate for its toxic spills in the area, and getting IBM to protect its workers from the toxic chemicals it was forcing them to use in the plants.
Once IBM WU went public in 1984 (see next section), they began traveling to different IBM plants around the country, leafleting on company grounds, and signing up workers to their mailing lists. The workers developed activist and informal steward networks across the company, regularly confronting their bosses at shop-floor meetings called by management, and successfully pushing back against top-down decisions about restructuring, shift length, benefits, and more. Beyond public confrontation, they also engaged in traditional bread-and-butter organizing campaigns, winning occasional concessions for groups of workers at a time, sometimes in one facility, and on at least one occasion, for an entire job classification across the firm nationally (customer engineers). They also became a visible presence both inside and outside IBM’s yearly shareholder meetings, taking over discussions about shareholder actions from the inside, and hosting rallies attended by local AFL-CIO affiliate members on the outside.
By the time they affiliated with the Alliance in 1999, IBM workers favored a pre-majority approach for three primary reasons. First, they had seen how major tech firms colluded with the NLRB to dole out unfavorable bargaining-unit determinations when workers did file for elections one facility at a time. The case of a failed election at NCR stood out to Lee as particularly demoralizing. IBM as a corporation was more powerful than many of these other firms, and IBM workers believed IBM would do the same.
Many of the workers eventually came to see the blue-collar/white-collar coalitions they had forged from IBM factories to branch offices as a source of strength, and kicking out the white-collar workers divided them unnecessarily.
Second, they had brief experiences organizing toward recognition votes one factory at a time, first with the IUE in 1995, and then with the IBEW in 1999. These unsuccessful attempts showed the workers the dangers of carving up their membership into NLRB bargaining-unit distinctions prematurely. Many of the workers eventually came to see the blue-collar/white-collar coalitions they had forged from IBM factories to branch offices as a source of strength, and kicking out the white-collar workers divided them unnecessarily — the boss was already trying to divide the workplace, and they saw no reason to aid in that effort.
Third, IBM was a unique type of anti-union employer. While the firm engaged in repressive union-busting tactics, they relied more heavily on what the Alliance@IBM’s CWA staff organizer Steve Early called their “union substitution apparatus.” Since the mid-1930s IBM continuously boasted some of the highest wages and strongest benefits packages in the industry. It developed “open-door” employee complaint policies that created, for some workers, a sense of being listened to at work (though as Early and Rand write, workers often called these “‘open door’ grievance mechanisms” an “‘out-the-door’ procedure for workers who try to use them”).
IBM developed a culture of company loyalty that Alliance member-turned CWA organizer Ralph Montefusco describes as a “cult” that ran on internalized guilt and threats of “betrayal” for stepping outside of the “family.” (For context, for many decades IBM mandated workers sing along to the IBM company songbook filled with lyrics praising IBM executives.) For IBM WU and Alliance@IBM worker leaders, choosing a minority-union approach — with an eye toward an eventual contract — was their best shot at growing their ranks in this particular type of anti-union workplace.
Sources of Support: International Unions, Tech Worker Networks, CWA, and Other Organized Groups Within the Firm
While IBM famously never negotiated a collective bargaining agreement in the U.S., many of its international operations did. These international unions were one of the greatest sources of strength for IBM WU members. The turning point for IBM WU came in 1983 when the IBM Japan union reached out to IBM WU and representatives from both met in Montreal. There, they planned the first international IBM workers meeting in Tokyo to take place the following year, with representation from Canada, Greece, France, Germany, and Italy. These international meetings became annual occurrences. The group initially called itself IBM Workers’ International Solidarity, then merged with the Switzerland-based UNI Global Union and renamed itself the IBM Global Union Alliance. It existed until 2014, and by the end, had 15 member countries.
In 1983, nothing emboldened IBM Workers United members more than seeing that IBM was actually capable of working with unions, and seemed to tolerate them well enough elsewhere.
