1938: Congress Of Industrial Organizations (C.I.O.)

Three-year Growth.

At its first formal convention, held in Pittsburgh, November 1938, the C.I.O. set itself up as a permanent federation of labor. It discarded the name. Committee for Industrial Organization, and became the Congress of Industrial Organizations. It framed and adopted a full-fledged constitution. In its new constitution, the purposes of the Congress were stated to be the promotion of organization and collective bargaining along industrial lines, adherence to contracts with employers, and the support of appropriate legislation.

Thus, in three years, the C.I.O. had grown from an informal committee, composed of eight national unions affiliated with the A.F. of L., to a national congress of unions, claiming in its membership 34 national unions, 8 organizing committees, and 675 local industrial unions. Although both business activity and employment were in 1938 far below the previous year, the C.I.O. managed not only to hold its earlier gains but to extend the boundaries of organization. In the steel, automobile, electrical manufacturing, glass, and shipping industries, most of the old agreements were renewed and many new ones were signed. Important contracts were negotiated with the General Electric and Postal Telegraph companies and with the Radio Corporation of America. In the meat-packing industry, the C.I.O. made considerable headway, even among the larger companies. Similar progress was recorded in the various branches of the textile industry. Total membership reported to the convention was put at more than 4,000,000, or four times the membership of the eight unions which, in November 1935, formed the Committee for Industrial Organization.

Constituent Unions.

The national unions comprising the C.I.O. cover practically all of the most important sectors of American employment, from mining and manufacturing to agricultural, white-collar, and public employment. At the close of 1938, five of the constituent organizations — the United Auto Workers, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, the United Mine Workers, and the Steel and the Textile Workers' Organizing Committees — each claimed a membership of more than 250,000. Two of these, the steel and the coal miners' unions, claimed, respectively, 525,000 and 612,000 members. Three unions, all young, claimed more than 100,000 members each among agricultural and cannery employees, electrical, radio, and machine workers, and in the lumber and wood-working industries. In addition to these national unions, there were directly affiliated with the C.I.O. 675 local industrial unions whose 123,000 members were distributed over many industries and occupations.

Organization.

In its organization, the C.I.O. observes the pattern which has long prevailed among American labor unions. The backbone of the C.I.O. is the 30 or more national unions affiliated with it. These organizations, the majority of them relatively young and organized in the past 3 or 4 years and the rest old unions formerly in the A.F. of L., are autonomous unions, joined together for common ends in a loose federation, the Congress of Industrial Organizations. In addition to these separate and independent unions, the next in importance is the group of Organizing Committees of which there were last November eight, charged with organizing employees in the distillery, farm equipment, optical, packinghouse, steel, textile, toy and novelty, and public utility industries. The Organizing Committees apparently occupy an intermediate status. Their function is to lay the foundation for an organization which, if successful, will in time become either an independent, affiliated national union or be absorbed into a closely allied union. The third type of affiliate is the local industrial union. These are as a rule temporary local organizations started in unorganized industries. When such organizations have multiplied in number and membership they will be, where their members are employed in the same or related industries, combined into autonomous national unions. In its broad outlines this is essentially the set-up of the A.F. of L., with the exception that the C.I.O. unions, unlike the majority of those affiliated with the A.F. of L., are all industrial unions and, as such, admit to membership all employees of an industry regardless of craft or skill.

At the same time, the local structure of the C.I.O. has been elaborated and formalized. During the past year, city and state federations composed of C.I.O. unions were set up in the leading industrial localities of the country and, as such, formed local counterparts of the national C.I.O. The creation of these local units was in part a response to the inevitable need for decentralization in the activities of a growing organization and in part a result of the expulsion of C.I.O. unions from the established city and State federations of labor affiliated with the A.F. of L.

Internal Dissensions.

The C.I.O. has not been entirely free from internal dissension. Because of a fundamental clash in policy, the International Ladies Garment Workers, one of the largest of the C.I.O. unions, with a membership of 250,000, and one of the founding members of the C.I.O., failed to send delegates to the November convention and has presumably withdrawn its affiliation with that organization. This action it took in order to avoid participating in a movement that would mean a permanent division in the ranks of American organized labor. The remaining serious disputes grew out of factional differences within affiliated organizations or the friction existing between an Organizing Committee and a union which had sometime in the past bad jurisdiction over the same industry. Factional disputes within the United Automobile Workers were responsible for recurring quarrels between groups in the administration of that union and the higher officers of the C.I.O. Not long before the convention, differences were apparently settled through the efforts of a C.I.O. committee composed of Philip Murray and Sidney Hillman, the two vice-presidents of that organization. Before the end of the year the dispute had broken out again; and Homer Martin, president of the Automobile Workers, resumed his attacks on the C.I.O. and reiterated his demand for full autonomy in the conduct of the internal affairs of his union. The second dispute was between the United Textile Workers, an old union formerly affiliated with the A.F. of L., and the Textile Workers' Organizing Committee set up by the C.I.O. by agreement with the United Textile Workers and operated under the general management of Sidney Hillman, president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, to unionize the numerous parts of the textile industry. Francis German, president of the United Textile Workers, challenged the legality of the agreement with the C.I.O., took legal steps to recover the funds of several lead unions, and himself withdrew from the C.I.O. The immediate aftermath was the secession of a group of local unions in New England from the Textile Workers' Organizing Committee and the expulsion of Mr. Gorman from his union. Meanwhile the nations steps so far taken in this dispute are being litigated in the courts.

