Congress of Industrial Organizations

The AFL authorized organizing drives in the automobile, rubber, and steel industries at its convention in 1934 but gave little financial support or effective leadership to those unions.On October 19, the closing day of the convention, William Hutcheson, the President of the United Carpenters, made a slighting comment about a rubber worker who was delivering an organizing report.The first major industrial union to be chartered by the CIO, on November 16, 1936, was the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE).The union, in fact, not only took over several GM factories in Flint, including one that made the dies necessary to stamp automotive body parts and a companion facility in Cleveland, Ohio, but held on to those sites despite repeated attempts by the police and National Guard to retake them and court orders threatening the union with ruinous fines if it did not call off the strike.The SWOC signed up thousands of members and absorbed a number of company unions at U.S. Steel and elsewhere, but did not attempt the sort of daring strike that the UAW had pulled off against GM.Instead, Lewis was able to extract a collective bargaining agreement from U.S. Steel, which had previously been an implacable enemy of unions, by pointing to the chaos and loss of business that GM had suffered by fighting the UAW.CIO unions signed multiyear contracts, often complicated and long, with GM, U.S. Steel, and other corporations in order to minimize strikes and also make sure employers took care of the work process.Homer Martin, the first president of the UAW, expelled a number of the union organizers who had led the Flint sit-down strike and other early drives on charges that they were communists.In the Memorial Day Massacre on May 30, 1937, Chicago police opened fire on a group of strikers who had attempted to picket at Republic Steel, killing ten and seriously wounding dozens.As in steel, these workers had abundant recent first-hand experience of failed organizing drives and defeated strikes, which resulted in unionists being blacklisted or worse.Lewis feuded with Hillman and Philip Murray, his long-time assistant and head of the SWOC, over both the CIO's own activities and its relations with the President Roosevelt's administration.[15] The Roosevelt administration launched a massive rearmament program after Germany defeated France in spring 1940, and factory employment soared.The competition was particularly sharp in the aircraft industry, where the UAW went head-to-head against the International Association of Machinists, originally a craft union of railroad workers and skilled trade employees.The unemployment problem ended in the United States with the beginning of World War II, as stepped-up wartime production created millions of new jobs, and the draft pulled young men out.But those strikes tended to be far shorter and far less tumultuous than the earlier ones, usually involving small groups of workers over working conditions and other local concerns.Those procedures produced modest wage increases during the first few years of the war, but, over time, not enough to keep up with inflation, particularly when combined with the slowness of the arbitration machinery.The CIO leadership, particularly those in more left unions such as the Packinghouse Workers, the UAW, the NMU, and the Transport Workers, undertook serious efforts to suppress hate strikes, to educate their membership, and to support the Roosevelt Administration's tentative efforts to remedy racial discrimination in war industries through the Fair Employment Practices Commission.The CIO unions were less progressive in dealing with sex discrimination in wartime industry, which now employed many more women workers in nontraditional jobs.Murray, as head of both the CIO and the Steelworkers, wanted to avoid a wave of mass strikes in favor of high-level negotiations with employers, with government intervention to balance wage demands with price controls.That project failed when employers showed that they were not willing to accept the wartime status quo, but instead demanded broad management rights clauses to reassert their workplace authority, while the new Truman administration proved unwilling to intervene on labor's side.The union eventually settled for the same wage increase that the Steelworkers and the UE had gotten in their negotiations; GM not only did not concede any of its managerial authority, but never even bargained over the UAW's proposals over its pricing policies.The CIO's major organizing drive of this era, Operation Dixie, aimed at the textile workers of the American South, was a complete failure.In July 1943, the CIO formed the first-ever political action committee in the United States, the CIO-PAC, to help elect Roosevelt.This affidavit requirement, later declared unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court, was the first sign of serious trouble ahead for a number of Communists in the CIO.Murray might have let the status quo continue, even while Walter Reuther and others within the CIO attacked Communists in their unions, if the CPUSA had not chosen to back Henry A. Wallace's Progressive Party campaign for president in 1948.Anti-communist unionists then took the battle to the City and State Councils where they ousted Communist leaders who did not support the CIO's position favoring the Marshall Plan and opposing Wallace.[27] It would push outward to West Coast and the South during World War II as its membership ballooned to over a million members due to the conversion of auto plants to wartime production.Both amassed the majority of their membership in the mines and factories surrounding the Ohio and Monongahela Rivers and the industrial cities of Lake Erie.While the majority of membership was indeed constituted by workers in the major industries of the East Coast and Midwest, the CIO also had strong representation on the West Coast thanks to the rapid expansion of the ILWU,[29] International Woodworkers of America (IWA),[30] Mine-Mill, and the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied Workers of America (UCAPAWA).
