HOME

E-MAIL

December 1931, the 50th anniversary of the creation of the modern labor movement, found America and much of the world sliding down the much steeper slope of a cataclysmic economic depression. Business enterprises failed by the thousands, production plummeted, unemployment went through the roof.  By 1932, when Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected President, the American economy was in chaos-and the American trade union movement was but a ghost of its former strength and numbers.

Roosevelt, taking the leadership of the all but paralyzed nation on March 4, 1933, undertook a number of programs designed to recharge the economy, feed the unemployed and restore confidence.  At his urging, Congress passed the National Recovery Administration; the NRA's Section 7a specifically placed on the statute books the right of unions to exist and to negotiate with employers.  Although it had no real enforcement powers, Section 7a was seen by millions of workers as a green light, if not a government invitation, to join a union.

Many AFL unions took quick advantage of the new atmosphere and soon began to register spectacular gains in membership.  Some issued leaflets suggesting that "President Roosevelt wants you to join the union."

The Supreme Court soon declared NRA unconstitutional, and Section 7a was no more.  Under the leadership of Senator Robert F. Wagner of New York, Congress in 1936 enacted the National Labor Relations Act-known as the Wagner Act.  It went beyond "7a" to establish a legal basis for unions; set collective bargaining as a matter of national policy required by the law; provided for secret ballot elections for the choosing of unions; and protected
union members from employer intimidation and coercion.  That law, as amended in 1947 by the Taft-Hartley Act and in 1959 by the Landrum Griffin Act, is still in force.

The surge in union membership in the early years of the New Deal, and the potential for organizing the important non-union mass production industries like steel, automobile, rubber, textile and others, led directly to the most serious schism in the history of the modern labor movement.  Heads of a number of the industrial unions in the AFL, led by John L. Lewis of the Mine Workers, called upon the AFL to finance and support big organizing campaigns in the nonunion industries on a basis that all the workers in each industry would belong to one industrial, or ,'vertical," union.  Most of the leaders of the AFL unions presided over craft, or "horizontal" unions, and they maintained that employees of the same skills or crafts in the unorganized industries
should sooner or later belong to their organizations.

In November 1935, Lewis announced the creation of the CIO, the Committee for Industrial Organization, composed of about a dozen leaders of AFL unions, to carry on the effort for industrial unionism.  Lewis, born in Iowa in 1880 of Welsh immigrant parents, went to work in the coal mines and became president of the Mine Workers in 1920.  An orator of remarkable virtuosity, Lewis voiced increasingly bitter attacks on his colleagues on the AFL Executive Council; his words helped speed the break.  In 1936, the various CIO unions were expelled from the Federation, because said Lewis, they
favored industrial unionism; because, said AFL President Green, they had flouted procedures and rules of the AFL. In 1938 the CIO held its first constitutional convention and became the Congress of Industrial Organizations.

In any event, the CIO began a remarkably successful series of organizing campaigns-and in rapid succession, over the next few years, brought industrial unionism to large sectors of basic American industry.  After U.S. Steel signed with the CIO Steel Workers in the spring of 1937, major organizing efforts brought, during the next few years, first signed agreements most frequently after strike action-with major corporations in the steel, auto, rubber, glass, maritime, meat packing and other mass production industries.  At the same time the unions remaining in the AFL registered even more substantial gains in membership.

The growth in union strength of both the AFL and CIO throughout the period, coupled with Roosevelt's domestic program, led to passage of a number of national social programs long advocated by the labor movement: among them, the national social security program, unemployment compensation, workers' compensation, and a federal minimum wage-hour law (the original minimum hourly pay set by the 1938 statute was 25 cents an hour).

During World War 11, the AFL and CIO, while preserving areas of disagreement, began to find more substantial bases for working together on problems affecting all workers.  Philip Murray, who succeeded Lewis as president of the CIO, and AFL President Green served jointly and cooperatively on a number of government commissions involved in the war effort.  Murrav, born in Scotland in 1886, came as a boy to the corn fields of western Pennsylvania, and through his negotiating talents and oratorical ability rose through the Mine Workers ranks to vice president.  Murray headed the CIO's Steel Workers Organizing Committee in 1936, and in 1942 he was elected president of the new United Steelworkers, a position he retained while serving as head of the CIO.

In 1952, Murray died, and was succeeded by Walter P. Reuther of the United Automobile Workers.  Reuther, born in 1907 as one of four sons of a socialist brewery worker in Wheeling, W.Va., moved to Detroit during the depression and became a skilled worker in the auto industry.  He was one of the prime organizers of the Auto Workers and after World War 11 won a closely contested battle for the UAW presidency, a post he held until his death in an airplane crash in 1970.  Just a few weeks after Murray's death, William Green died, and was succeeded by George Meany, the AFL sec'y/treasr.  Many of the old antagonisms had died out, many of the old issues had been resolved, and the stage was set for merger of the two labor groups.  They were reunited into the AFL-CIO at a convention in New York opening on Dec. 5, 1955.

George Meany was unanimously elected president of the merged labor federation, and a new chapter opened for the American labor movement.  Meany, born in the Bronx, N.Y., in 1894, followed his father's footsteps as a plumber, became active in his local union, and was elected president of the New York State Federation of Labor in 1934.  On the basis of a brilliant record of helping win enactment of state labor and social legislation, he was elected AFL secretary-treasurer, to fill a vacancy, in 1939.

Back to Top

[Home] [373 Officers] [Upcoming Events] [Links to Other Unions]
[Local 373 E-mail] [Webmaster E-mail] [373 Members E-mail Directory]
[Ironworkers' Prayer] [History of American Labor]
[Sign Guestbook] [View Guestbook]