Organizing Tactics.

The organizing tactics employed by the C.I.O. during the last year were much more restrained than in the preceding period. The sit-down strike was most sparingly, if at all, used. Aside from the usual methods of organization, the C.I.O.'s most vigorous efforts to advance its position took the form of charges against employers brought before the National Labor Relations Board. The most important of these were the result of the defeat the C.I.O. suffered in its strike against the 'little' or independent steel companies in 1937 and its failure to win recognition from the Ford Motor Company. Accordingly the labor practices of the leading independent steel companies — Bethlehem, Republic, Inland, and National — and of the Ford Company have been the subject of prolonged and searching investigation by the Board; and preliminary and final decisions from time to time issued by the Board have found one or another of these companies guilty of a variety of unfair practices, among them the failure to bargain with the C.I.O. union. While this is a slow method of organization, it has in other similar situations proved an unusually effective one.

Conflict with A.F. of L.

The chances for peace with the A.F. of L. apparently became much slimmer than before. The victories won by the C.I.O. since its inception and its ability, demonstrated during the depression of 1937-38, to withstand adverse business conditions no doubt persuaded that organization to pursue its independent course, unless it could obtain wholly satisfactory terms of peace. The tone of the debate at the November convention of the C.I.O. therefore disclosed no strong demand for a settlement with the A.F. of L., based on a compromise of conflicting claims. In fact, the proposal most popular with the delegates to the convention — the convening of a joint convention of all C.I.O. and A.F. of L. unions — left most disputed questions unsettled and would, in all probability, have doomed such a meeting to early failure.

Meanwhile, the issues dividing the two organizations have grown in number and difficulty. The actions taken by the C.I.O. at its November convention are themselves considered as closing the door to a negotiated peace. The number of unions, new and old, whose jurisdictions overlap has steadily increased and, consequently, the number of separate issues to be disposed of have become more numerous and of greater gravity. The attacks by the A.F. of L. on the National Labor Relations Board, because it regards that agency as too friendly to the C.I.O., and the Federation's efforts to amend the Labor Relations Act have brought the C.I.O. to the defense of the Board and the Act and have injected a new issue into the original quarrel about industrial unionism and the methods of unionizing unorganized workers. With respect to proposed legislation, notably the wages and hours bills, the two organizations stood in determined opposition.

The conflict spread also into politics. Traditionally opposed to independent political action by organized labor, the A.F. of L. openly fought the C.I.O.'s political affiliates, the American Labor Party in New York and the national Labor's Non-Partisan League. In the elections for local and national offices, held throughout the country in November 1938, the A.F. of L. in many places supported candidates opposed by the C.I.O. While the C.I.O. probably suffered from the general political reaction against the present Federal administration and its participation in the sit-down strikes of 1936-37, the opposition of the A.F. of L. was without doubt a considerable factor in the outcome of the elections. In Pennsylvania, one of the principal strongholds of C.I.O. unions, the Republican candidates supported by the A.F. of L. were elected by large majorities. In the industrial states of Ohio and Michigan, where the C.I.O. was associated in the public mind with the unusually aggressive organizing tactics of its earlier campaigns, the candidates it supported met generally with severe defeats. By and large, the election of November proved to be a decided set-back to the political aspirations of the C.I.O.

Economic Policies.

The prevailing business depression of 1937-38 clarified the economic policies and program of the C.I.O. Pursuing the orthodox and traditional union policy, the C.I.O. opposed concessions in wages and working conditions on the grounds that wage cuts would precipitate a general deflationary movement in business, reduce the aggregate purchasing power of labor, and hence prolong, instead of shorten, the duration of the depression. This policy the C.I.O. was, in most cases, strong enough to enforce. It managed to preserve friendly relations with the United States Steel Corporation without acceding to the demand for a wage reduction which that corporation is reported to have made. With the exception of occasional concessions, the scales of wages in effect under C.I.O. contracts remained in the main virtually unchanged.

The general economic policy of the C.I.O. was directed toward strengthening and extending existing labor legislation, increasing the expenditures for relief of the unemployed, and widening the limits of State action. In his report to the convention, John L. Lewis, then chairman and now president of the C.I.O., discussed at considerable length the economic problems of the country and the course of action best calculated to solve them. In substance, the program he recommended and the measures the convention supported were equivalent to the policies which have been in effect in this country since 1933. (See also AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR.)