1935-1955 Robert H. Zieger The University of North Carohna Press Chapel Hill London Contents © 1995 University of North Girolina Press Preface vii All rights reserved Abbreviations ix Manufactured in the United States of America Introduction. The Fragile Juggernaut i 1 Before the CIO 6 The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on 2 Founding the CIO, 1935-1936 22 Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the 3 Over the Top, 1936-1937 42 Council on Library Resources. 4 The Diverse Arenas of the CIO, 1936-1938 66 5 Stasis and Schism, 1938-1940 90 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 6 1941, Year of Decision in Zieger, Robert H. 7 World War II 141 The CIO, 1935-1955 / by Robert H. Zieger. 8 After the War 212 p. cm. 9 The CIO and Its Communists 253 Includes bibliographical references and index. 10 The Korean War 294 ISBN 0-8078-2182-9 (cloth : aik. paper) I. Congress of Industrial Organizations (U.S.)— 11 The Postwar CIO 305 History. 2. Trade unions—United States— 12 The Final Years of the Late, Great CIO 333 Political activity—History—20th century. I. Title. "13 Merger and Beyond 357 HD8055.C75Z54 1995 Conclusion 372 33I.88'33'o9730904—dc20 94-17949 ap Notes 379 Index 477 99 98 97 96 95 54321 A section of illustrations begins on page igi. Harold F. Johnson Library Center Hampshire College Amherst, Massachusetts 01002 Preface idea of writir^ a history of the CIO grew out of a summer seminar for college teachers'that I conducted in 1981. As we discussed the role of organized labor in American history, 1930-80, we found ourselves remark­ ing frequently on the lack of an archives-based history of the industrial union federation. Having just completed studies of AFL unions in this period, I decided that it was time for soiAeone to take oh the CIO. Since we held our sessions in the Walter P. Reuther Library conference room at Wayne State University in Detroit, the notion of writing a history of the CIO came naturally, even if in such a setting the project seemed daunting. Now, a decade and a half later, the task is done. Its completion encour­ ages reflection about the places to which research has taken me and the people who have helped me. I wish to thank the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fac­ ulty Enrichment Programme of the Canadian government, Wayne State University, and the University of Florida for providing travel funds. In the summer of 1983 I held Summer Stipend from the NEH, which also spon­ sored the seminar out of which the project grew. The Office of Research and Graduate Education of the University of Florida helped defray the costs of photographic reproduction. The list of curators, librarians, and archivists who helped me is long. In a previously published article on CIO research (see below), I provided a guide to sources and mentioned some individuals whose assistance was in­ valuable. I am particularly indebted to the staff of the Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University, who for the first part of this "project were also my academic colleagues. Betty Corwine, Renee Akins, Greg Kisling, and other members of the office staff of the Department of History at the University of Florida provided outstanding assistance. Individuals who helped by sharing materials were John Barnard, Randy Boehm, and Gilbert Gall. Robert E. Zieger helped with some key research. Joan Man of the lUE helped me gain access to "missing" CIO Executive Board minutes, while Maier Fox, then research director of the United Mine Workers, helped make United Mine Workers and John L. Lewis records, in storage at the time, available for research. Lewis Bateman, executive edi- vii tor of the University of North Carolina Press, took an early interest in this Abbreviations project and was a ready source of outstanding professional advice. The following scholars have permitted me to cite unpublished work: Steve Babson, Thomas Dietz, Michael Goldfield, Rick Halpern, Roger Horowitz, Nelson Lichtenstein, Bruce Nelson, Judith Stein, Marshall Ste­ venson, Warren Van Tine, Jacob Vander Meulen, and Walter Yonn. Col­ leagues and friends who read and commented on parts of the manuscript also deserve thanks. LeRoy Ashby, David Colburn, Michael Goldfield, Pat AA Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel, and Tin Maney, Bob McMahon, and Marshall Stevenson helped in this way at cru­ •"Workers cial moments. The critiques of the University of North Carohna Press's ACTU Association of Catholic Trade Unionists readers, David Brody and Melvyn Dubofsky, were "invaluable. For many ACWA Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America years, the friendship of LeRoy and Mary'Ashby, Pat and Elaine Maney, and AFL American Federation of Labor Sam and Marion Merrill has been a constant source of encouragement and AFL-CIO American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial validation. Organizations Happy is the person for whom love and work combine. My biggest debt CARD Committee to Abolish Racial Discrimination is to my wife, Gay. CIO Committee for Industrial Organization (1935-38); Congress of Industrial Organizations (1938-55) January i, 1994 CPUSA Communist Party of the United States of America Gainesville, Florida CWA Communications Workers of America ERP employee representation plan FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation FE Farm Equipment Workers FEPC Fair Employment Practice Committee FTA Food, Tobacco, and Allied Workers GM General Motors HUAC House Committee on Un-American Activities lAM International Association of Machinists ILA International Longshoremen's Association ILGWU International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union ILWU International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union .lUC industrial union council lUE International Union of Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers IWW Industrial Workers of the World LIU local industrial union LNPL Labor's Non-Partisan League Mine, Mill International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers MRA Mora! Re-Armament viii Preface NAACP National Association for the Advancement of Colored THE CIO, 1935-1955 People NDAC National Defense Advisory Commission NDMB National Defense Mediation Board NIRA National Industrial Recovery Act NLRB National Labor Relations Board NMU National Maritime Union NRA National Recovery Administration NWLB National War Labor Board OES Office of Economic Stabilization 0PM Office of Production Management PAC Political Action Committee SOC Southern Organizing Committee SWOC Steel Workers Organizing Committee TWOC Textile Workers Organizing Committee TWU Transport Workers Union TWUA Textile Workers Union of America UAW United Automobile Workers UCAPAWA United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied Workers of America UCWOC United Construction Workers Organizing Committee UE United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers ULPC United Labor Policy Committee UMW United Mine Workers URW United Rubber Workers USWA United Steelworkers of America UTSE United Transport Service Employees WFTU World Federation of Trade Unions WSB Wage Stabilization Board X Abbreviations Introduction The Fragile Juggernaut ^^^^rganized labor.' Say those words, and your heart sinks," laments olabor lawyer Thomas Geoghegan. "It was a cause, back in the thirties. Now it is a dumb, stupid mastodon of a thing, crawling'off to Bal Harbour to die." Evidence of labor's decay is everywhere. Recruitment of new members is at a standstill. Once-powerful unions retrench and retreat. Laws passed ostensibly to encourage unionism now victimize activists. Cheering Ten­ nessee autoworkers celebrate the defeat of a UAW organizing drive. A third of the delegates at the 1992 Democratic National Convention are unionists, but the AFL-CIO plays no visible role in the campaign and is absent from public discussion of the postelection economic summit and the new presi­ dent's economic policy initiatives. "Even liberals, even progressives, do not seem to need us," mourns Geoghegan.' It was not always thus. Beginning in November 1935 and for a decade thereafter, industrial workers organized powerful unions. Aided by a friendly federal government, workers staged innovative sit-down strikes and wrested contracts from some of the most bitter-end corporations. They created permanent industrial unions that boldly intruded into political and governmental arenas. They challenged managers and supervisors at work sites and on shop floors throughout the country. They staged mass demon­ strations. Through their leaders, they pressed a social democratic public agenda. They often welcomed Communists and other radicals as their leaders and spokesmen. It was, recalled a veteran organizer a few years later, a golden age, an "era of invincibility," a time when "labor was on top and management underneath."^ It was the classic era of the CIO. _ The CIO stands at the center of the history of twentieth-century America. Its emergence was the key episode In the country's coming to terms with the "labor problem" that had commanded public attention since at least the 1870s. With a peak membership of nearly 5 million, the CIO represents the largest sustained surge of worker organization in American history. Its efforts led directly to the establishment of a system of collective bargaining within the context of regular economic growth that lasted for a generation. The explosion of unionism in the central industrial core of the economy transformed American politics, refigured the class-race nexus. and crucially influenced the U.S. role in the overlapping international crises tual gains after the CIO had expelled its Communist-leaning affiliates in of the 1940s and 1950s. 1949-50. It developed its most systematic and effective politicaHmpact in Within the labor movement itself, the impact of the CIO was equally the allegedly placid 1950s as it was poised on the edge of merger with the great. The expansion of organized labor from its traditional narrow enclaves AFL and as its legendary shop-floor militancy was^being enmeshed in a web into the central industrial core transformed unionism in the United States.