Ralph Hosea Chaplin (1887–1961) was an American writer,artist and labor activist.
The Communist Party USA and its allies played an important role in the United States labor movement,particularly in the 1930s and 1940s,but wasn't successful either in bringing the labor movement around to its agenda of fighting for socialism and full workers' control over industry,or in converting their influence in any particular union into membership gains for the Party. The CP has had only negligible influence in labor since its supporters' defeat in internal union political battles in the aftermath of World War II and the CIO's expulsion of the unions in which they held the most influence in 1950. After the expulsion of the Communists,organized labor in the United States began a steady decline.
The American Federation of Labor was a national federation of labor unions in the United States that continues today as the AFL–CIO. It was founded in Columbus,Ohio,in 1886 by an alliance of craft unions eager to provide mutual support and disappointed in the Knights of Labor. Samuel Gompers was elected the full-time president at its founding convention and was re-elected every year except one until his death in 1924. He became the major spokesperson for the union movement.
The nature and power of organized labor in the United States is the outcome of historical tensions among counter-acting forces involving workplace rights,wages,working hours,political expression,labor laws,and other working conditions. Organized unions and their umbrella labor federations such as the AFL–CIO and citywide federations have competed,evolved,merged,and split against a backdrop of changing values and priorities,and periodic federal government intervention.
In the Memorial Day massacre of 1937,the Chicago Police Department shot and killed ten unarmed demonstrators in Chicago,on May 30,1937. The incident took place during the Little Steel strike in the United States.
Lee Pressman was a labor attorney and earlier a US government functionary,publicly alleged in 1948 to have been a spy for Soviet intelligence during the mid-1930s,following his recent departure from Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) as a result of its purge of Communist Party members and fellow travelers. From 1936 to 1948,he represented the CIO and member unions in landmark collective bargaining deals with major corporations including General Motors and U.S. Steel. According to journalist Murray Kempton,anti-communists referred to him as "Comrade Big."
Republic Steel is an American steel manufacturer that was once the country's third largest steel producer. It was founded as the Republic Iron and Steel Company in Youngstown,Ohio in 1899. After rising to prominence during the early 20th Century,Republic suffered heavy economic losses and was eventually bought out before re-emerging in the early 2000s as a subsidiary. The company currently manufactures Special Bar Quality (SBQ) steel bars and employs around 2,000 people. It is currently owned by Grupo Simec,based in Guadalajara,Mexico.
These are References for Labor unions in the United States.
The Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC) was one of two precursor labor organizations to the United Steelworkers. It was formed by the CIO on June 7,1936. It disbanded in 1942 to become the United Steel Workers of America. The Steel Labor was the official paper of SWOC.
The United Cannery,Agricultural,Packing,and Allied Workers of America union (UCAPAWA) changed its name to Food,Tobacco,Agricultural,and Allied Workers (FTA) in 1944.
Mary Heaton Vorse was an American journalist and novelist. She established her reputation as a journalist reporting the labor protests of a largely female and immigrant workforce in the east-coast textile industry. Her later fiction drew on this material profiling the social and domestic struggles of working women. Unwilling to be a disinterested observer,she participated in labor and civil protests and was for a period the subject of regular U.S. Justice Department surveillance.
The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) is a union of wage workers which was formed in Chicago in 1905 by militant unionists and their supporters due to anger over the conservatism,philosophy,and craft-based structure of the American Federation of Labor (AFL). Throughout the early part of the 20th century,the philosophy and tactics of the IWW were frequently in direct conflict with those of the AFL concerning the best ways to organize workers,and how to best improve the society in which they toiled. The AFL had one guiding principle—"pure and simple trade unionism",often summarized with the slogan "a fair day's pay for a fair day's work." The IWW embraced two guiding principles,fighting like the AFL for better wages,hours,and conditions,but also promoting an eventual,permanent solution to the problems of strikes,injunctions,bull pens,and union scabbing.
George W. Taylor was a professor of industrial relations at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania,and is credited with founding the academic field of study known as industrial relations. He served in several capacities in the federal government,most notably as a mediator and arbitrator. During his career,Taylor settled more than 2,000 strikes.
A wildcat strike is a strike action undertaken by unionised workers without union leadership's authorisation,support,or approval;this is sometimes termed an unofficial industrial action. The legality of wildcat strikes varies between countries and over time.
The Little Steel strike was a 1937 labor strike by the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and its branch the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC),against a number of smaller steel producing companies,principally Republic Steel,Inland Steel,and Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company. The strike affected a total of thirty different mills belonging to the three companies,which employed 80,000 workers. The strike,which was one of the most violent labor disputes of the 1930s,ended without the strikers achieving their principal goal,recognition by the companies of the union as the bargaining agent for the workers.
The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) was a federation of unions that organized workers in industrial unions in the United States and Canada from 1935 to 1955. Originally created in 1935 as a committee within the American Federation of Labor (AFL) by John L. Lewis,a leader of the United Mine Workers (UMW),and called the Committee for Industrial Organization. Its name was changed in 1938 when it broke away from the AFL. It focused on organizing unskilled workers,who had been ignored by most of the AFL unions.
Meyer Bernstein (1914–1985) was a 20th-Century American labor leader and educator who worked for the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC),the United Steel Workers of America (USWA),the U.S. Department of Labor,and the United Mine Workers of America (UMW).
Harold J. Ruttenberg was an American labor activist for the Congress of Industrial Organizations's Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC) and later United Steel Workers of America (USWA),who in 1946 left labor for management and became an "outspoken" business executive in the steel industry.
Jesse Reese,was a black communist and militant trade unionist in the United States.
Strikes in the United States in the 1930s played a major role in reshaping the economy as it recovered from the Great Depression. Unions gained millions of members for unions in the American Federation of Labor (AFL)and the new Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). Energized by successful strikes in major industries with the help of New Deal agencies,the unions played a major role in Democratic Party efforts to reelect President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936,as well as 1940 and 1944.
