Hillman, Sidney 1887-1946

HILLMAN, SIDNEY 1887-1946

Labor leader and government bureaucrat

Politician

Unlike most labor leaders, Sidney Hillman assumed a place in the Roosevelt administration, both through a series of official appointments and as a confidant of the president, that allowed him to operate at the highest levels of government. Hillman became a power in the Democratic Party and was a participant in the shaping of domestic economic and social policy throughout the 1930s and 1940s.

Immigrant

In 1887 Hillman was born to a Russian-Jewish family living in Zagare. His family had a strong rabbinical tradition and intended for him to follow a religious calling. Against his father's wishes he began to read books on Western social thought, and he soon became politically active. In 1905 he was arrested for participating in a public protest in support of the Russian revolution of 1905. In 1907 he immigrated to the United States, where he became involved in the New York Jewish socialist community.

Pragmatic Labor Leader

Hillman's reputation came not as an ideologue but as a pragmatic labor organizer and a reasonable and fair negotiator. He helped to found and became the first president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America in 1914. During World War I he made contacts with progressives in the government and became convinced of the benefits of state intervention on labor's behalf. During the 1920s he urged the American Federation of Labor (AFL) to reform and accept industrial unionism and public ownership of utilities. With the Depression he became an important New Dealer and an early advocate of sweeping reforms and the adoption of Keynesian economic policies.

Democrat

In 1940 Hillman cemented his relationship with President Franklin D. Roosevelt and helped firmly commit the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) to the Democratic Party. Not only was he becoming an important person in the Democratic Party, he was also a personal friend of Roosevelt. As the only labor representative on the National Defense Advisory Commission, Hillman was a supporter of the administration's preparedness policies. He had a difficult time persuading the leadership of the CIO that preparedness was necessary, since many labor leaders feared that war preparation would be used as a pretext for eliminating the gains made by organized labor over the previous five years. During World War II he served on various government agencies. Roosevelt expected Hillman, as a labor leader, to prevent strikes and other labor disputes during the war—a thankless and virtually impossible task. Roosevelt also made him associate director of the Office of Production Management, which was under the direction of William S. Knudsen of General Motors. Unfortunately for Hillman, 1941 proved to be a bad year for labor relations. During his first year on his new job he faced strikes in shipyards, repair shops, aircraft plants, lumberyards, and many other businesses. The year saw more strikes than in any other year of American history except for 1937 and 1919. Furthermore, his position as a government official undermined his credibility with other labor leaders. For example, he sided with Roosevelt and Knudsen in the use of army troops to break a wildcat United Automobile Workers strike against the North American Aviation Company in June 1941. Even though it was a strike the CIO had itself condemned, the CIO in turn condemned Hillman for supporting the use of troops to end it.

Honest Broker

As the person unofficially in charge of mobilizing manpower for the war, Hillman tackled two major problems. The first was that of labor peace and plentiful workers. To promote these ends he pushed for an understanding between the AFL and the CIO that would end the feuding between the two major labor organizations. He also recognized that the Depression had undermined the skills of the American workforce and that such skills were needed for war industries. He worked closely with Owen Young of General Electric to create a vast vocational education program that drew on every government agency in any way related to mobilization and also stressed a "training within industry" program of worker training. On 12 April 1942 Roosevelt created the War Manpower Commission to oversee labor during the war and appointed Paul McNutt, the former governor of Indiana, as director. Hillman had been performing the responsibilities of the commission by himself and had expected to be appointed director. He finally succumbed to the pressure under which he had been working and suffered a heart attack. It was six months before he returned to work.

Politician

Although HillMan's influence as a labor leader was in decline during the last few years of his life, his political influence continued to be considerable. He played an important part in the Democratic Party national convention in 1944 and in choosing Harry S Truman as its vice-presidential nominee when most insiders realized that Roosevelt would not live out a fourth term. Hillman died in 1946 at age fiftynine.

Source:

Steven Fraser, "Sidney Hillman: Labor's Machiavelli," in Labor Leaders in America, edited by Melvyn Dubofsky and Warren Van Tine (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), pp. 207-233.