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The Joseph A. Beirne Memorial in Washington D.C. was built in the memory of Joseph A. Beirne, the founding father of the Communications Workers of America (CWA), who passed away after more than 30 years in the vanguard of the labor movement. The union started a three-part program, including an archives, museum, and written history, as a testament to CWA's many achievements under his administration. The archives was initiated in 1986, when CWA hired an archivist to organize the Joseph A. Beirne Memorial Archives. The original scope of the project encompassed primarily the processing of the Beirne papers and the renovation of an area in the CWA headquarters building into an archival facility. Since then, however, the role of the archives has expanded considerably to include the preservation of the important records of the entire union and the establishment of an oral history project, which will update an earlier project conducted by the University of Iowa's Center for Labor and Management between 1968 and 1972. The Beirne archives consists of six major collections, which include records relating to the administrations of Joseph Beirne and his successor, Glenn Watts, as well as to the National Federation of Telephone Workers and the International Typographical Union.