The CIO's second headquarters was an office on the third floor of this building, the United Mine Workers ' headquarters, at 900 15th Street NW, Washington, DC . [ 4 ]
718 Jackson Place NW, Washington, D.C. , the fourth and final headquarters for the Congress of Industrial Organizations. As of 2008, the building is owned by the federal government and houses small units attached to the Executive Office of the President . [ 16 ]
AFL–CIOPittsburgh, Pennsylvaniaunionsindustrial unionsUnited StatesCanadaAmerican Federation of LaborJohn L. LewisUnited Mine WorkersunskilledFranklin D. RooseveltNew Deal coalitionAfrican AmericansGreat DepressionTaft–Hartley ActAmerican Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial OrganizationsWashington, DCUnited States labor movementcraft unionismindustrial unionismBrewery WorkersGreat Depression in the United StatesInternational Ladies' Garment Workers' UnionMinneapolis Teamsters Strike of 1934TrotskyistCommunist League of America1934 West Coast Longshore StrikeCommunist Party USAAuto-Lite strikeAmerican Workers PartyWilliam HutchesonUnited CarpentersInternational Typographical UnionSidney HillmanAmalgamated Clothing Workers of AmericaDavid DubinskyUnited Textile WorkersMine, Mill and Smelter Workers UnionMax ZaritskySteel Workers Organizing CommitteeLee PressmanUnited Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of AmericaSchenectady, New YorkGeneral Motors Corporationsit-down strikecollective bargaining agreementU.S. SteelFlint, MichiganFlint Sit-Down StrikeCleveland, Ohiogrievance processHague v. Committee for Industrial OrganizationJersey City, New JerseyFrank "Boss" HagueUnited States Supreme CourtChryslerBattle of the OverpassHomer MartincommunistsWyndham MortimerHenry KrausVictor ReutherRoy ReutherJones & Laughlin SteelstrikesBethlehem Steel CorporationYoungstown Sheet and TubeNational SteelInland SteelAmerican Rolling MillsRepublic SteelCatholic Radical AllianceMemorial Day MassacreChicagoMassillon, OhioAmerican Labor PartyblacklistedPhilip MurrayPresident Roosevelt'sWendell WillkieUnited Steel Workers of AmericaNational Labor Relations BoardstrikeHarry BridgesInternational Longshoremen's AssociationInternational Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's UnionTransport Workers Union of AmericaNational Maritime UnionUnited Electrical, Radio and Machine WorkersInternational Association of MachinistsJackson PlaceWashington, D.C.Executive Office of the PresidentWorld War IISoviet Unionnon-aggression pactNazi GermanyMolotov–Ribbentrop Pactshop stewardsarbitrationunion securityDetroitFair Employment Practices Commissionsex discriminationTrumanstrikebreakersOperation DixieAmerican SouthJim CrowsegregationCIO-PACRepublican Partyright to work lawssecondary boycottsCommunist PartyNational Federation of Telephone Workers1947 Telephone strikeTaft–Hartley Act of 1947United Public WorkersFur and Leather WorkersAssociation of Catholic Trade UnionistsWalter ReutherHenry A. WallaceProgressive PartyMarshall PlanInternational Longshore and Warehouse UnionInternational Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter WorkersFood and Tobacco WorkersInternational Fur and Leather Workers UnionInternational Union of Electrical, Radio and Machine WorkersCommunications Workers of AmericaWilliam GreenGeorge MeanyDavid J. McDonaldAFL-CIOIndustrial Union DepartmentPennsylvaniaGreat LakesIndianaIllinoisMichiganMassachusettsEssingtonCamdenWestinghouseEast