A wide variety of unions had formed in the brand-new steel industry in the 1900s. Local steel unions formed in steel mills here and there, but no national organization existed.
While the AA had a good degree of success organizing steel workers, it also had some significant failures. In 1892, the union fought and lost the Homestead strike, which nearly bankrupted the union and cost it a majority of its members. It attempted a recognition strike at U.S. Steel in 1901, which also failed and cost the union most of its members in that influential company. It engaged in a strike in 1919 for which it was ill-prepared and which was broken during the Red Scare.
AFL attempts to organize in steel
By mid-1933, the AA was almost moribund. Union president Michael F. Tighe, 76, was referred to as "Grandmother" due to his advanced age and timidity,[3] and he suspended locals that called for aggressive action.[4]
Passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) on June 16, 1933, sparked widespread union organizing throughout the country, even in the steel industry.[5][pageneeded] The AA's membership rose to more than 150,000 by February 1934 (although most had not become dues-paying members).[6]
In 1934, an opposition group known as the Rank and File Movement formed within the AA. A number of militant local affiliates had sprung up across the nation or had joined existing lodges in large enough numbers to elect their own, militant leaders. The locals coalesced into the Rank and File Movement and challenged the conservative leadership to act, demanding that the AA reorganize along industrial union lines.[7]
At its annual convention in San Francisco in October 1934, the AFL called for an organizing campaign in the steel industry. As early as 1926, AFL president William Green had convinced the federation's executive council to re-establish federal labor unions (FLUs) as a compromise between workers' desires to belong to an industrial union and the jurisdictional rights of existing AFL affiliates. The FLU had been one of Samuel Gompers' favorite recruiting devices. All workers in a plant were recruited into a single union. Theoretically, after organizing in an industry was complete, the FLUs would be broken up and the workers parceled out to the appropriate craft union. Although a number of AFL affiliates protested the use of FLUs, Green put them off — declaring that the FLUs were but temporary organizing devices.[8]
The AFL seemed committed to organizing with FLUs, and to organizing the steel industry. Between 1932 and 1934, the number of FLUs had risen to 1,798 from 307.[9]
But no organizing drive in steel emerged. The AFL executive council meeting in January 1935 considered organizing steel workers into FLUs, but only Green and two other vice presidents supported the plan. Green pointed out to the council that the AA had no resources to organize new members, and was philosophically opposed to organizing any but skilled workers. But the council refused to authorize an AFL-led organizing drive. Instead, the council voted to initiate a joint organizing drive similar to the failed 1919 campaign.[10]
Green dared not refuse the AFL executive council's instructions to undertake a joint organizing drive, but he did not wholeheartedly implement a plan, either. For the first six months of the year, Green did nothing. After the creation of the federal Steel Labor Relations Board in late June 1935 (an independent labor relations board created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt because of the failures of the National Labor Board), Green worked with Tighe, steel industry executives and the steel board to create a plan to allow collective bargaining in the steel industry. The talks dragged on through the end of the year. The sticking point was the AFL's demand for representational exclusivity (the concept that if a majority of workers voted for the union then all employees in the bargaining unit should belong to the union).[citation needed]
By early 1935, what little organizing the AA had exhibited in the steel industry melted away. Continued pressure by the steel companies—including the widespread establishment of company unions, the use of violence, spies and unwarranted dismissal—had decimated the AA's membership.[11] When the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the NIRA on constitutional ground on May 27, 1935,[12] the organizing drive collapsed. Tighe reported to the AFL in May 1935 that his membership stood at 8,600. At the AFL's convention in Atlantic City in October 1935, the executive council issued a report in which it claimed it had not been "advisable to launch an organizing campaign for the steel industry" in the previous year.[13]
Establishment of SWOC
Other events swiftly overtook the AA. The National Labor Relations Act was signed into law by President Roosevelt on July 5, 1935.
Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO) formed within the AFL on November 8, 1935. The AFL had long resisted industrial unionism, but the changing nature of work and the American economy were draining the AFL of members and inhibiting organizing.[14]
Under the leadership of John L. Lewis, the United Mine Workers of America (UMW) had rapidly expanded its membership. It had even gained a foothold in the so-called "captive mines"—those mines owned and operated by the steel industry to provide coke and coal for steel production. So long as the steel industry remained nonunion, pressure could be put on the captive mines to stay nonunion. And throughout the country, coal operators were using the competitive advantage of the captive mines to stonewall the UMW.[15]
CIO efforts to woo the AA
Lewis and the Congress of Industrial Organizations did not wish to leave the AFL. In order to avoid antagonizing the AFL but eager to begin an organizing drive in steel along industrial union lines, the CIO resolved to work through the AA instead.[16]
The CIO first attempted to push a steelworker industrial organizing plan through the January 1936 AFL executive council meeting. The CIO proposed raising $500,000 toward a $1 million goal to fund the organizing drive. The CIO also requested a jurisdictional waiver, so that skilled workers could be assigned to the AA and while other workers joined a new industrial steelworkers union. The executive council rejected the plan and demanded that the CIO disband. To maintain the pretense of action, the executive council then passed a resolution instructing Green to come up with his own organizing plan for the steel industry.[17]
The CIO then attempted to subvert the AA from within. If the AA changed its mind about organizing along industrial lines, Green and the AFL—which above all else respected each member union's autonomy—could do little to prevent the organizing campaign. The CIO approached President Tighe on April 15 and asked to speak to delegates at the AA's convention, but Tighe refused to say whether he would permit a CIO address. Fewer than 100 delegates gathered at the AA's convention in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, on April 28, 1936. Tighe locked the doors of the convention hall to keep the CIO officials out. Tighe then asked the members to vote on whether they wished to hear the CIO offer. The delegates voted 42 to 43 (with seven abstentions) to refuse to hear the proposal. But the CIO found a way to end-run the AA leadership. When the Pennsylvania State Federation of Labor sent a delegation to deliver greetings to the AA, the delegation included John Brophy, the newly hired organizing director of the CIO. Tighe initially refused him entrance, but was forced to give Brophy access under pressure from the delegates. In his remarks, Brophy explained the offer of the CIO: $500,000 for the organization of the steel industry, provided the campaign occurred along industrial lines. A motion was made and carried to appoint a committee to study the proposal.[18]
Tighe remained uncertain as to what course to take. He sent AA international secretary Louis Leonard to consult with Green at Green's home in Coshocton, Ohio. Green countered the CIO offer with a pledge of 35 organizers and an undetermined amount of money. Leonard then met Lewis on June 3 in Washington, D.C. Lewis made it clear that the CIO would move ahead with an organizing drive in the steel industry with or without the AA.[19]
Leonard met with the AA executive board the following day. The AA officials accepted the CIO proposal. They voted to affiliate with the CIO, and a memorandum was drafted which established the AA as an administrative unit within the CIO's steelworker organizing committee. Subsequently, the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC) was formed in Pittsburgh on June 7, 1936.[20]
Green was outraged. He denounced what he saw as the takeover of the AA on June 5, and declared that the CIO steelworker organizing drive would fail. More importantly, however, Green interpreted the move as proof that the CIO was engaging in dual unionism. After specious charges were drawn up and an illegal trial conducted, the AFL suspended the 10 unions which belonged to the CIO—the AA among them.[21]
Structure of SWOC
SWOC's internal structure was dictated in most ways by the agreement with the AA. The AA gave SWOC the constitutional legitimacy it needed in order to function as a union. The AA remained inactive except for issuing charters and the approval of contracts for existing lodges. The AA authorized SWOC to handle all matters regarding organizing and to negotiate contracts on behalf of new locals. The only provision for internal governance was that the chairman of the CIO was empowered to appoint a director for SWOC and a policy committee.[22]
