Unionism under the New Deal

Irish Jesuit Province

Unionism under the New DealAuthor(s): Daniel LyonsSource: The Irish Monthly, Vol. 78, No. 923 (May, 1950), pp. 228-233Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20516173 .

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LABOUR UNIONS IN AMERICA?III

UNIONISM UNDER THE NEW DEAL

By DANIEL LYONS, S.J.

IN 1931 Pope Pius XI cried out against the "despotic economic domination" prevailing everywhere. He charged that this

domination was "

the characteristic note of the modern economic

order ", and pointed out that it was "

the natural result of limitless

competition ". In the following year he declared that the gigantic leaders of industry had become so powerful they controlled the

governments of the world.

Since the United States is a political democracy, a revolt against this growing economic dictatorship was inevitable. Politicians came

to realize not only that such a financial oligarchy was undesirable, but that it was the workingmen, not the corporations, who had the

power to vote. On June 16, 1933, the infant Roosevelt Administra

tion passed the National Recovery Act. The N.R.A. provided that

each industry establish codes of fair competition concerning prices,

wages, and working conditions. The Act further provided that **

employees shall have the right to organize and to bargain col

lectively through representatives of their own choosing, and shall be

free from the interference, restraint, or coercion of employers ". A

National Labour Board was created to protect this right of the

workers. Pius XI had already insisted on this right when he declared

that to prevent workers from forming unions was "

criminal

injustice ". Franklin D. Roosevelt referred to the social encyclicals in his radio addresses, and he highly approved of them.

It was the N.R.A. that put organized labour on the march. But

the exclusively trade-union approach of the American Federation

of Labour was antiquated. For over a generation a host of new

machinery had been causing the replacement of skilled craftsmen

with unskilled and semi-skilled machine tenders. The A.F. of L.

failed to adapt itself to the new type of factory and assembly-line conditions. Samuel Gompers had been justified in his espousal of

craft unionism in those early years of struggling for survival. But

the policy seemed to crystallize with him. When he was replaced,

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in 1924, by the present head of the A.F. of L., William Green, the

policy continued. The A.F. of L. had become arch-conservative.

It was convinced that the unskilled could never be controlled, even

if they could be organized. What the A.F. of L. failed to realize

was that times had changed. For the first time in the history of

America, workers enjoyed legal protection in joining unions.

John L. Lewis, the fiery, beetle-browed leader of the miners and

vice-president of the A.F. of L., had been championing the cause

of industrial unionism for several years. At the A.F. of L. conven

tion in 1934 a Committee for Industrial Organization was formed.

In addition to the miners, clothing workers, printers, and a few other

industrial unions which had somehow managed to creep into the

A.F. of L. through a side door, there were many members of craft

unions among those clamouring for industrial organization. But the

two kinds of unions overlapped. The wholesale growth of industrial

unions was bound to provoke bitter jurisdictional disputes with craft

organizations. Under the National Recovery Act union membership increased

40 per cent, in two years. But in May, 1935, the Supreme Court,

acting on a technicality, declared the N.R.A. unconstitutional.

Nevertheless, the spirit of the N.R.A. lived on. Less than two

months later, on July 5, 1935, Congress passed the National Labour

Relations Act. The N.R.A. was replaced by the N.L.R.A. The

latter is known as the Wagner Act, after Senator Robert Wagner of New York, who introduced it. Though not yet a Catholic at

that time, Senator Wagner was a profound student of the Papal

encyclicals. When he became discouraged, as employers spent over

$6,000,000 to disrupt the Wagner Act, and when the New York Press

attacked him as a dangerous radical, it was the late Cardinal Hayes who patted him on the hand and reassured him: "You are doing God's work."