But back in 1983, nothing emboldened IBM Workers United members more than seeing that IBM was actually capable of working with unions, and seemed to tolerate them well enough elsewhere. At this point IBM WU was still underground in the U.S., so when IBM WU leader Lee Conrad attended the 1984 meeting in Japan and was told that IBM Japan management was “looking for the American,” his Japanese co-workers gave him sunglasses to wear. (“Like that would help!” said Lee. “No, all that did was help them say, ‘there’s the guy with the sunglass, that must be him.’”) When he came back to the U.S., he felt empowered by the international solidarity, and also realized there was “no such thing as an underground anymore.” This is when IBM WU decided to go public.
Another source of strength outside of IBM WU’s membership came from early tech-worker networks based largely in Massachusetts and California. The CWA was working on several campaigns starting in the early-1980s to organize high-tech workers, bringing union and non-union workers together across the industry to share tactics at firms like NCR, Western Electric, Digital Equipment Corporation, Wavetek, and others. IBM WU members were always active in these networks.
In 1987, the CWA under President Morty Bahr committed to organize IBM globally in collaboration with unions around the world, publishing a global study of the company and its labor relations. While these pronouncements aggravated some IBM WU members who felt CWA leadership was acting without consulting workers on the ground, IBM WU also believed that an information- and resource-sharing partnership with CWA would work in their favor. They agreed to collaborate, but only after CWA committed in writing to respect IBM WU’s autonomy.
In addition to working with community and labor leaders outside the plants, they also worked with another IBM employee network, the Black Workers Alliance (BWA). IBM WU grew out of the manufacturing plants, and BWA, the offices. The BWA also included managers in its ranks. But the two groups found much to work on together, from their campaign to get IBM to pull its operations from Apartheid South Africa to fighting racial discrimination within IBM. They also spoke at each other’s events. BWA leader Ken Branch was one of the closest connections to IBM WU, and joined international IBM union meetings as well.
The Pension Uprising
The biggest turning point in their growth came in 1999, when IBM went to a cash-balance pension plan, cutting the value of workers’ pensions by 40%. “All hell broke loose at IBM,” said Lee. “I started getting calls at work saying, ‘Are you that union guy?’ We ought to start doing something!’” While the preexisting IBM WU structures and the visibility of its leaders helped support the upsurge in worker activity, the spontaneous nature of the uprising also exceeded its bounds.
Mass meetings sprung up around the U.S., and meeting rooms and halls were standing room only.
Mass meetings sprung up around the U.S., and meeting rooms and halls were standing room only. Congressional leaders took on the fight as their own, most famously Vermont’s Bernie Sanders (his 1999 town hall on the issue is available online), New York’s Maurice Hinchey, and others. IBM was forced to testify in congress. Through the uprising, union membership grew to its highest point of over 400 members, and their official “supporter” list shot to over 4,000. The company began issuing concessions: depending on age and year of service, some workers became eligible to opt into keeping their pension.
The pension uprising helped IBM workers see for themselves what the union was capable of, and that same year they formally affiliated with CWA District 1. Administratively, they were part of a “national Local,” Local 1701. (Much to Trekkies’ dismay, the number came from the IBM Endicott address, not the USS Enterprise.)
Becoming the Alliance@IBM
The CWA affiliation was a natural fit for the workers. While they always kept the possibility of a collective bargaining agreement alive, both they and the CWA knew that they had to keep building the union from the ground up before they could get there. Like the UE (see: PWOC and CAAMWU case studies), the CWA was one of the only other major unions that recognized the difficulties of NLRB election drives in the high-tech sector and was interested in supporting these efforts. Steve Early explained to me CWA’s relationship to pre-majority unionism in the high-tech sector as follows: “Some of the way CWA ended up with supporting these projects was trying it the traditional way, being rebuffed in that fashion, not disappearing IUE-style [referring to the earlier, short-lived IUE effort at IBM], and then trying to find a way for as long as possible to continue to support people in their own self-organizing.”