For all intents and purposes, the AA ceased to exist and function after it was subsumed by SWOC. Philip Murray was appointed director of SWOC, and ran the organization (and union) until his death. Murray oversaw a $500,000 budget and 36 organizers.[23]
Steel Labor was the official paper of SWOC. Its first editor was J. B. S. Hardman. The first issue was published was August 1, 1936. The newspaper's initial purpose was to promote social change, but this mission changed over time to become more moderate. Information provided about the labor movement in America to steelworkers was limited.[24]
Organizing successes
SWOC had a major success on March 2, 1937, when the union signed a collective bargaining agreement with U.S. Steel. SWOC effectively infiltrated the employer's company unions and turned the unions against the employer. Green denigrated the contract for not achieving a closed shop.[25]
SWOC suffered its first defeat when it attempted to organize the 186,000 workers laboring for "Little Steel"—Republic Steel, Bethlehem Steel, Youngstown Sheet and Tube, National Steel, Inland Steel and American Rolling Mills. Worker sentiment for a strike was strong, leading to a walkout in 1937 but SWOC was financially exhausted and had not adequately planned for a protracted dispute. Unlike U.S. Steel, the companies of Little Steel were willing to use violence, espionage and large numbers of strikebreakers to crush the union. The worst incidence of violence occurred in Chicago Illinois, when 10 people were killed and 30 wounded during the Memorial Day Massacre.[26] At least six other people, all union members or supporters, were killed before the strike ended later that summer [27]
The AA—and SWOC—had a role in the most important labor relations court case of the modern era. During SWOC's attempt to organize Jones and Laughlin Steel in 1936, the company summarily fired hundreds of union supporters. SWOC filed an unfair labor practice against the company and won. Republic Steel appealed in court, alleging that the National Labor Relations Act was unconstitutional. But in National Labor Relations Board v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation, 301 U.S. 1 (1937), the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the NLRA.[citation needed]
SWOC inspired a number of similarly-structured organizing committees in the CIO. But none of these were as successful as SWOC.[28]
Organizing slowed after the initial burst of success. By 1939, SWOC was in debt by $2.5 million. Little Steel continued to strongly resist unionization, establishing company unions and intimidating workers. SWOC made little inroad below the Mason-Dixon line, except for a few beachheads in border states which came about as part of its agreements with U.S. Steel. However, the callous treatment of workers displaced by technological change occasionally helped SWOC organize a plant here or there.[29]
Second wave of success
Little Steel capitulated in the spring of 1941. Improving economic conditions had not led to rising salaries, and worker walk-outs involving tens of thousands of employees lashed Bethlehem Steel in New York and Pennsylvania. Long-delayed court rulings forced the company to dismantle its company unions, and most of the company's plants voted for the union by the fall. Huge majorities voted for the union at Youngstown Sheet and Tube and at Inland Steel. Republic Steel quietly signed contracts soon thereafter, and the union expanded its membership at U.S. Steel. Wage increases in the contracts averaged 10 percent a year. Once only an organization which existed solely on paper, SWOC now had more members than the Mine Workers.[30]
SWOC had had little success at the historically important Homestead mill. But in April 1941, after layoffs sparked renewed interest in the union, U.S. Steel signed a contract with SWOC. It marked the successful return of a union to the plant for the first time since 1892.[31]
In 1940, SWOC director Philip Murray was elected president of the CIO.[citation needed]
Disbanding SWOC
SWOC and the AA were disbanded at a convention held in Cleveland, Ohio on May 22, 1942. A new organization, the United Steel Workers of America (USWA), was founded. Philip Murray was installed as the new union's president. David J. McDonald was appointed the union's first secretary-treasurer.[32]
↑ Brody, "Origins...," 1987, p. 16. Although most historians claim AA membership was only 50,000 in February 1934, Brody points out that record-keeping in the AA headquarters had broken down due to lack of funds and that the 150,000 number is a better estimate.
