The CIO, 1935-1955

Robert H. Zieger

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2000
• Print ISBN: 9780807846308, 9780807821824
• eBook ISBN: 9780807866443
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Labour & Industrial Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) encompassed the largest sustained surge of worker organization in American history. Robert Zieger charts the rise of this industrial union movement, from the founding of the CIO by John L. Lewis in 1935 to its merger under Walter Reuther with the American Federation of Labor in 1955. Exploring themes of race and gender, Zieger combines the institutional history of the CIO with vivid depictions of working-class life in this critical period. Zieger details the ideological conflicts that racked the CIO even as its leaders strove to establish a labor presence at the heart of the U.S. economic system. Stressing the efforts of industrial unionists such as Sidney Hillman and Philip Murray to forge potent instruments of political action, he assesses the CIO's vital role in shaping the postwar political and international order. Zieger's analysis also contributes to current debates over labor law reform, the collective bargaining system, and the role of organized labor in a changing economy.

Chapter 1: Before the CIO

“It is clear . . . that we have to build another organization.” The words were those of Hatters’ president Max Zaritsky, but the sentiments were everyone’s as industrial union supporters met in the wake of Franklin Roosevelt’s overwhelming electoral victory in November 1936. The men who hoped to build a new labor federation had to respond to three broad concerns: the ambiguous legacy of industrial unionism, the character and proclivities of an industrial working class undergoing rapid and dramatic transformation, and the institutional and political developments that had occurred since the onset of the Great Depression in 1929–30. The remarkable labor activism and political upheaval of the early New Deal offered these men unique opportunities, but as they well realized, if they misstepped they might well find themselves doyens of a marginalized movement rather than pioneers of a new union frontier.¹

THE AMERICAN WORKING CLASS IN THE 1920S

The industrial working class in the long decade after World War I underwent profound and rapid changes. During the period 1919 to 1933 working people experienced enormous changes in the pace and character of work, the patterns of industrial unrest, and the very composition of the labor force. The full implications of the second industrial revolution now became apparent. Thus, for example, employment in its characteristic industries, such as automobiles, rubber, petroleum, chemicals, electrical goods, and related sectors, expanded. Employment in the clerical, services, and governmental areas mushroomed. Meanwhile, employment in agriculture, extractive pursuits, and older industrial sectors such as cotton textiles and iron and steel making shrank.

In the 1920s the content of much industrial labor changed dramatically. Industry after industry registered almost incredible gains in productivity as more and more mechanical devices came on line. In manufacturing generally, production per man-hour grew by over 70 percent, and the real value added per worker grew by 75 percent; the average worker had 50 percent more horsepower at his or her disposal. Between 1914 and 1927 productivity in iron and steel grew by 55 percent, in automobiles by 178 percent, and in rubber tires by 292 percent. In the coalfields, mechanical cutters and loaders began to transform the miner’s traditional tasks, while power-driven trams accompanied the industry’s rapid expansion into the virgin fields of southern Appalachia. Textile manufacturers introduced electrically powered machinery at a rapid rate. The automobile assembly line swung into full operation, with vehicle production leaping from 573,000 in 1914 to over 5.3 million in 1929. In the latter year, the industry employed 447,500 workers, a number only three and a half times larger than the 1914 labor force. Major innovations in glass production, lumber handling, cigar manufacturing, and construction tools accounted for part of the great growth in productivity, but incremental changes involving cumulative small improvements contributed as well. In the 1920s integrated systems, linked by sophisticated electrical communications networks and powered by ever more efficient engines, became commonplace.²

Experts disagreed as to how to interpret these vast trends in human terms. Many people lamented the decline of the craftsman and the degradation of skill. Thus, sociologists Robert and Helen Lynd quoted the proprietor of a large midwestern machine shop discussing his workers’ lack of pride in accomplishment. “They’re just working. They don’t know what for. They’re just in a rut and keep on doing it.”³

Not every observer of modern industry as it came of age in the 1920s agreed. The U.S. census showed a decline in the percentage of workers toiling in unskilled jobs and increases in both the semiskilled and skilled categories between its 1910 and 1930 enumerations. Children stayed in school longer, a circumstance that most manpower experts associated with rising skill levels. Industrial changes mechanized jobs, but they rarely deskilled people. The automobile industry, for example, changed dramatically from the early century days when metal, upholstery, and finish workers built each car by hand. Yet these workers, along with thousands of tool-and-die makers, continued in great demand in the expanding industry, partly because even the most mechanized industry required many traditionally skilled workers; partly because the expansion of mass production in most sectors was accompanied by a similar expansion in prototype, luxury, and specialty products; and partly because new processes inevitably demanded workers skilled in maintenance, repair, and adaptation.⁴

The very meaning of the term skill fell into contention. Critics of census and union definitions argued that what was defined as skill had less to do with the inherent character of work than with who was doing it: when women or immigrants took over tasks earlier performed by men, taxonomists began to classify the work as un- or semiskilled. Was secretarial work, involving meticulous labor with state-of-the-art typewriters, calculating machines, and accounting and filing systems, less skilled than typography? And what of the skills of interpersonal discourse, human management, and personal appearance, increasingly at a premium in a society moving rapidly toward white collar employment? Even in the industrial sphere, it was unclear that the stereotypical picture of the sturdily republican craftsman was any closer to reality than the national myth of the yeoman farmer.

