FDR AND ORGANIZED LABOR
Around the time when Franklin Delano Roosevelt took over the presidential office in 1933, union membership recorded a decrease from over 3 million in 1932 to around 2.7 million a year later. That number constituted around 7% of all employed workers at the time when the most likely underestimated unemployment rate reached a quarter of the labor force. Extremely limited job opportunities and a huge number of individuals ready to secure any kind of employment created an environment where workers could be easily abused. Despite some attempts of the Hoover administration to empower organized labor (e.g., the 1932 Norris–La Guardia Act), union membership resulted in limited protection of the workers who were willing and able to pay membership fees. However, the declining trend reversed already in 1934 and unions would consistently grow during Roosevelt's presidency, a phenomenon that reflected first the protective and regulative labor provisions of the New Deal and later the massive industrial growth during World War II. By the time Roosevelt died shortly after he was elected to his fourth term, union membership in the United States reached its high peak. In 1945, over 14 million workers belonged to unions, which constituted over 35% of non-agricultural workers (the highest recorded rate in U.S. history) and over 27% of all employed workers.
One of the flagship legislative proposals of the First New Deal (1933-34/5) was the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA, June 1933). Title I of NIRA outlined guidelines for the creation of the so-called "codes of fair competition" (rules according to which industries were supposed to operate), endowed trade unions with certain rates, and allowed standards of work (e.g., pay rate, hours) to be monitored and enforced. The famous section 7 (A) of NIRA provided workers with the right to bargain collectively through their own representatives. However, in 1935, the Supreme Court declared Title I of NIRA unconstitutional (Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States). The Roosevelt administration immediately followed with the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA; known also as the Wagner Act), which offered many of the labor protection and regulation provisions that were earlier included in NIRA. NLRA provided basic rights of private sector employees to organize into trade unions, engage in collective bargaining for better terms and conditions at work, and take collective action, including strike. Unlike NIRA, which tied the same rights to industrial codes, NLRA guaranteed labor rights through the federal government. The act also created the National Labor Relations Board, which was to guarantee the rights included in NLRA (as opposed to merely negotiating labor disputes) and organize labor unions representation elections. NLRA remains the landmark legislation of federal labor law that established the increasingly powerful position of organized labor during Roosevelt's presidency. The 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), although applicable to certain industries only, additionally strengthened the image of Roosevelt as the champion of workers' rights. It established a national minimum wage and overtime standards. It also limited the work week to 44 hours (in 1940, amended to 40 hours a week).
It is important to note that unions traditionally organized industrial, urban workers. While some agricultural labor unions existed during Roosevelt's presidency, they organized a minuscule number of rural workers. Consequently, in the context of labor legislation and labor unions discussed in this module, the term "worker" refers mostly to industrial workers.
CRAFT UNIONISM V. INDUSTRIAL UNIONISM
The American Federation of Labor (AFL), the largest union grouping in the contemporary United States, was growing rapidly after 1933, reaching the membership of 3.4 million in 1936. However, hundreds of thousands of workers chose membership in unions that did not belong to the AFL that was at the time facing severe internal tensions and outside criticism. Traditionally, the AFL organized unions by craft rather than industry, for example, electricians or stationary engineers would form their own skill-oriented unions rather than join a large automobile-making union. This model excluded the so-called unskilled workers, employed most commonly in mass production. Most AFL leaders, including president William Green, were reluctant to shift from the organization's longstanding tradition of craft unionism and started to clash with other leaders within the organization, such as John L. Lewis, the president of the United Mine Workers of America (UMW). The issue came up at the annual AFL conventions in 1934 and 1935, but the majority voted against a shift to industrial unionism (organizing workers along the lines of industries rather than crafts).
American Federation of Labor
Label of the American Federation of Labor.
After the defeat at the 1935 convention, Lewis gathered AFL's pro-industrial unionism leaders and organized the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO) to "encourage and promote organization of workers in the mass production industries." The CIO formed unions with the hope of bringing them into the AFL, but in the end, the AFL rejected the idea of a more open and inclusive form of organization that would unionize workers regardless of craft or skills. In 1938, the AFL expelled the CIO and its members. The CIO transitioned into a rival federation of unions under the new name of the Congress of Industrial Organizations. Both the AFL and the CIO supported Roosevelt and organized labor became the loyal member of the New Deal Coalition.
The CIO quickly earned the reputation of a more radical and more inclusive labor organization than the AFL. Millions of workers received an opportunity to organize under the auspices of a major union grouping for the first time. The AFL's long history of the exclusion of immigrant workers, women workers, and workers of color gradually made the AFL out of touch with the realities of the American industrial labor. Historians have extensively discussed the racist stand of the AFL (A. Philip Randolph and his Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters gathering black workers constitute an exception in the AFL membership). While the CIO was not free of racist (and sexist!) sentiments, its declared attitude toward African American workers was strikingly different from that of the AFL's. Above all, the new form of organization finally opened the door to mainstream organized labor to black workers, who usually occupied unskilled industrial jobs (excluded from the AFL's form of organization). Many radical black labor leaders wholeheartedly supported the CIO, regardless of the organization's racist practices (e.g., white workers would usually keep better paid and more skilled jobs as well as leadership positions in unions). Already in 1937, the CIO membership was higher than the AFL membership, reaching 3.7 million.
New more radical trends in organized labor also translated into more radical forms of protest, most notably sit-downs. In February 1937, nearly 200,000 General Motors workers refused to work in Flint, Michigan. Staying idle in the plants rather than leaving them prevented bringing strikebreakers - a common practice used by employers to discourage labor protests. The several week-long protest resulted in a contract that satisfied the protesting workers and shortly after that, hundreds of sit-downs followed across the country.
UPSURGE IN WORLD WAR II
Both the AFL and the CIO supported Roosevelt in 1940 and 1944. However, Lewis, a devoted neutralist, opposed Roosevelt on foreign policy grounds and questioned Roosevelt’s decision to run for the third term in 1940. In the end, all unions strongly supported the war effort after June 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union.
During the World War II period, unions dramatically strengthened their bargaining and political position and membership expanded from 8.7 million in 1940 to more than 14.3 million in 1945, about 35% of the non-agricultural work force. Around 2.8 million workers in that number belonged to independent or unaffiliated unions that were not part of the AFL or the CIO. For the first time, large numbers of women received access to well paid, unionized factory jobs (with many men serving in the military) and, as a result, joined unions. Although in 1940, the unemployment rate was still around 14%, the demands of the war effort quickly produced attractive jobs. By the end of the war, unemployment was practically non-existing. In exchange for the promise that workers would not engage in labor protest during the time of massive production demands, labor leaders were promised favorable working conditions. However, every year a number of workers broke the no-protest promise. In 1943, Lewis, still the president of the United Mine Workers, led one of the biggest war-time strikes. The miners demanded higher wages and safer working conditions but their demands met with fervent political opposition. Some even called to arrest Lewis for obstructing production essential to the war effort but in the end the miners’ demands were met.
While in the two decades following World War II union membership remained high, never again would it grow (as a percentage of overall non-industrial labor) and be as popular as during Roosevelt's presidency.
John L. Lewis
John L. Lewis, President of the United Mine Workers of America and founder of the CIO, photographed at the Capitol in 1922.