PittsburghMonongahela RiversLake ErieInternational Woodworkers of AmericaUnited Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied Workers of AmericaAluminum Workers of AmericaAmalgamated Association of Iron and Steel WorkersAmalgamated Lithographers of AmericaAmerican Communications AssociationAmerican Newspaper GuildAmerican Radio AssociationBarbers' and Beauty Culturists' Union of AmericaFederation of Architects, Engineers, Chemists and TechniciansFederation of Glass, Ceramic and Silica Sand Workers of AmericaFood, Tobacco, Agricultural and Allied Workers' Union of AmericaIndustrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of AmericaInsurance Workers of AmericaInternational Fishermen and Allied Workers of AmericaInternational Fur and Leather Workers' Union of the United States and CanadaInternational Ladies Garment Workers UnionInternational Longshoreman's and Warehousemen's UnionInternational Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter WorkersInternational Union of United Brewery, Flour, Cereal, Soft Drink and Distillery Workers of AmericaInternational Union, United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers of AmericaLeather Workers' International UnionMechanics Educational Society of AmericaNational Association of Broadcast Engineers and TechniciansNational Association of Die Casting WorkersNational Marine Engineers' Benefit AssociationNational Maritime Union of AmericaOil Workers' International UnionPlaythings, Jewelry and Novelty Workers' International UnionRetail, Wholesale and Department Store UnionState, County, and Municipal Workers of AmericaTextile Workers' Union of AmericaTransport Workers' Union of AmericaUnited Farm Equipment and Metal Workers of AmericaUnited Federal Workers of AmericaUnited Furniture Workers of AmericaUnited Hatters, Cap and Millinery Workers International UnionUnited Mine Workers of AmericaUnited Office and Professional Workers of AmericaUnited Packinghouse Workers of AmericaUnited Paperworkers of AmericaUnited Public Workers of AmericaUnited Rubber, Cork, Linoleum and Plastic Workers of AmericaUnited Shoe Workers of AmericaUnited Steelworkers of AmericaUnited Stone and Allied Products Workers of AmericaUnited Transport Service Employees of AmericaUtility Workers' Union of AmericaCharles P. HowardJames B. CareyAllan HaywoodJohn V. RiffeCommunists in the United States Labor Movement (1919–37)Communists in the United States Labor Movement (1937–1950)Henry O. MayfieldGeorgia State UniversityUniversity of Maryland LibrariesNational Labor CollegeAFL-CIO Lane KirklandThomas R. DonahueJohn J. SweeneyRichard TrumkaLiz ShulerBuilding TradesMaritime TradesMetal TradesProfessional EmployeesTransportation TradesUnion LabelA. Philip Randolph InstituteAlliance for Retired AmericansAsian Pacific American Labor AllianceCoalition of Black Trade UnionistsCoalition of Labor Union WomenLabor Council for Latin American AdvancementPride at WorkInternational Labor Communications AssociationSolidarity CenterWorking for America InstituteAmerican Rights at WorkInternational Rescue CommitteeJewish Labor CommitteeLabor and Working-Class History AssociationWorking AmericaAFL–CIO Employees Federal Credit UnionAffiliated unionsAFSCMELocalsIronworkersIUANPWNFLPA/FPANWSLPAOPCMIAPrinters & EngraversSAG-AFTRAWorkers UnitedUNITE HEREUURWAWSouth BayFloridaNew York CityOregonRhode IslandWashington StateWest VirginiaDirectly affiliated local union