The relationship between members and leadership was generally strong, though as with most pre-majority campaigns affiliated with established unions, there were occasionally tense negotiations with the CWA executive board over the budget. Often in these cases, member-leaders feel they have to “prove” themselves or their campaigns in a way formally recognized unions do not. “There were times I was pulling my hair out,” said Lee. “You can see I don’t have any left!” But in general, CWA was very supportive of the Alliance@IBM effort, contributing roughly $150,000 a year to the union, with membership dues bringing in roughly $15,000 yearly.
‘What we care about is workers self-organizing and building something.’
Both Lee and Ralph attribute CWA’s steadfast support of the Alliance@IBM to Larry Cohen, who was CWA’s Director of Organizing and Mobilizing when the Alliance kicked off, and President for most of the final decade of its existence. In an interview, Larry told me his orientation to non-contractual unionism is one that runs deep across much of CWA to this day: “What we care about is workers self-organizing and building something.” Under Larry’s leadership as Organizing Director and then President, worker campaigns had to meet the criteria of having a “vital organizing committee,” meaning each committee member had to be able to reach at least 10 to 20 other workers “in some meaningful way,” with their organizing becoming “broader and deeper” over time.
This commitment to the organizing committee was never abstract; CWA leadership always needed the numbers. “We count everything,” said Larry. But within the criteria, CWA supported vital organizing committees’ campaigns whether the workers were likely to achieve collective bargaining or not. “I don’t think we ever abandoned any campaign that met the criteria,” said Larry. “We say that organizing is for as long as it takes.”
The workers’ affiliation with CWA helped them formalize their organizing and develop a more sustainable structure. Workers got training and support for phone banking, implementing worker rating systems to assess union support, professionalizing their communications systems and documents (something the workers say mattered a lot to IBM employees given their self-perception as an elite class of worker), and wider reach nationally for connecting with workers both in and outside IBM.
They were also able to pay someone to maintain their website and run email lists. “We were like the initiators of this kind of online union organizing at the time,” Lee told me. “It was pretty much brand new.” They used mass email blasts to plan for actions and recruit new members in smaller, more rural offices around the country. Workers would occasionally hack into the IBM system to pull new lists of workers, and in the case of a particularly large email list, a worker sent it to them saying: “it fell off a truck.” These types of “guerilla” tactics are what allowed them to keep their membership and support base informed.
Also thanks to the many strong CWA locals that existed across the country, the two shop-floor leaders who joined the CWA payroll (Ralph Montefusco and Lee Conrad) were able to access CWA resources and office space while they traveled around the U.S. supporting local organizing campaigns across the firm. Both Lee and Ralph identify this access and support as a major source of strength for their organizing outside of their respective home bases of New York and Vermont. Ralph even had keys to several CWA offices around the country, and when he traveled the country visiting Alliance committees, he was able to use those spaces to host worker meetings, make photocopies, and use a phone and computer.
Their affiliation with the CWA also allowed them to become active in their local AFL-CIO chapters, with Ralph and Lee both serving on local executive boards.
Challenges and Wins
Several Alliance@IBM members recognize they faced organizing limitations because of their pre-majority model. For example, they often struggled to turn issue-based campaign wins into longer-term organizing structures, something they credit to management’s union substitutionism. They also acknowledge the informational hurdle they faced in conveying what it meant to be part of a non-traditional union formation, without mandatory dues deductions and formal company recognition.
As often happens in pre-majority unionism, employer concessions that responded to union activity were harder to claim as union victories.
And as often happens in pre-majority unionism, employer concessions that responded to union activity were harder to claim as union victories. For example, during the pension uprising, IBM’s capitulation ended up eating into some of the union’s newly strengthened base, as several of the white-collar workers who joined the fight could no longer be convinced of the need for the union once their own immediate interests were served.
At the same time, Alliance members have no doubt that the number and scale of the worker battles they won and sustained within the company over decades would not have happened without the robust union structures they built.
