CONGRESS OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATIONS (CIO)

Dismal working conditions for millions of American industrial laborers inspired the creation of the CIO. Originally called the Committee for Industrial Organization, the CIO began in November 1935 as a reformist movement within the American Federation of Labor (AFL), which had traditionally focused on organizing skilled workers, such as electricians and carpenters, into their own trade unions. The AFL had made only halfhearted efforts to organize the millions of workers in such basic industries as steel, automobiles, rubber, and meatpacking. These industrial workers had almost universal complaints about the general climate of job insecurity during the Great Depression, the lack of any meaningful input concerning their working conditions, and the arbitrary power of their foremen to hire, fire, and transfer. For most workers, having so little control over their lives proved to be humiliating and degrading. Anyone who was fortunate enough to work at an industrial job during the Depression had to accept long hours and the increasingly fast pace of the machinery. The combination proved to be exhausting, and often dangerous. If workers spoke up or complained, they risked losing their jobs, with no recourse.

ORIGINS

The CIO sought to change the balance of power in American factories. Three presidents of existing AFL unions—John L. Lewis of the United Mine-workers (UMW), David Dubinsky of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, and Sidney Hillman of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers—pushed hardest for the creation of the CIO and offered resources from their union treasuries to support the cause. Lewis's UMW had a direct interest in organizing the steel industry, because large steel companies owned a significant percentage of the nation's coal mines. Dubinsky and Hillman saw potential in linking the fortunes of industrial workers, through the CIO, with Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. All early CIO leaders feared that unrest among American workers, if not harnessed in positive ways, could be channeled into potential Communist or fascist movements.

Industrial workers had made their discontent obvious after the passage in 1933 of Roosevelt's National Industrial Recovery Act, which was designed primarily to allow businesses to regulate themselves out of the Great Depression, but which also contained a clause (section 7a) that guaranteed American workers the right to organize into unions without interference from their employers. Throughout 1934, hundreds of thousands of laborers, across industries and across regions, went on strike to claim their legal right to join unions, many of which were affiliates of the AFL. In most cases, however, employers ignored the law and fought hard, often violently, against their employees. Many leading union supporters lost their jobs, while the federal government did nothing to prevent or punish these blatant violations of the National Industrial Recovery Act. The prospects for widespread gains for organized labor fizzled with the 1934 organizing defeats. But what would become of the unrest that prompted the uprisings? Lewis, Dubinsky, and Hillman hoped that it could be funneled into effective industrial unions within the AFL, making organized labor a significant national political force. The AFL's leadership, however, did not share this vision, and very shortly after its creation the CIO began to operate, for all practical purposes, as an independent labor organization.

AMBIGUOUS BREAKTHROUGHS

Two months after the Supreme Court declared the National Industrial Recovery Act unconstitutional in May 1935, President Roosevelt signed the National Labor Relations Act—also known as the Wagner Act, after its chief sponsor, Senator Robert Wagner from New York—which once again guaranteed American workers the right to join unions without employer opposition. Workers were understandably wary. Likewise, while CIO officials appreciated the symbolic importance of the bill, they had no illusions that business owners would obey it. CIO leaders also faced the difficult task of convincing workers that the CIO was serious about supporting them, and that it had the power to stand up to intransigent managements.

In February 1936, rubber workers at Goodyear Tire in Akron, Ohio, forced these dynamics into the open with their fight for long-simmering demands: a measure of control over both their hours and their method of payment, and protection for union activists, who were being fired in violation of the Wagner Act. The struggle was far more complex than simply workers versus management. The CIO competed for the workers' allegiance with an AFL union and with Goodyear's company union, which was not an independent bargaining agent and which should have been outlawed under the Wagner Act. Rubber workers set the pace in this conflict, largely rejecting the AFL, but not entirely content with their alternatives. The CIO hoped to harness the workers' anger and use it to establish a permanent union with a collective bargaining agreement with Goodyear, but the company was still far stronger than any union. In late March, Goodyear offered minor changes in working hours, but refused to sign a formal contract. This was an ambiguous result, like many of the CIO's experiences in the 1930s. The rubber workers were not crushed, which was a major triumph when compared with earlier years, but by no means did the CIO create a solid institutional base in Akron, and rubber workers were without either a collective bargaining agreement or any other means to resolve their grievances.

The CIO also sought to organize steelworkers, who shared common complaints about the arbitrary power of foremen, but who also had experienced numerous routs at the hands of management, most recently in 1934. Steel was the heart of American industrial might, however, and there were half a million potential steelworker union members. Girding for battle, the CIO created the Steel Workers' Organizing Committee (SWOC) in June 1936. Funded primarily by Lewis's UMW, SWOC ignored any AFL claims to jurisdiction over skilled steelworkers and began mass organizing.

While still technically part of the AFL, the CIO now operated independently and faced strong opposition from its parent organization. The CIO also acted on its own by supporting President Roosevelt in his successful bid for reelection in 1936. Whether or not they were influenced by the CIO's endorsement, most working-class Americans voted for Roosevelt, and CIO leaders hoped that this display of political power would help protect the fledgling industrial union movement.

