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This series includes material about Helen Quirini's life and achievements. This series has correspondence, awards and certificates, newspaper articles by and about Quirini and her activism, letters of recommendation, theses, interview transcripts, diaries of her time on the shop floor at General Electric, her memoir, photographs, ephemera and more. This series covers the entirety of Quirini's life and work starting with the Brother Sister Cash Market where she worked with her brother in the late 1930s and early 1940s, her 39 years working at General Electric and then her post-retirement activism. The original order, titling and folder contents were preserved wherever possible. Quirini received a variety of national awards including the Beirne Award from the United Way and the Phillipe Award from General Electric. She also received local accolades such as the Patroon award in her hometown of Schenectady, New York. Included in the award folders are nomination materials, letters of recommendation, resumes, related materials and the awards themselves. This series contains extensive correspondence regarding Quirini's personal life, employment, activism and fundraising. There also are many VHS cassettes of Schenectady City Council meetings which Quirini attended as a citizen. Series 1 covers her activism, awards and achievements as both the subject and author of newspaper articles. Several students also corresponded with Quirini and wrote about her in papers and masters theses. Scholarly publications which predominantly feature Quirini are located in this series. Please see Series 2 and Series 3 for other scholarly writings about unions in general, Local 301 or General Electric.

This series documents Helen Quirini's extensive union activities through her membership in Local 301. When Quirini joined this local it was affiliated with the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers (UE). During the late 1940s and early 1950s, the federal government kept UE leadership and its members under surveillance because of suspected Communist ties. In his aggressive investigations of accused Communists, Senator Joseph McCarthy, chairman of the Committee on Investigations of the Committee on Government Operations, subpoenaed Quirini and she was one of many members of the UE to testify in a pre-hearing before Congress in February 1954. She swore under oath that she was not and had never been a member of the Communist Party. Citing these supposed Communist connections, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) expelled the UE in 1949 and replaced it with the International Union of Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers (IUE). During subsequent years many UE locals elected to join the IUE, including Local 301 in June 1954. This series features materials related to all of the aforementioned events, including Quirini's subpoena, anti-McCarthy literature issued by unions, Quirini's surveillance files and a significant amount of propaganda from both unions issued before Local 301's vote to join the IUE.