Beyond winning issue-based campaigns, interrupting shareholder meetings, and many instances of holding management accountable on the shop floor, IBM WU and Alliance members had other major wins. In the early 1980s, working alongside local environmental groups in Endicott, they forced IBM to clean up a toxic spill to the tune of several million dollars. In 2005 they won damages related to an age discrimination case in response to IBM’s pension restructuring. They won a mileage campaign to support field-based Customer Engineers. They developed much closer relationships to local congressional leaders than did IBM, producing a significant advantage for the workers during local hearings over IBM’s state subsidies. They helped IBM workers in several countries, from Chile to Italy, win their own domestic battles against the firm. The list goes on.
And while they struggled to turn all of their newsletter subscribers and supporters into active, dues-paying members (the former outweighing the latter more than ten-to-one), the influence they wielded within the firm could be felt with every public action and confrontation with management. The Alliance@IBM members were seen by their co-workers as the primary authority on what was taking place within IBM, and eventually the only informational source the workers could trust. Facing looming threats of offshoring but unable to get any direct information from the company, IBM employees began leaking internal information to the Alliance, which it would then post online and send to all members, supporters, and subscribers. They became one of the most important sources of information for investigative journalists as well, which in turn weakened IBM’s public perception on a number of fronts.
IBM workers knew who would have their backs and who could actually help them overturn shop floor injustices. They kept IBM back on their heels.
All in all, in their non-traditional, pre-majority form, the Alliance achieved something remarkable: IBM workers knew who would have their backs and who could actually help them overturn shop floor injustices. They kept IBM back on their heels. Without even a contract in tow, the Alliance shifted the balance of power in the firm, and did so against all odds.
Lessons
In reflecting on their lessons from decades of struggle, Lee and Ralph had the following advice for workers in pre-majority unions today: Find like-minded people as soon as you can to help you deal with feeling isolated. Become a genuine source of real information if you’re able to, so your co-workers know they can reliably trust you. Use your communication platforms to obscure your size when you’re just starting out so you look bigger than you are. Don’t be afraid of guerilla tactics where appropriate (information leaks from employees were crucial to their success). Collaborate with environmental and community-based organizations around the local facilities where you work. Form strong ties with other unions in your area, and show up at one another’s events. Get media coverage of major issues and actions, especially around public-interest campaigns (subsidies, environmental concerns, etc). And don’t forget to do non-organizing activities together (like softball teams) so that social connections are at the base of your organizing.
‘Sometimes you can’t really predict when there’s going to be an upsurge over some issue. And it certainly helps to have a network of people with organizational experience in place when that occurs.’
As for unions thinking of taking on pre-majority campaigns for the first time, Steve says: “Sometimes you can’t really predict when there’s going to be an upsurge over some issue. And it certainly helps to have a network of people with organizational experience in place when that occurs.” For union leaders concerned about the financials, Steve adds, laughing: “But is it gonna happen in the next budget year?” Steve’s point is clear: union upsurges can’t usually be predicted.
This is the reason Larry Cohen likes the metaphor of vending machines for how not to run a union campaign: “You know, you put in a quarter, you ordered a soda, you didn’t get the soda. You start with the coin release, then you start pounding, then you start kicking, then you knock the machine over — and you’re either going to get the fucking soda or the quarter.” Larry says that some national union leaders, and even some on the left, still think this way about campaigns. But unfortunately that’s not how worker movements are built and sustained over time.
Reflecting on union leaders who aren’t yet planning to support pre-majority campaigns today, Larry says: “I’d say you’ve got to figure out how to reorient so you can [take on these campaigns], especially under Trump. You better be prepared that your strength will be the members and the stewards that fight with them every day. You can collect some amount of money — it can even be a token amount — but we better be prepared to make that commitment to workers.”
This case study of IBM workers’ union efforts draws from union pamphlets and other archival materials, newspaper reports, and interviews with two of the long-term IBM shop-floor leaders — Lee Conrad and Ralph Montefusco — who eventually went on the CWA payroll to dedicate themselves fulltime to their organizing. Also interviewed were the CWA union representative assigned to the Alliance@IBM, Steve Early, and CWA director of organizing-come-president, Larry Cohen.
This case study is part of a bigger project. If you had any experience with either IBM Workers United or the Alliance@IBM and would like to talk with the author, she would love to hear from you at [email protected].