The CIO's fortunes rose with the success in early 1937 of the famous Flint, Michigan, sit-down strike against General Motors (GM). Although it appears that most autoworkers in Flint desired greater control over their working lives, only a few were willing to risk their livelihoods by openly associating with a unionization drive sponsored by the upstart United Auto Workers (UAW). By organizing workers to stay inside factories rather than to picket outside them, UAW activists neutralized much of the power that GM (or any other intransigent employer) traditionally wielded in such conflicts. A police assault on the sit-down strikers would damage company property, and it was impossible to operate machines with strikebreakers while strikers occupied the plant. Although the Supreme Court would later declare the sit-down tactic to be an unconstitutional violation of a company's property rights, for a brief period, refusing to leave factories tipped the balance of power in labor conflicts. The CIO was not involved in the day-to-day conduct of the Flint strike. Lewis, however, personally negotiated with GM and government officials to broker the final settlement. As a result, the CIO gained much favorable publicity and the UAW became one of its largest and most important affiliates. The UAW's first agreement, however, proved to be more important for its symbolism than its substance. GM pledged to recognize the UAW as its labor force's sole bargaining agent for six months, but much remained unclear about what concrete differences that would bring in labormanagement relations.

With an eye toward GM's loss of market share during the Flint sit-down strike—the economy was experiencing a minor upswing in the midst of the Depression—U.S. Steel president Myron Taylor unexpectedly settled with SWOC in early March 1937. Once again, the agreement was an ambiguous triumph. U.S. Steel employees won a wage increase and a forty-hour workweek, but SWOC did not extract the right to be the sole bargaining agent for the company's workers. Nevertheless, the CIO benefited from having won any concessions at all from the nation's largest steelmaker, which had rebuffed all previous organizing campaigns. The following month, Chrysler Corporation signed a labor agreement with the UAW-CIO, and the Supreme Court declared the Wagner Act constitutional. Hundreds of thousands of workers across the country, from a staggering variety of jobs, soon joined CIO-affiliated unions. There was certainly reason to be hopeful about the future of the CIO's industrial union project.

DAUNTING CHALLENGES

However, there were also ominous developments. Ford Motor Company violently resisted UAW organizing efforts, and the Roosevelt administration failed to enforce the Wagner Act. Likewise, smaller steel companies fought successfully, sometimes lethally, against SWOC's efforts to complete organization in steel. These campaigns drained resources from the CIO, which, despite increasing its institutional presence around the country, was often unable to offer adequate support to the masses of hopeful workers in other industries who had recently joined unions. The CIO also relied heavily on organizers, and top leaders in a few affiliated unions, who were members of the Communist Party. Communist union activists, perhaps a quarter of the CIO organizing staff, were essential to the industrial union mission and appear almost without exception to have placed their commitment to workers above their party allegiances. Yet the presence of Communists in the CIO made the organization vulnerable to red-baiting politicians and industrialists. During the Depression years, however, top CIO officials shrugged off such attacks and utilized the Communists' talents.

The biggest threat to the CIO proved to be the deep recession that began in late 1937. Industrial employment plummeted, severely reducing union membership and dues payments. When it officially split from the AFL in November 1938—changing its name to the Congress of Industrial Organizations—the CIO was far weaker than it had been a year earlier. The recession further emboldened anti-union employers like Ford and Republic Steel to flaunt the Wagner Act, the AFL continued its counterattack against what it considered to be the CIO's renegade operations, and John L. Lewis assumed increasing, often erratic, control of the CIO while still leading the UMW. It is unclear how many workers still belonged to CIO unions in late 1938, but it seems certain that the numbers were far lower than those released by CIO officials.

As the defense buildup for World War II brought the nation out of the Great Depression, the CIO's prospects for survival increased dramatically. The war years, indeed, would bring relative institutional stability, but with many constraints on union behavior. The central question continued to be whether or not industrial unionism, through the CIO, could maintain a lasting presence and improve the lives of millions of American workers. The jury remained out as the Depression ended. The alternative, however, seemed to be the grim, arbitrary autocracy that had prompted unionization. Adding to the complexity, while the CIO sought better lives for masses of Americans, the working class itself was not united. Improving opportunities for all workers would require serious challenges to racial and gender discrimination, hierarchies that were dear to many members of CIO unions. The CIO, indeed, faced daunting challenges.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bernstein, Irving. The Turbulent Years: A History of the American Worker, 1933–1941. 1970.

Cohen, Lizabeth. Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919–1939. 1990.

Dubofsky, Melvyn, and Warren Van Tine. John L. Lewis: A Biography. 1977. Abridged edition, 1987.

Faue, Elizabeth. Community of Suffering and Struggle: Women, Men, and the Labor Movement in Minneapolis, 1915–1945. 1991.

Fine, Sidney. Sit-Down: The General Motors Strike of 1936–1937. 1969.

Fraser, Steven. Labor Will Rule: Sidney Hillman and the Rise of American Labor. 1991.

Halpern, Rick. Down on the Killing Floor: Black and White Workers in Chicago's Packinghouses, 1904–1954. 1997.

Hodges, James A. New Deal Labor Policy and the Southern Cotton Textile Industry, 1933–1941. 1986.

Irons, Janet. Testing the New Deal: The General Textile Strike of 1934 in the American South. 2000.

Kelley, Robin D. G. Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression. 1990.

Meier, August, and Elliott Rudwick. Black Detroit and the Rise of the UAW. 1979.

Nelson, Bruce. Workers on the Waterfront: Seamen, Long-shoremen, and Unionism in the 1930s. 1988.

Preis, Art. Labor's Giant Step: Twenty Years of the CIO. 1964.

Ruiz, Vicki. Cannery Women, Cannery Lives: Mexican Women, Unionization, and the California Food Processing Industry, 1930–1950. 1987.

Zieger, Robert H. The CIO: 1935–1955. 1995.

DANIEL CLARK

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