( CIO ), soon recognized the futility of their unions ’ internecine competition and started to lay the groundwork for a potential merger . The AFL continued to grow , largely due to its successes in several white collar , government and service industries . The CIO was stagnant ; it found it more difficult to expand into the relatively small employee groups that characterized those growing sectors .
In June 1954 , 105 of the combined organizations ’ 140 unions signed a no-raiding agreement as a tangible first step towards a merger of the AFL and CIO . When the formal agreement to merge into the AFL-CIO was signed , it brought together the AFL ’ s 10.6 million members and the CIO ’ s 4.5 million ; together they represented about 90 % of the country ’ s unionized workers .
Samuel Gompers in the office of the American Federation of Labor , 1887 .
leaders . CIO Co-Founder David Dubinsky took his International Ladies Garment Workers Union ( ILGWU ) out of the organization and rejoined the AFL . Lewis finally resigned as CIO president in late 1940 ; he was succeeded by Philip Murray .
Competition and Cooperation
Both the AFL and the CIO took no-strike pledges during World War II . And both did their part in enabling America to produce the material necessary to support the troops of the United States and its allies . They also expanded their membership . From 1939 to 1945 , the AFL added about three million members , largely in the construction trades and the trucking industry , as well as both the department store and public service industries . The CIO recruited 2.1 million new members , especially in the automotive , steel , meatpacking and electrical industries .
In August 1945 , America ’ s unions began using strikes and sit-downs to gain muchdelayed increases in wages and benefits . They achieved some of their goals . But they also faced a backlash in a scrambled economy coping with the expiration of war contracts , the conversion to peacetime production needs , the return to the labor force of 12 million servicemembers and the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act that limited unions ’ rights and powers . Communist elements throughout the country lost much of their influence in those early years of the Cold War . President Walter Reuther of the United Auto Workers ( UAW ) led the charge to remove many of them from the CIO . ( The AFL had long refused to allow communist or socialist sympathizers to join its fraternity of workers .)
The early 1950s was a period of relatively calm labor-management relations . Corporate employers acknowledged unions ’ collective bargaining power ; and the unions understood the limitations placed on their power by the Taft-Hartley Act , subsequent court decisions and overall social / political attitudes . About one-third of the country ’ s labor force belonged to a union . The AFL continued to recruit semi-skilled workers in industrial settings . The CIO acknowledged the opportunities to enroll skilled workers such as tool and die makers and millwrights . The two organizations spent almost as much time and effort trying to make inroads in each other ’ s jurisdictions as on trying to penetrate such unorganized sectors of the economy as agriculture and retail trade .
Fratricidal competition between the two umbrella groups lessened dramatically with the deaths in 1952 of both AFL President William Green and CIO President Philip Murray . Both men had serious personal animosities that had short-circuited some early calls for a recombination of their organizations . Their successors , George Meany ( AFL ) and Walter Reuther
Coda
During the next seven years before this schoolboy had to memorize its abbreviation , that “ union of unions ” actually lost two million members . The successful efforts of large corporations to offer very competitive salary and benefit packages blunted the further encroachment of organized labor into the American economy , as did rising concern about union corruption . The complete story of the AFL-CIO ’ s evolution during the 1960s and beyond is one for another time .
Michael A . Martorelli is a Director Emeritus at Fairmount Partners in Radnor , Pennsylvania , and a frequent contributor to Financial History . He received his MA in History from American Military University .
Sources
Dubofsky , Melvyn . Hard Work : The Making of Labor History . University of Illinois Press . 2000 .
Foner , Philip S . History of the Labor Movement in the United States , Vol . II . International Publishers . 1947 .
Lichtenstein , Nelson . State of the Union : A Century of American Labor . Princeton University Press . 2002 .
Taft , Philip . Organized Labor in American History . Harper & Row . 1964 .
Zieger , Robert H . The CIO 1935 – 1955 . The University of North Carolina Press . 1995 .
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