Mass Unionism

1
Mass Unionism

• I. The Problem of Unorganized Workers
• A. Extent
• B. Reasons
• II. The Birth of the CIO
• A. History
• B. Strategy
• III. Union explosion
• A. Radical nation
• B. The CIO organizes industry
• C. Sit-down strikes
• D. New Unionists
• E. Craftsmen under pressure
• IV. Reaction

2
Unorganized Workers

• In 1932, only 3 million out of 49M gainfully
  employed Americans belong to unions

Ford assembly line, 1928
3
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
4
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)
5
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
6
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
7
Organizing Industry

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

Jones Laughlin Steel, 1937
8
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
9
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 Woolworths

ILGWU basketball team New Haven, 1937
10
Craftsmen under Pressure

• Competition forces AFL to be aggressive
• Uses Wagner Act to gain over 1M new members

Striking cabbies, 1939
11
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, Texas1937