Able and Militant Fighters for Workers

American Federation Of Teachers ◽

This chapter examines how their time in Chicago led Harold Gibbons and Ernest Calloway to the shared experience of industrial union organizing and reinforced their faith in the potential of working-class mobilization. It begins with an account of the Memorial Day Massacre in 1937 and how Chicago provided Calloway with his first opportunity to exercise leadership in a union setting. It then considers Gibbons's involvement in Chicago's labor community as member of American Federation of Teachers Local 346 as well as his role in helping Chicago workers organize under the banner of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). It also discusses Gibbons's work as an organizer for the Textile Workers Organizing Committee (TWOC) and looks at two men who played instrumental roles in shaping Calloway's career: Willard Townsend and John Yancey. Finally, it describes Calloway's involvement with the United Transport Service Employees of America (formerly International Brotherhood of Red Caps), during which he also began to articulate a concept of working-class citizenship.

A Labor-Liberal Constellation

The Rise of Political Action Committees ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190075514.003.0007 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 168-196

Author(s):

Emily J. Charnock

Keyword(s):

Political Education ◽

National Committee ◽

Labor Organizations ◽

American Federation ◽

Liberal Democrats ◽

Democratic Action

This chapter traces the initial diffusion of the PAC concept from the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) to other labor organizations, including the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and liberal ideological groups. Though the AFL had previously opposed the CIO’s partisan electoral strategy and the formation of P.A.C., it came to emulate both following passage of the Taft-Hartley Act by a Republican Congress in 1947, forming Labor’s League for Political Education (LLPE) to engage in elections. That same year, two avowedly “liberal” groups were created to bolster the anti-Communist Left and champion liberal Democrats: the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) and the National Committee for an Effective Congress (NCEC). The chapter traces the intertwined electoral efforts and tactical innovations of these liberal and labor organizations through the AFL-CIO merger in 1955, the subsequent creation of their joint PAC, the Committee on Political Education (COPE), and the latter’s activities in the 1956 elections.

Organizing the Sexual Division of Labor

10.5406/illinois/9780252040320.003.0003 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Ruth Milkman

Keyword(s):

Women Workers ◽

Division Of Labor ◽

Women's Labor ◽

American Federation ◽

Sexual Division ◽

Job Segregation ◽

Sexual Division Of Labor

This chapter examines the effects of union organization on women workers and sexual division of labor, focusing on the 1930s and 1940s along with earlier developments in U.S. women's labor history. It draws on feminist scholarship that argued that labor unions' efforts to exclude women from membership had helped to consolidate patterns of job segregation by gender in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. After reviewing theories of occupational segregation by sex, especially with regards to the role of unions in the formation of labor-market boundaries between “women's work” and “men's work,” the chapter discusses the ways that the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (initially called Committe for Industrial Organization) contributed to the sexual division of labor. It argues that industrial unions had the opportunity to challenge job segregation by sex during the 1930s and 1940s, but instead helped consolidate it. In both periods, the labor movement showed litte interest in recruiting women into its ranks.

Sewing the Fabric of Statehood

10.5622/illinois/9780252041464.001.0001 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Adam M. Howard

Keyword(s):

Foreign Policy ◽

Jewish History ◽

Jewish State ◽

Cultural Centers ◽

American Federation ◽

Economic Aid ◽

American Labor

This book explores the untold story of how three influential garment unions worked with the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in support of a new Jewish state. It reveals a coalition at work on multiple fronts. Sustained efforts convinced the AFL and CIO to support Jewish development in Palestine through land purchases for Jewish workers and encouraged the construction of trade schools and cultural centers. Other activists, meanwhile, directed massive economic aid to Histadrut, the General Federation of Jewish Workers in Palestine, or pressured the British and American governments to support the Jews in Palestine and later, recognize Israel’s independence. Ultimately, these efforts led American labor to forge its own foreign policy--and reshape both the postwar world and Jewish history.

Le rôle social des syndicats aux États-Unis

Relations industrielles ◽

10.7202/1021401ar ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 18 (3) ◽

pp. 363-385

Author(s):

Leon Dale

Keyword(s):

New Jersey ◽

Atlantic City ◽

Executive Council ◽

American Federation ◽

Sommaire « L'établissement de l'AFL-CIO a stimulé le développement du programme syndical de service à la communauté et fut la cause d'une participation plus active des syndicats dans les affaires de la communauté. » Report of the Executive Council of the AFL-CIO, Second Convention, Atlantic City, New Jersey, December 5, 1957, American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, p. 287.