The Wagner Act guaranteed to employees the right to form a

union of their own choosing, while it placed employers under the

obligation of bargaining collectively with any union representing a

majority of their workmen. Union members were also protected in their right to engage in union activities. The National Labour

Relations Board was created to insure that the provisions of the Act

were carried out. The Wagner Act has often been called one-sided?

but the term is misleading. The reason the Act did not likewise

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IRISH MONTHLY

prohibit employees from interfering with the right of employers to

organize is because employees have no way to prevent employers from organizing. Prior to the passage of this Act, the only way in which workers could insist on their natural rights of joining a union was by striking, and such economic warfare should be a last resort, not the only one. Bishop Francis J. Haas, of Grand Rapids, is one

of the most outstanding of the many impartial experts who defended the Wagner Act. Quoting Pope Leo XIII, where he pointed out that

governments "

must protect natural rights, not destroy them *\ Dr.

Haas insisted: "Catholics in particular should rise to the defence of the Wagner Act as a necessary use of governmental power."

Since the Wagner Act followed so closely on the heels of the National Recovery Act, the phenomenal growth in unionism during the 'thirties was left uninterrupted when the N.R.A. was declared

unconstitutional. The Committee for Industrial Organization, which

had been started reluctantly by the A.F. of L., soon veered farther

and farther away from the parent organization, flying headlong in

the direction of dual unionism. In 1936 the A.F. of L. suspended the ten unions participating in the Committee, and two years later

the A.F. of L. faced an obvious fact by sedately expelling them.

The Committee for Industrial Organization changed its name to the

Congress of Industrial Organizations, preserving its well-known

initials: d.O.

The amazing growth of the C.I.O. was due to three main causes:

(1) the rapidly developing steel, auto, rubber, and other industries were like rich fields ripe for the harvest; millions of workers in

those industries, who had been neglected by the A.F. of L., were

much in need of mass unionization; (2) the Wagner Act made it

possible for working people to give vent to their innate desire of

forming a union, without fear of reprisal; (3) the new leaders of the

C.I.O. included some of the most capable men from the A.F. of L. :

John L. Lewis, Philip Murray, Sidney HUlman, and David Dubinsky. These were among the ablest union leaders in the world.

Lewis' mine workers began to organize the steel industry in 1936.

Repeated attempts had been made to unionize this industry in the

past, but this time the union organizers had a friendly Government

behind them. The man picked to head the Steel Workers' Organizing Committee was Philip Murray, a determined leader of rare tact and

diplomacy. The steel companies had worked feverishly to organize

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unions which they controlled. But instead of attacking the heads

of these unions as mere tools of management, Murray set out to win

them over.

The steel barons did all they could to hinder and defeat the union

drive. They placed full-page advertisements in 375 newspapers,

declaring they would never recognize the steel-workers' organization.

Carnegie Steel, the largest subsidiary of U.S. Steel, concocted 11,000

ratings in pay and status for 100,000 workers, merely to confuse the

union organizers. The companies tried to prevent the organizing committees from renting halls, and where this failed they attempted to break up union meetings. But all these efforts were as futile

as trying to stop a tidal wave.

For the first time in American history, industrial management was faced with a labour movement that relentlessly pursued its

objectives by applying a shrewd imitation of big business technique. Lewis and Murray staged immense campaigns throughout the steel

areas. They operated forty-three branch offices, with 200 full-time

organizers plus thousands of volunteers. The movement was widely

publicized by means of the Press, the radio, sound vans, and mass

meetings. Sixty leaders of company unions met with Murray's

organizers and joined in their campaign. Lewis gave radio addresses

in which he showed that the actual weekly earnings of employees in the wealthy steel industry made it twentieth out of twenty-one

major industries. The steel executives labelled the union's efforts ** a complete failure ". But five months after the organizing campaign

had started, Big Steel announced a wage increase "

to be submitted

to representatives of the employees ". Other steel companies followed suit. By mid-1937 the union had 150,000 members pocketed in 280 lodges, with more than 100 steel companies under contract.

The staunchest anti-union pillar in America had fallen.

The automobile industry is about as large as that of steel, and it

had traditionally been as anti-union. Earlier attempts at organization in the auto plants had been shattered by discrimination and intimida

tion. As unionism began to grow, nurtured by the Wagner Act, efforts were made to crush it wherever it appeared.

By 1942, however, after a stormy struggle, the United Auto

Workers (C.I.O.) held more than 1,000 contracts in auto, aircraft, and farm equipment plants, involving 912,000 workers. It remains

America's largest single union to-day.

