1940: American Federation Of Labor

Gain in Membership.

The American Federation of Labor gained nearly 250,000 members in 1940 and reported for August 1940 a membership of 4,247,443, the highest figure in its history. The increase was widely distributed among the constituent unions of the Federation and reflected the gradual improvement of business during the year, as well as the expansion of industry associated with the beginnings of the country's defense program. The reaffiliation of the International Ladies Garment Workers with the A. F. of L. brought 250,000 new members, although only a fraction of these were recorded in the August figures. But this gain was partially offset by the loss of 79,000 members of the International Typographical Union, which was suspended by the Federation for failure to pay a special per capita tax whose proceeds were to be used to finance organizing campaigns and to fight the C.I.O.

Relations with NLRB.

Changes in the policy of the National Labor Relations Board were an important factor contributing to the growth of the Federation. With the appointment of W. M. Leiserson to membership on the Board, that agency adopted a much more liberal policy toward craft unions. Since practically all of the unions affiliated with the A. F. of L. are organizations of this type, the tendency of the Board to permit groups of skilled labor to choose craft unions as their bargaining units, even in plants already under the jurisdiction of industrial or vertical unions, became a source of immediate benefit to the Federation and of great potential gains in the next years. There were signs, also, that the Board might reconsider an earlier decision in the case of the longshoremen of the west coast where, by establishing a regional bargaining unit, it had virtually destroyed A. F. of L. unions in several of the Pacific ports.

These revisions in the Board's policy were no doubt the result of the vigorous campaign which the A. F. of L. has been waging against the Board and its staff. In 1939 the Federation had prevented the confirmation of Donald Wakefield Smith as a member of the Board. In 1940 it blocked the reappointment of J. Warren Madden as chairman of the Board. By the end of the year the Board had been reorganized and the majority members — H. A. Millis, the new chairman, and W. M. Leiserson — were expected to deal more patiently and sympathetically with the claims of the A. F. of L. than did their predecessors. At the same time the resignation of important members of the Board's staff, which followed Mr. Madden's retirement, has had the effect of mollifying the Federation.

In its efforts to amend the National Labor Relations Act, the Federation was unsuccessful. Although both houses of Congress were apparently ready to amend this law, action was prevented by the Administration. The Federation, meanwhile, though pleased with the changes in the Board's personnel and policies, remained apparently unwilling to depend alone on new interpretations of the law and continued to press for organic revisions in the terms of the Act. In its report to the 1940 convention, the Executive Council of the A. F. of L. proposed the following amendments:

(1) The creation of a new five-man Board.

(2) A change in the unit rule to permit skilled employees and recognized classifications of workers to retain their separate unity, if they so desire, similar to the Railway Labor Act.

(3) A direct court appeal by labor organizations in representation cases, so as to preclude a recurrence of the longshoremen's decision, which wiped out all American Federation of Labor longshoremen's bargaining units on the West Coast.

(4) Amendments preserving the integrity of collective bargaining agreements entered into by bona fide labor organizations.

(5) Procedural amendments to eliminate the outrageous delays that jeopardize the organizational gains made by many labor unions.

Relations with C.I.O.

Relations between the A. F. of L. and the C.I.O. remained unchanged during the year. Early in 1940 John L. Lewis reiterated his proposal of the year before that the C.I.O. unions enter the A. F. of L. in a body and then adjust their particular differences. This was again rejected and during the remainder of the year no serious attempts to effect peace in the labor movement were made. Rightly or wrongly responsibility for this impasse was generally put on John L. Lewis. During the presidential campaign Mr. Lewis early stated his opposition to Mr. Roosevelt and eventually announced his support of Mr. Willkie, the Republican candidate. In his appeal for labor support for his candidate, Mr. Lewis promised that, if Mr. Willkie was defeated, he would resign as president of the C.I.O. After the election, accordingly, Mr. Lewis refused to stand for re-election and Philip Murray was chosen in his place. This shift in the highest office of the C.I.O. aroused hopes that peace negotiations between the rival organizations could be resumed with better chances of success. But, whether because the influence of Mr. Lewis in the C.I.O. remained dominant even after his retirement or because the issues that divided the two organizations had with the passage of time become more difficult to reconcile, the year ended with no further peace moves and with little indication that reconciliation was practicable.

Meanwhile the A. F. of L. benefited from internal strains within the C.I.O. The position Mr. Lewis took in the presidential election divided the C.I.O. and strengthened the A. F. of L. with the public and an increasing proportion of the rank and file of union members. Evidence of the existence of strong communist influences in the C.I.O., likewise, enhanced the prestige of the Federation. Finally differences in policy between Mr. Sidney Hillman, one of the founders of the C.I.O. and until the last convention a vice-president of that organization, and Mr. Lewis, which almost reached an open break and made Mr. Hillman the leader of the peace party in the C.I.O., produced more friendly relations between the A. F. of L. and Mr. Hillman, and, hence, the administration in Washington with whom Mr. Hillman had become quite influential.

In the several industries in which C.I.O. and A. F. of L. jurisdiction overlapped, the A. F. of L. continued to recoup some of the losses it had suffered from the organization of the C.I.O. The Federation's textile union made considerable headway in that industry in the face of strong opposition from the C.I.O. union. A new union of newspaper writers, the Editorial Association, made serious inroads into the C.I.O. Newspaper Guild and won an important contract with the Hearst papers of Chicago. In the automobile and automotive parts industries, A. F. of L. unions gained many members, although the large automobile companies remained almost exclusively under C.I.O. control. Only in the steel industry did the unions of the A. F. of L. find it impossible to make appreciable progress.

Internal Problems.

In spite of its advances, the A. F. of L. faced knotty problems of internal organization and policy. The most baffling of these had to do with charges of racketeering against high officials of several of the Federation's constituent unions and the demand that the Federation discipline such officers and assume responsibility for the conduct of their unions. In fact the International Ladies Garment Workers made it a condition of their reaffiliation with the A. F. of L. that that organization undertake to clean out affiliated unions found to be controlled by racketeers and gangsters. Whatever the opinion of the leaders of the A. F. of L., they soon faced the traditional difficulty of reconciling these practical problems with the principle of union autonomy and they contented themselves with deploring the existence of criminal practices in unions and exhorting the members of the unions in question to put their own houses in order.

Another problem of the Federation was the continuation of antitrust suits initiated by the United States Department of Justice against unions in the building and trucking industries. Since the unions in these industries are old and powerful craft organizations, they had in the course of their history adopted numerous restrictive practices and had often entered in collusive arrangements with employers for fixing prices and restricting production. In his drive against monopoly, Mr. Thurman Arnold, an Assistant Attorney-General, included among the combinations against which he was proceeding these types of labor unions. The A. F. of L. has from the outset vigorously fought any attempt to bring labor organizations under the antitrust laws and has viewed Mr. Arnold's policy with distrust and fear. But the Department of Justice has refused to be diverted and the results of its policy will be determined by forthcoming decisions of the United States Supreme Court in the several labor cases that are now before it.

See also CONGRESS OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATIONS; STRIKES; TRADE UNIONS; WAGES, HOURS AND CONDITIONS.