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The CIO was born out of a fundamental dispute within the U.S. labor movement over whether and how to organize industrial workers. Those who favored craft unionism believed that the most effective way to represent workers was to defend the advantages they had secured through their skills. In the case of skilled workers, such as carpenters, lithographers, and railroad engineers, this meant maintaining as much control as possible over the work their members did through enforcement of work rules, zealous defense of their jurisdiction to certain types of work, control over apprenticeship programs and exclusion of less skilled workers from membership.
Craft unionists were therefore opposed to organizing workers on an industrial basis, i.e., into unions that represented all of the production workers in a particular enterprise, rather than in separate units divided along craft lines. Many of the opponents of industrial unionism were also motivated by a general disdain for industrial workers, whom they considered unorganizable, and for the foreign-born and racial minorities who made up a large number of their ranks.
The proponents of industrial unionism, on the other hand, generally believed that these craft distinctions may have been appropriate in those industries in which craft unions had flourished, such as construction or printing, but that they were unworkable in industries such as steel or auto production. In their view, dividing workers in a single plant into a number of different crafts represented by separate organizations, each with its own agenda, would weaken those workers’ bargaining power and leave the majority of them, who had few traditional craft skills, completely unrepresented.
While the AFL had always included a number of industrial unions, such as the United Mine Workers and the Brewery Workers, by the 1920s the most dogmatic craft unionists had a strong hold on power within the federation. They used that power to quash any drive toward industrial organizing.
The debate over industrial unionism became even fiercer in the 1930s, when the Great Depression nearly eliminated some unions, such as the United Mine Workers and the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union . A number of labor leaders, and in particular John L. Lewis of the Mine Workers, came to the conclusion that their own unions would not survive while the great majority of workers in basic industry remained nonunion and started to press the AFL to change its policies in this area.
The AFL did, in fact, respond, but with very halting steps. In 1933 it authorized the formation of “federal” unions, which were affiliated directly with the AFL and which organized workers on an industrial basis. The AFL did not, however, promise to allow those unions to maintain a separate identity indefinitely, meaning that these unions might be broken up later in order to distribute their members among the craft unions that claimed jurisdiction over their work. The AFL also authorized organizing drives in the automobile, rubber and steel industries at its convention in 1934, but gave little financial support or effective leadership to those unions. The AFL’s timidity only succeeded in making it less credible among the workers it was supposedly trying to organize, particularly in those industries, such as auto and rubber, in which workers had already achieved some organizing success at great personal risk.
This dispute came to a head at the AFL’s convention in Atlantic City in 1935, when William Hutcheson , the President of the Carpenters , made a slighting comment about a rubber worker delivering an organizing report. Lewis responded that Hutcheson’s comment was “small potatoes,” to which Hutcheson replied “I eat small potatoes, that is why I am so big.” After some more words Lewis punched Hutcheson, knocking him to the ground; Lewis then relit his cigar and returned to the rostrum. The incident -- which was also “small potatoes,” but very memorable -- helped cement Lewis’ image in the public eye as someone willing to fight for workers’ right to organize.
Shortly after the Convention, Lewis called together Charles Howard, President of the International Typographical Union , Sidney Hillman, head of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America , David Dubinsky, President of the ILGWU, Thomas McMahon , head of the United Textile Workers , John Sheridan of the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Union, Harvey Fremming from the Oil Workers Union and Max Zaritsky of the Hatters, Cap and Millinery Workers to discuss the formation of a new group within the AFL to carry on the fight for industrial organizing. The creation of the CIO was announced on November 8November 8 is the 312nd day of the year (313rd in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 53 days remaining. Events 1519 Hernan Cortes enters Tenochtitlan and Aztec ruler Moctezuma welcomes him with great pomp as would befit a returning god. 1520 Stoc, 1935. Whether Lewis always intended to split the AFL over this issue is debatable; at the outset, the CIO presented itself as only a group of unions within the AFL gathered to support industrial unionism, rather than a group opposed to the AFL itself.
The AFL leadership, however, treated the CIO as a pathogen from the outset, refusing to deal with it and demanding that it dissolve. The AFL’s opposition to the CIO, however, only increased the stature of the CIO and Lewis in the eyes of those industrial workers keen on organizing and disillusioned with the AFL’s ineffective performance. Lewis continued to denounce the AFL’s policies while the CIO offered organizing support to workers in the rubber industry who went on strike and formed the Steel Workers Organizing Committee, in defiance of all of the craft divisions that the AFL had required in past organizing efforts, in 1936Events January-February January 15 The first building to be completely covered in glass is completed in Toledo, Ohio, for the Owens-Illinois Glass Company. January 20 Death of George V of the United Kingdom. His son Edward VIII succeedes him as King of th.