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The 1920s

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American Federation of Labor head Samuel Gompers (right) endorsed the pro-labor independent Presidential candidate Robert M. La Follette Sr. in 1924.

In the pro-business environment of the 1920s, business launched a large-scale offensive on behalf of the so-called "open shop", which meant that a person did not have to be a union member to be hired. AFL unions lost membership steadily until 1933.[1] In 1924, following the death of Samuel Gompers, UMWA member and AFL vice president William Green became the president of the labor federation.[2] The organization endorsed pro-labor progressive Robert M. La Follette Sr. in the 1924 presidential election. He only carried his home state of Wisconsin. The campaign failed to establish a permanent independent party closely connected to the labor movement, however, and thereafter the Federation embraced ever more closely the Democratic Party, despite the fact that many union leaders remained Republicans.[3] Herbert Hoover in 1928 won the votes of many Protestant AFL members.[4]

The New Deal years

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The Great Depression were hard times for the unions, and membership fell sharply across the country. As the national economy began to recover in 1933, so did union membership. The New Deal of president Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat, strongly favored labor unions. He made sure that relief operations like the Civilian Conservation Corps did not include a training component that would produce skilled workers who would compete with union members in a still glutted market. The major legislation was the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, called the Wagner Act. It greatly strengthened organized unions, especially by weakening the company unions that many workers belonged to. It was to the members advantage to transform a company union into a local of an AFL union, and thousands did so, dramatically boosting the membership. The Wagner Act also set up to the National Labor Relations Board, which used its powers to rule in favor of unions and against the companies. However, the NLRB was later taken over by leftist elements who favored the CIO over the AFL.[citation needed]

In the early 1930's AFL president William Green (president, 1924–1952) experimented with an industrial approach to organizing in the automobile and steel industries. [5] The AFL made forays into industrial unionism by chartering federal labor unions, which would organize across an industry and be chartered by the Federation, not through existing craft unions, guilds, or brotherhoods. As early as 1923, the AFL had chartered federal labor unions, including six news writer locals that had formerly been part of the International Typographical Union.[6] However in the 1930's the AFL began chartering these federal labor unions as an industrial organizing strategy. The dues in these federal labor unions (FLUs) were kept intentionally low to make them more accessible to low paid industrial workers; however, these low dues later allowed the Internationals in the Federation to deny members of FLUs voting membership at conventions.[7] In 1933, Green sent William Collins to Detroit to organize automobile workers into a federal labor union.[8] That same year workers at the Westinghouse plant in East Springfield MA, members of federal labor union 18476, struck for recognition.[9] In 1933, the AFL received 1,205 applications for charters for federal labor unions, 1006 of which were granted.[10] By 1934, the AFL had successfully organized 32,500 autoworkers using the federal labor union model.[11] Most of the leadership of the craft union internationals that made up the federation, advocated for the FLU's to be absorbed into existing craft union internationals and for these internationals to have supremacy of jurisdiction.[12] [13] At the 1933 AFL convention in Washington, DC John Frey of the Molders and Metal Trades pushed for craft union internationals to have jurisdictional supremacy over the FLU's; the Carpenters headed by William Hutchenson and the IBEW also pushed for FLU's to turn over their members to the authority of the craft internationals between 1933 and 1935. [14] In 1934, one hundred FLUs met separately and demanded that the AFL continue to issue charters to unions organizing on an industrial basis independent of the existing craft union internationals. [15] In 1935 the FLUs representing autoworkers and rubber workers both held conventions independent of the craft union internationals.[16] By the 1935 AFL convention, Green and the advocates of traditional craft unionism faced increasing dissension led by John L. Lewis of the coal miners, Sidney Hillman of the Amalgamated, David Dubinsky of the Garment Workers, Charles Howard of the ITU, Thomas McMahon of the Textile Workers, and Max Zaritsky of the Hat, Cap, and Millinery Workers, in addition to the members of the FLU's themselves.[17] Lewis argued that the AFL was too heavily oriented toward traditional craftsmen, and was overlooking the opportunity to organize millions of semiskilled workers, especially those in industrial factories that made automobiles, rubber, glass and steel. In 1935 Lewis led the dissenting unions in forming a new Congress for Industrial Organization (CIO) within the AFL. Both the new CIO industrial unions, and the older AFL crafts unions grew rapidly after 1935. In 1936 union members enthusiastically supported Roosevelt's landslide reelection. Proposals for the creation of an independent labor party were rejected.[18]

Unions now became a major component of the New Deal coalition, along with big-city machines, Catholics and Jews, poorer farmers, and the white South. The AFL continued to concentrate its legislative efforts on obtaining political protection for the right of unions to organize and strike, rather than on obtaining social change through legislative action.[citation needed]

  1. ^ Sidney Fine (1995). "Without Blare of Trumpets": Walter Drew, The National Erectors' Association, and the Open Shop Movement, 1903–1957. University of Michigan Press. p. 203.
  2. ^ Gary Fink, ed. (1984). Bigraphical Dictionary of American Labor. Greenwood Press. p. 264-265. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)
  3. ^ Michael Kazin et al., eds. (2011). The Concise Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History. Princeton University Press. p. 321. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)
  4. ^ Allan J. Lichtman (2000). Prejudice and the Old Politics: The Presidential Election of 1928. Lexington Books. p. 188.
  5. ^ Irving Bernstein. (1969). A History of the American Worker: Turbulent Years. Houghton Mifflin. p. 94-95.
  6. ^ Irving Bernstein. (1969). A History of the American Worker: Turbulent Years. Houghton Mifflin. p. 94-95, 127.
  7. ^ Irving Bernstein. (1969). A History of the American Worker: Turbulent Years. Houghton Mifflin. p. 94-95, 627.
  8. ^ Irving Bernstein. (1969). A History of the American Worker: Turbulent Years. Houghton Mifflin. p. 94-95.
  9. ^ Irving Bernstein. (1969). A History of the American Worker: Turbulent Years. Houghton Mifflin. p. 105.
  10. ^ Irving Bernstein. (1969). A History of the American Worker: Turbulent Years. Houghton Mifflin. p. 355.
  11. ^ "Toledo Auto-Lite Strike". ufcw324.org. Retrieved 2017-03-11.
  12. ^ "Toledo Auto-Lite Strike". ufcw324.org. Retrieved 2017-03-11.
  13. ^ Irving Bernstein. (1969). A History of the American Worker: Turbulent Years. Houghton Mifflin. p. 355.
  14. ^ Irving Bernstein. (1969). A History of the American Worker: Turbulent Years. Houghton Mifflin. p. 355,383-396.
  15. ^ Irving Bernstein. (1969). A History of the American Worker: Turbulent Years. Houghton Mifflin. p. 359.
  16. ^ Irving Bernstein. (1969). A History of the American Worker: Turbulent Years. Houghton Mifflin. p. 382.
  17. ^ Irving Bernstein. (1969). A History of the American Worker: Turbulent Years. Houghton Mifflin. p. 386-398.
  18. ^ The Social Economic Foundation, A Labor Party for the United States. New York: The Social Economic Foundation, 1936.[unreliable source?]
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