↑ Brody, "Origins...," 1987, p. 16; Phelan, p. 100; Rose, 2001; Staughton Lynd, "The Possibility of Radicalism in the Early 1930s: The Case of Steel," Radical America 6 (Nov.-Dec. 1972), p. 36-35.
↑ Between 1933 and 1937, the four largest steel manufacturers in the U.S. had purchased more tear gas and nauseating gas than the United States government. Phelan, p. 103.
↑ Brody, "Origins...," 1987, p. 16; Zieger, p. 35. AFL executive council report is cited in Rayback, p. 349. See also, generally, Pacchioli, 1999; and Rose, 2001.
↑ Brody, "Origins...," 1987, p. 20; Zieger, p. 29-33; Phelan, p. 129-142.
↑ Rayback, p. 350; Phelan, p. 135; Zieger, p. 35. Green's March 2, 1936 plan relied on a joint organizing committee and needed $750,000 in start-up costs alone. Only five of the AFL's 110 unions responded favorably, contributing but $8,625 and five organizers.
↑ Phelan, p. 135-136; See also, generally, Marshall, 1936.
↑ Brody, "Origins...," 1987, p. 26; Zieger, p. 36-37. Half the members of the governing policy committee were drawn from CIO unions, half from SWOC staff. Four of the committee's eight members came from the Mine Workers, two from the AA, and one each from the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union. The committee met infrequently and at the pleasure of the director of SWOC, and served to rubber-stamp the director's actions.
↑ Zieger, p. 37. The number of organizers eventually swelled to more than 200.
↑ Quirke, Carol (2012-08-30). Eyes on Labor: News Photography and America's Working Class. OUP USA. p.186. ISBN978-0-19-976822-6.
↑ Zieger, p. 38-39, 44, 54–65; Rayback, p. 351-52; Phelan, p. 144.
↑ White, p. 130-225; Zieger, p. 38-39, 44, 54–65; Rayback, p. 351-52; Phelan, p. 144.
John Llewellyn Lewis was an American leader of organized labor who served as president of the United Mine Workers of America (UMW) from 1920 to 1960. A major player in the history of coal mining, he was the driving force behind the founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), which established the United Steel Workers of America and helped organize millions of other industrial workers in the 1930s, during the Great Depression. After resigning as head of the CIO in 1941, Lewis took the United Mine Workers out of the CIO in 1942 and in 1944 took the union into the American Federation of Labor (AFL).
The Communist Party USA and its allies played an important role in the United States labor movement, particularly in the 1930s and 1940s, but never succeeded, with rare exceptions, 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 (AFL) was a national federation of labor unions in the United States founded in Columbus, Ohio, in December 1886 by an alliance of craft unions disaffected from the Knights of Labor, a national labor union. Samuel Gompers was elected the full-time president at its founding convention and reelected every year, except one, until his death in 1924. He became the major spokesperson for the union movement.
Craft unionism refers to a model of trade unionism in which workers are organised based on the particular craft or trade in which they work. It contrasts with industrial unionism, in which all workers in the same industry are organized into the same union, regardless of differences in skill.
Philip Murray was a Scottish-born steelworker and an American labor leader. He was the first president of the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC), the first president of the United Steelworkers of America (USWA), and the longest-serving president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).
Iorwith Wilbur Abel, better known as I. W. Abel, was an American labor leader.
Operation Dixie was the name of the post-World War II campaign by the Congress of Industrial Organizations to unionize industry in the Southern United States, particularly the textile industry. Launched in the spring of 1946, the campaign ran in 12 Southern states and was undertaken as part of a dual effort to consolidate wage gains won by the trade union movement in the Northern United States by raising wage levels in the South while simultaneously transforming the conservative politics of the region, thereby allowing the trade union agenda to win on a national scale.
The U.S. Steel recognition strike of 1901 was an attempt by the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers to reverse its declining fortunes and organize large numbers of new members. The strike failed.
