On the Road to the Split of the American Labor Movement: Criticism of the American Federation of Labor In Committee for Industrial Organizations Pamphlets (1935–1936)
On the Road to the Split of the American Labor Movement: Criticism of the American Federation of Labor In Committee for Industrial Organizations Pamphlets (1935–1936)

Summary/Abstract: The US labor movement gained momentum after the passage of the nira (1933)and especially the Wagner Act (1935). The new law guaranteed employees the right to or-ganise and bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing. The dy-namic growth in union membership was accompanied by a heated debate over wheth-er unions should be organised to cover all workers in an industry or on an occupationalor craft basis. This piece covers Committee of Industrial Organizations (cio) pamphletspublished between 1935 and 1936, a critical period in the rivalry between the AmericanFederation of Labor (afl) and the cio. Most took the form of journalistic commentary oncurrent events in the union environment. The pamphlet, as a form of communication, bydefinition, presents a one-sided description of reality. Nevertheless, the CIO pamphlets area valuable source of knowledge about the division in the American labour movement inthe 1930s. In this piece, I examine the axes of contention and arguments. They cover var-ious issues, such as an assessment of the US trade union movement’s achievements, ju-risdictional claims, industrial charters, and dues. I trace the evolution of radicalism in theviews of the cio leadership, from reforming the Committee in the spirit of “unionisingunorganised mass production under the banner of the afl” to massive criticism of theFederation that ultimately made further coexistence impossible. The latter resulted in theAFL suspending the CIO in September 1936.

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