In America, autonomy and opportunity had been associated with geographical mobility. Slaves were slaves, regardless of their particular tasks, most essentially because they had no option to exit. People were free when they could pick up and move on. Thus, autoworkers and textile workers, however mechanized their work, were freer than the tens of thousands of coal miners, trapped in rural environments and possessed only of skills that were ill-matched to the requirements of modern industry. Most economists argued that skill was less the ability to perform given tasks, no matter how much dexterity or experience went into the performance, than the ability to “learn how to learn.” From this perspective, truly skilled workers actually welcomed technological innovation, sought the vocational training or education that allowed them to keep abreast, and exploited opportunities an expanding economy offered to upgrade their qualifications and capabilities.

The attitudes and policies of employers in many of the newer sectors of the economy changed as well. Several generations of industrial experience had revealed that even jobs that seemed to require little training or education were generally performed better by people with experience. Employers in fast-paced modern industry might discriminate against aging workers, but overall there was a tendency for large-scale employers to attempt to reduce labor turnover and to retain experienced workers. Some employers created internal labor markets, providing workers with mobility within the company into supervisory and even (though rarely) managerial positions. While abusive treatment of workers remained widespread, employers were increasingly aware that the training and experience, even among semiskilled workers, represented an important asset. In the 1920s, statistical indices showed characteristically sticky wage rates, as employers paid above strict market levels, partly no doubt to buy off potential militancy but partly also in recognition of the costs of labor turnover.⁵

The composition of the labor force running this complex and potent system changed dramatically after the war. After 1914 the great influx of southern and eastern Europeans slowed to a trickle. The exit of children from the industrial labor force continued. At the same time, however, large numbers of native rural dwellers, black and white, surged into the industrial sectors, and female employment expanded. In 1900, for example, about 17 percent of the labor force consisted of women, about half in domestic service. Three decades later, female participation had expanded to 22 percent of the labor force, or over 10.6 million workers, fewer than a fifth of whom were domestics. As women entered the labor force, children left it. Even in the southern cotton mills the labor force aged as men settled into permanent employment and the number of children in the mills dwindled.

Massive European immigration had given eastern and midwestern cities a distinctive cast. But wartime and postwar immigration restriction abruptly curtailed the influx from Europe. Demographic stabilization created an emerging second generation of ethnic workers, committed to life in America, increasingly distanced from old-world customs and familial traditions, and expecting the continuation of rising standards of security, prosperity, and mobility.⁶

The curtailment of European immigration opened opportunities for domestic and hemispheric migrants. Between 1917 and 1929 over a million and a half black Americans came north to work. Likewise, the mechanization of agriculture and the relative attractions of industrial wages and urban life drew thousands of white rural workers into the manufacturing centers. Mexicans filled some of the void left by the restriction of European immigration, migrating first to the growing fields of California and the Midwest but moving as quickly as they could from the sugar beet fields to the steel mills and auto factories.⁷

Industrial conflict abated. The period of World War I and its aftermath had been remarkable in its incidence of strikes and violence. Between 1916 and 1922 an average of 9 percent of American workers were involved in strikes annually, with the great 1919 strike wave involving over one-fifth of all workers in work stoppages.⁸ After the massive coal and railroad strikes of the summer of 1922, however, industrial America quickly settled into apparent quiescence, as remarkable for its placidity as the earlier period had been for its turbulence. Between 1923 and 1930 the number of strikers engaged in stoppages dropped by over 80 percent. In 1919 there were 3,600 strikes involving over 4 million workers; in 1929 there were 921, involving fewer than 300,000. The index of strike activity declined steadily throughout the late 1920s, reaching in 1930 an incredible 637 strikes and 183,000 workers, who represented a minuscule .8 percent of the labor force.⁹

Equally notable was the rising prosperity of working-class America. In the 1920s real wages continued to rise. Between 1914 and 1929 the average number of hours toiled per week in manufacturing declined by about 10 percent. Skilled workers and increasing numbers of their semiskilled associates bought homes and automobiles. Those who worked in the newer sectors of the economy often had access to company-sponsored programs of medical care, housing, recreation, and stock purchase and increasingly enjoyed at least a modicum of job security. The labor force aged as child labor receded. The proportion of the foreign-born declined. With educational standards rising and with employers increasingly concerned about turnover, workers became less mobile geographically, gained more experience, and were more likely than they had been earlier to commit to an entire career in industrial employment.¹⁰