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IRISH MONTHLY

The original eight unions of the d.O. covered the miners, the

printers, the clothing, garment, textile, refinery, mill, and millinery workers. Since then, scores of other unions have been added,

including the steel and auto workers; the glass, rubber, electrical, radio, marine, aluminium, and shoe workers; the transport workers, radio operators, architects, chemists, leather workers, office workers, and clerks; federal, state, county and city employees; the maritime,

longshore, and woodworkers; and the canning, packing, and agricul tural workers.

When the C.I.O. broke away from the A.F. of L., it took with it

1,000,000 members. This left the A.F. of L. with a membership of

2,500,000. In six years the A.F. of L. increased to 7,000,000, while the C.I.O. numbered more than 5,000,000. The A.F. of L. grew under the Wagner Act largely by adopting the methods of the C.I.O.

It soon dropped its objections to industrial unionism, going all out

after any and every kind of union. By its example, the C.I.O. forced

the A.F. of L. to abandon its discrimination against negroes, though a minority of its unions still exclude or segregate them. Even the

unions seem to have recognized that the sit-down strike is extremely difficult to justify, as they have never resorted to it since the 1930's.

Philip Murray, who has remained president of the Steel Workers

of America, succeeded John L. Lewis as head of the d.O. in 1940,

although Lewis is still president of the independent United Mine

Workers. From its inception, the C.I.O. suffered from the infiltra

tion of Communists into key positions in many of its unions. Murray was afraid to oust the Reds lest the GI.O. be split asunder in the

process. But their influence since the end of the war has been

steadily waning. At the national convention last November, Murray and Reuther managed to expel some of the Red-dominated unions

and legislated against others. Communists can no longer serve on

the GI.O. executive board, which controls the union policy. In America, as elsewhere, labour organizations suffer from lop

sided publicity. Unions receive attention mostly through strikes, yet

only about 5 per cent, of labour's activities has to do with strikes.

On the contrary, by control over their membership, by improving

conditions, and by eliminating grievances, unions prevent countless

thousands of strikes from coming into being. Where industrial war

fare does arise it is often not the fault of labour, though the unions

are invariably blamed for it. By and large, unions are schools of

232




democracy, union halls are recreation centres, and most unions are

benefit societies. The union label has vastly improved the lot of

workers on the job, and it has built schools, hospitals, and homes

for the aged. Occupational society is not only natural to man, it is

extremely necessary for the common welfare. Along with industrial

progress, organized labour has been the leading factor in elevating American workingmen from the inhuman conditions of fifty years

ago to their enviable position of to-day. The first article in this series closed with a tribute by Terence V.

Powderly, the head of the Knights of Labour, to Cardinal Gibbons.

The modern counterpart of the Knights of Labour is the C.I.O., and

the modern Powderly is Philip Murray who, like Powderly before

him, is an excellent Catholic and the greatest labour leader of his

age. Murray, who keeps a copy of Rerum Novarum always on his

desk, feels he is doing God's work in managing the C.I.O. At the

recent national C.I.O. convention in Boston, Murray invited Dr.

Richard J. Cushing to address the delegates. The Archbishop, who

is the son of a blacksmith from Fermoy, is a modern successor to

Cardinal Gibbons. In his address he declared:

" The aims of the C.I.O. are those of the trade union move

ment and of organized labour generally. These are chiefly three: (1) the organization of the working men and women of

America, without reference to race, creed, colour, or nationality, for mutual aid and protection; (2) the establishment of sound

collective bargaining and wage agreements; (3) the promotion of

legislation to safeguard economic security and social welfare, and to extend democratic institutions, civil rights and liberties.

"For my own part, I cannot see how any man in his right

mind, certainly how any American with the slightest comprehen sion of Christianity, can complain about those objectives. . . ."

As the Archbishop closed his thirty-minute address by invoking God's blessing on the convention, the mixed delegation of Catholics,

Protestants and Communists rose, as one man, in thunderous

applause. President Philip Murray praised the speech as "a great tribute to labour coming from the heart and soul of a great man?

one of us ".

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Documents

Unionism under the New Deal