The Knights of Labor

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History ◽

10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.474 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Matthew Hild

Keyword(s):

Trade Unions ◽

The United States ◽

Industrial Workers ◽

Skilled Workers ◽

Knights Of Labor ◽

American Federation ◽

American Capitalism ◽

Railway System

Founded in Philadelphia in 1869, the Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor became the largest and most powerful labor organization that had ever existed in the United States by the mid-1880s. Recruiting men and women of nearly all occupations and all races (except Chinese), the Knights tried to reform American capitalism and politics in ways that would curb the growing economic and political abuses and excesses of the Gilded Age. Leaders of the organization viewed strikes as harmful to workers and employers alike, especially after the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, but a series of railroad strikes in 1884 and 1885 caused the Knights’ membership rolls to reach a peak of at least 700,000 in 1886. The heyday of the Knights of Labor proved brief though. Two major events in May 1886, the Haymarket riot in Chicago and the failure of a strike against Jay Gould’s Southwestern Railway system, began a series of setbacks that caused the organization to decline about as rapidly as it had arisen. By 1893, membership dropped below 100,000, and the Knights’ leaders aligned the organization with the farmers’ movement and the Populist Party. The Knights increasingly became a rural organization, as urban skilled and semi-skilled workers joined trade unions affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL). The AFL, however, proved less inclusive and egalitarian than the Knights of Labor, although some of the latter’s ideals would be carried on by later organizations such as the Industrial Workers of the World and the Congress of Industrial Organizations.

Kirkland, (Joseph) Lane, (12 March 1922–14 Aug. 1999), President, American Federation of Labor—Congress of Industrial Organizations, 1979–95, then Emeritus

10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.u179756 ◽

2007 ◽

Keyword(s):

American Federation ◽

Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund, American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations und Landsorganisationen i Danmark und die Diskussion des welfare-to-work-Paradigmas

Gewerkschaften im Umbau des Sozialstaats ◽

10.1007/978-3-531-94296-4_4 ◽

2012 ◽

pp. 99-145

Author(s):

Michaela Schulze

Keyword(s):

Welfare To Work ◽

American Federation ◽

The Bible Speaks to Labor

10.5406/illinois/9780252039034.003.0006 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Elizabeth Fones-Wolf ◽

Ken Fones-Wolf

Keyword(s):

Community Relations ◽

Textile Workers ◽

Free Enterprise ◽

Human Welfare ◽

Protestant Churches ◽

The Bible ◽

Social Message ◽

Local Minister

This chapter focuses on religious resources that the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) utilized to offer an alternative to Christian free enterprise and bring collective bargaining to the South. In the summer of 1946, the citizens of Danville, Virginia rallied behind a local minister and the local of the Textile Workers Union of America to create a Citizens' Committee to fight for economic justice and defy charges that they were led by outsiders “with Communistic leanings.” There were also allies in the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, at Highlander Folk School, and in the industrial department of the YWCA who sought to fuse Protestantism's social message to the organization of southern workers. These pointed to a reservoir of prophetic Christianity upon which the CIO could draw when it mobilized for its crusade to organize Dixie. Perhaps most important, the CIO had a cadre of men and women with ties to Protestant churches whom it could send to build favorable community relations.

The Racial Politics of Progressive Americanism: New Deal Liberalism and the Subordination of Black Workers in the UAW

Studies in American Political Development ◽

10.1017/s0898588x05000040 ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 19 (1) ◽

pp. 75-97 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Charles Williams

Keyword(s):

New Deal ◽

Racial Politics ◽

Foreign Country ◽

General Motors ◽

Black Workers ◽

American Federation ◽

United Automobile Workers

In February 1937, members of the United Automobile Workers (UAW) celebrated their pioneering victory over General Motors by waving American flags as they marched out of Fisher Body and paraded through the streets of Flint, Michigan. Later that year, as the UAW turned to organizing Ford's massive River Rouge plant, the Ford edition of the United Automobile Worker described the complex as a foreign country and called on workers to “win this for America” and “win the war for democracy in River Rouge!” When a successful strike finally led to union recognition and an NLRB election in 1941, the UAW urged Rouge workers to “keep faith with America” and its greatest leaders, Washington, Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, by voting for the inclusive unionism of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) over the un-American alternative of the American Federation of Labor (AFL).

A Alca e as novas alianças sindicais Norte-Sul

Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional ◽

10.1590/s0034-73292001000200009 ◽

2001 ◽

Vol 44 (2) ◽

pp. 168-185 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Yves Chaloult ◽

Wilson Fernández

Keyword(s):

American Federation ◽

America Latina

Apoiado em entrevista com dirigente sindical e em artigos publicados em jornais de Washington (EUA), além de outras fontes bibliográficas, o texto examina os rumos que as organizações da sociedade civil das Américas, em particular as centrais sindicais, vêm trilhando nos últimos anos. Segundo enfoca, para defender os trabalhadores de seu país das ameaças ao trabalho advindas com a globalização, o regionalismo econômico - em especial a Alca - e o avanço tecnológico, a central norte-americana American Federation of Labor - Congress of Industrial Organizations mudou radicalmente suas estratégias. Ela agora, em vez de tentar barrar os acordos de livre comércio, tem procurado limitar a autonomia governamental na negociação dos mesmos. Ao mesmo tempo, vem buscando uma maior articulação com as centrais da América Latina. Essa aproximação, ao que parece, está dando origem a um novo e promissor "internacionalismo sindical".