This America was no workers’ paradise. Income distribution remained steeply skewed. Regional and sectoral exceptions to the general pattern in industrial prosperity, high (if officially unacknowledged) rates of unemployment, and boring, dispiriting, and often downright dangerous toil exacted a dreadful toll. Harsh discipline, chaotic job classification and assignment, arbitrary exertions of shop-floor power, and anxiety-producing rehiring and promotion practices kept millions of workers on the edge of insecurity and defeat. Even progressive employers imposed close supervision and accelerated the pace of work. Age, gender, and racial discrimination were rampant.

Everywhere except in a few unionized enclaves, workers lacked representation, legal job entitlements, and even the most rudimentary voice in the industrial decision-making process. The right to organize was nonexistent. Democratic representation, the rule of law, and the protection of individual rights were rarely to be found in mills, factories, and mines. Everywhere, it was open season on anyone who dared talk union.¹¹

Moreover, in the 1920s once-strong unions suffered crushing defeats. The UMW lost 80 percent of its membership. Belligerent employers wiped out World War I-era union gains in textiles, meatpacking, metalworking, and pulp and paper making.

Despite declining strike incidence, however, laborite dissidence was hardly dead. The railroad brotherhoods and the politically cautious AFL participated in third party political action through the 1924 election. Throughout the new era of the 1920s, labor, radical, and ethnic subcultures flourished, rallying in defense of the Italian anarchist martyrs Sacco and Vanzetti, keeping alive the spark of unionism, and warning against the injustices and irrationalities of the now-triumphant business culture.¹²

Still, through the bulk of the decade in most of American industry there were no strikes and little apparent interest in the revival of laborite activism. After smashing the steelworkers’ union in the great 1919–20 strike, the steel companies yielded the eight-hour day in 1923 and were untroubled by unions. In the automobile industry, a few radicals distributed shop papers, but by 1930 the vast auto labor force was 99 percent nonunion. Among the country’s 100,000 rubber workers, similar conditions prevailed. The booming electrical appliance, farm equipment, and auto parts industries were no more hospitable.

Business leaders and their spokesmen in Washington such as Secretary of Commerce Herbert C. Hoover pronounced the end of the labor problem. In a 1928 campaign address, presidential candidate Hoover boasted that during the decade the nation had constructed 3.5 million new homes, electrified 9 million residences, installed 6 million telephones, and produced and sold to its citizens 7 million radio sets and 14 million automobiles. In the crisis-ridden postwar years “discontent and agitation against our democracy were rampant” and “fear for the future haunted every heart,” but, he now proclaimed, an American working class more fully integrated into national life and culture than any comparable class in history bespoke the end of such strife and tribulation.¹³

Indeed, by the later 1920s, throughout the industrial heartland of the country would-be organizers and activists grew discouraged. Whole communities that only a decade before had nurtured rich and active socialist and working-class organizations were now quiescent. “There is no longer a Workingmen’s Library or any other educational activity,” reported the Lynds from Muncie, Indiana, quoting a despairing unionist who declared that “‘the organized labor movement in [Muncie] does not compare with that of 1890 as one to one hundred.”’ The situation was much the same in dozens of other cities and towns.¹⁴

Indeed, it was in new industrial cities such as Flint, Michigan, that the new era seemed most dramatically to have transformed the lives and mentalities of working-class people. Before the war the city had boasted a vigorous local craft union movement and had elected socialists to citywide office. In the 1920s, however, only construction and railroad workers were able to maintain their unions. The 40,000 men and women who poured into the city to toil in the new auto factories did not look to collective bargaining to advance their interests. Partly, of course, this was because Flint’s major employer, GM, tolerated no union talk. But as important was the calculation that autoworkers made in their own minds: the industry’s high wages bought the ability to participate in the emerging consumer culture. They did not regard the movies, the radio...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: The Fragile Juggernaut
• Chapter 1: Before the CIO
• Chapter 2: Founding the CIO, 1935–1936
• Chapter 3: Over the Top, 1936–1937
• Chapter 4: The Diverse Arenas of the CIO, 1936–1938
• Chapter 5: Stasis and Schism, 1938–1940
• Chapter 6: 1941, Year of Decision
• Chapter 7: World War II
• Chapter 8: After the War
• Chapter 9: The CIO and Its Communists
• Chapter 10: The Korean War
• Chapter 11: The Postwar CIO
• Chapter 12: The Final Years of the Late, Great CIO
• Chapter 13: Merger and Beyond
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Index