Business and Industry
Congress of Industrial Organizations (C.I.O.)
1935-Present

One of the great conflicts within the labor movement existed between the craft unions and the industrial unions. When the American Federation of Labor indicated reluctance to organize unskilled workers, John L. Lewis created the Committee for Industrial Organization within the A.F. of L. in 1935. Facing increased hostility from A.F. of L.’s leadership, he led eight industrial unions out of the A.F. of L. to form the Congress of Industrial Organizations. The A.F. of L. and C.I.O. maintained separate existences until a merger in 1955 created the AFL-CIO.

Lewis created the Committee for Industrial Organization when he realized that any gains won for miners could be lost if he did not organize such "captive mines" as those held by the steel producers' United States Steel Company, which alone employed 170,000 workers. Because that meant including unskilled as well as skilled workers, many of the craft unions within the A.F. of L. opposed the effort to organize mass-production industries. The C.I.O. proved highly successful and within a few years had organized big steel, automobile, rubber, and other major industries. That exacerbated the schism within the A.F. of L., which refused to accept the new unions because they looked down on both industrial workers and industrial unions as unskilled laborers.

Seeing no future for industrial unions within the A.F. of L. framework, Lewis withdrew them and created the Congress of Industrial Organizations in 1938. He was its first president. In 1940, in an attempt to use his prestige to sway the presidential outcome, Lewis vowed to resign as C.I.O. president if Franklin Roosevelt was re-elected. Lewis, who was a Republican, had initially supported Roosevelt for his first two terms, but later began to feel Democrat Roosevelt did not support labor unions, and if a Republican candidate were elected with the help of labor votes, the union would be rewarded. Upon fulfilling his promise, the presidency passed to Philip Murray, president of the United Steel Workers. Murray retained his position until his death in 1952. Walter Reuther of the United Auto Workers became the last president of the C.I.O., prior to its historic merger with the A.F. of L.

Membership in the C.I.O. rose from four million in 1938 to six million in 1945. In 1949 and 1950, the C.I.O. expelled 11 affiliated unions for having communist ties. Although nearly 650,000 members had been in those unions, many rejoined the C.I.O. in unions that had been established as alternatives to the ones that it deemed to be communist dominated.

The distinction between a purely craft union A.F. of L., and the primarily industrial union C.I.O., blurred over the years. Due to disagreements between factions, the unions in some industries were split into an A.F. of L. union and a C.I.O. union. The International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) was one of the original C.I.O. unions, but it soon returned to the A.F. of L.

Thus by 1952, the year when the presidents of both the A.F. of L. and C.I.O. died, the A.F. of L. had nearly half its membership in industrial unions. Over time the urge to merge grew stronger and in 1955, through the efforts of Reuther, the two organizations merged into the AFL-CIO. As of 2005, the federation of the AFL-CIO comprised more than 13 million American workers in 58 member unions, in nearly every sector of the U.S. economy.

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