The Steel Strike of 1919 was an attempt by the weakened Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers (AA) to organize the United States steel industry in the wake of World War I. The strike began on September 22, 1919, and collapsed on January 8, 1920.
Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers (AA) was an American labor union formed in 1876 to represent iron and steel workers. It partnered with the Steel Workers Organizing Committee of the CIO, in November 1935. Both organizations disbanded May 22, 1942, to form a new organization, the United Steelworkers.
David John McDonald was an American labor leader and president of the United Steelworkers of America from 1952 to 1965.
Emil Rieve was an American labor leader. He was president of the Textile Workers Union of America (TWUA) from 1939 to 1956, a vice president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) from 1939 to 1955, and a vice president of the AFL-CIO from 1955 to 1960.
Benjamin Franklin Fairless was an American steel company executive. He was president of a wide range of steel companies during a turbulent and formative period in the American steel industry. His roles included President of Central Alloy Steel from 1928 to 1930; First Vice President of Republic Steel from 1930 to 1935; President of the Carnegie-Illinois Steel Company from 1935 to 1938; and then President (1938–1955), and later Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the board of directors (1952–1955) of U.S. Steel, the largest steel corporation in the United States.
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 Pennsylvania AFL–CIO is a federation of labor unions in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania in the United States. It is an affiliate of the AFL-CIO. It was formed on June 9, 1960, by the merger of two predecessor bodies, the Pennsylvania Federation of Labor and the Pennsylvania Industrial Union Council. It can trace its history through its predecessor bodies to 1890.
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. Created in 1935 by John L. Lewis, who was a part of the United Mine Workers (UMW), it was originally called the Committee for Industrial Organization but changed its name in 1938 when it broke away from the American Federation of Labor (AFL). It also changed names because it was not successful with organizing unskilled workers with the AFL.
Stanley H. Ruttenberg was an American labor economist, CIO union organizer, director of the Research Department of the AFL-CIO, and Assistant Secretary of Labor under U.S. President Lyndon Baines Johnson.
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.
References
Brody, David. Labor in Crisis: The Steel Strike of 1919. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1987. ISBN0-252-01373-5
Brody, David. Steelworkers in America: The Nonunion Era. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1969. ISBN0-252-06713-4
Brody, David. "The Origins of Modern Steel Unionism: The SWOC Era." Forging a Union of Steel: Philip Murray, SWOC, and the United Steelworkers. Ithaca, N.Y.: ILR Press, 1987. ISBN0-87546-134-4
Dubofsky, Melvyn and Dulles, Foster Rhea. Labor in America: A History. 6th ed. Wheeling, Ill.: Harlan Davidson, Inc., 1999. ISBN0-88295-979-4
Foner, Philip. History of the Labor Movement in the United States. Vol. 2: From the Founding of the A.F. of L. to the Emergence of American Imperialism. New York: International Publishers, 1955. ISBN0-7178-0092-X
Krause, Paul. The Battle for Homestead, 1890–1892: Politics, Culture, and Steel. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992. ISBN0-8229-5466-4
Marshall, Margaret. "Waiting for Lewis." The Nation. May 20, 1936.
Pacchioli, David. "Forged in Steel." Research/Penn State. 20:1 (January 1999).
Phelan, Craig. William Green: Biography of a Labor Leader. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1989. ISBN0-88706-871-5
Rayback, Joseph G. A History of American Labor. Rev. and exp. ed. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1966. ISBN0-02-925850-2
Rose, James D. Duquesne and the Rise of Steel Unionism. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 2001. ISBN0-252-02660-8
Schlesinger, Arthur M. The Age of Roosevelt: The Coming of the New Deal: 1933–1935. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1958. ISBN0-618-34086-6
White, Ahmed. The Last Great Strike: Little Steel, the CIO, and the Struggle for Labor Rights in New Deal America. Oakland: University of California, 2016. ISBN0520285611
Zieger, Robert H. The CIO, 1935–1955. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1995. ISBN0-8078-2182-9
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