Congress of Industrial Organizations

Congress of Industrial Organizations. John L. Lewis of the United Mine Workers (UMW) and other unionists created the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO) in November 1935, as a means of encouraging industrial unionism within the American Federation of Labor (AFL). The early CIO, with the financial support of Lewis's UMW, exhibited a high degree of rank‐and‐file activism. Lewis and his associates, most notably Sidney Hillman (1887–1946) of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, broke with the traditions of the AFL by embracing political action, working with communists and other radicals, and welcoming African American workers.

Victories in key Middle West strikes in 1936–1937 established the United Rubber Workers and the United Automobile Workers (UAW) as major CIO affiliates. When the U.S. Steel Company signed a contract with the Steel Workers Organizing Committee in March 1937, this bolstered the CIO's prestige and appeal. The CIO also benefited from its support of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1936 presidential election. Defeat in the bloody “Little Steel” strike of 1937 and the recession of 1937–1939 slowed the CIO's momentum. In 1938, the CIO formalized its break with the AFL, holding its first constitutional convention and adopting its permanent name, the Congress of Industrial Organizations.

In 1940, Lewis departed the CIO, which was now led by Steelworkers' chief Philip Murray (1886–1952), and in 1942 Lewis, with no formal announcement, severed the tie between the UMW and the CIO. Also that year, as the United States entered World War II, CIO leaders issued a no‐strike pledge, relying on their influence in the National War Labor Board for advances in wages and union recognition. Extensive wartime strikes by CIO members, however, compromised this strategy. Thanks to the wartime boom and a tight labor market, CIO membership approached 5 million.

After the war, CIO leaders sought partnership with business and government. The strike wave of 1946, however, along with Republican party gains in the 1946 elections, curbed these ambitions. CIO efforts to bring large‐scale organization to the South (“Operation Dixie”) failed, but the CIO‐affiliated UAW and the steelworkers achieved impressive economic contract gains that set new standards for American workers. The CIO also continued its operations in an effort to strengthen liberal forces in the Democratic party.

In 1949–1950, long‐simmering ideological conflict led to the ouster of eleven allegedly procommunist affiliates. Murray's death in 1952 brought other internal conflicts into the open. The new CIO President Walter Reuther concluded that a merger with the older AFL represented the CIO's best hope of institutional survival. This merger took place in 1955.

The CIO brought union organization and improved working conditions and living standards to millions of workers; it also integrated the labor movement into mainstream American liberal politics. Its inability to expand geographically and into white‐collar and service sectors, however, limited its postwar effectiveness.
See also Automotive Industry; Communist Party—USA; Depressions, Economic; Iron and Steel Industry; Labor Movements; Liberalism; Mass Production; New Deal Era, The; Strikes and Industrial Conflict.

Bibliography

Robert H. Zieger , The CIO, 1935–1955, 1995.

Robert H. Zieger