Mass UnionismI. The Problem of Unorganized Workers

A. ExtentB. Reasons

II. The Birth of the CIOA. HistoryB. Strategy

III. Union explosionA. Radical nationB. The CIO organizes industryC. Sit-down strikesD. New UnionistsE. Craftsmen under pressure

IV. Reaction

Unorganized Workers• In 1932,

only 3 million out of 49M gainfully employed Americans belong to unions

Ford assembly line, 1928

Reasons for the Problem

• AFL ideology– Skill– Craft jurisdiction– Homogeneity & exclusivity

• Racism & racial antagonism– 85,000 black steelworkers

• Sexism and gender roles– Journeymen Barbers’ IU

• “Blithering liability”

• Nativism and ethnic division– Tobin (Teamsters)

• “Rubbish” Nativist union badge

The Congress of Industrial

Organizations• Amalgamated Clothing Workers

• United Mine Workers

• ILGWU

• Textile workers

• Mine, Mill and Smelting Workers

CIO leaders Sidney Hillman (garment), Francis Gorman (textile), and John L. Lewis

(mining)

CIO strategy

• Organizing Committees– Not unions– Centralized– Control

• Grass Roots– Build on

ethnicity– Communists

• Politics– Lewis and UMW

give $600K to Roosevelt New York City garment workers’ protest,

1936

Radical Nation• 1936 election• FDR polls 60.8% of

vote– Landon gets only

36.5%

• Inaugural, 1937– “One-third of a nation

…”

FDR meets farmer impoverished by drought

Campaign trail, August, 1936

Organizing Industry

• 4.7M workers strike in 1937– Electric– Steel – Rubber

Jones & Laughlin Steel, 1937

Sit-down Strikes

• 400,000 workers stage sit down strikes in 1937– 130,000 in

March alone

• In one year, UAW membership rises from 30,000 to 400,000

General Motors, 1937

New Unionists

• Textile Workers’ gains 100,000

• ACW gains 240,000

• ILGWU gains 140,000

• UE gains 90,000

• Sit down strikes among workers at Woolworth’s

ILGWU basketball teamNew Haven, 1937

Craftsmen under Pressure

• Competition forces AFL to be aggressive

• Uses Wagner Act to gain over 1M new members

Striking cabbies, 1939

Reaction

• South resists organization

• Little Steel strike fails– Chicago, Youngstown– Memorial Day Massacre, 1937

• Police kill ten strikers, disable nine, injure thirty

• Shift in political winds– Americans are tired,

frustrated– FDR: “A pox on both your

houses.”– Dems lose 1938 midterm

elections

ILGWU organizer tarred-and-feathered by Ford goon squad Dallas, Texas—1937