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Concept
Congress of Industrial Organizations
Summary
The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) was a federation of unions that organized workers in industrial unions in the United States and Canada from 1935 to 1955. Originally created in 1935 as a committee within the American Federation of Labor (AFL) by John L. Lewis, a leader of the United Mine Workers (UMW), and called the Committee for Industrial Organization. Its name was changed in 1938 when it broke away from the AFL. It focused on organizing unskilled workers, who had been ignored by most of the AFL unions.
The CIO supported Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal coalition, and membership in it was open to African Americans. CIO members voted for Roosevelt at the 70+% level.
Both the CIO and its rival the AFL grew rapidly during the Great Depression. The rivalry for dominance was bitter and sometimes it was violent.
In its statement of purpose, the CIO said that it had formed to encourage the AFL to organize workers in mass production industries along industrial union lines. The CIO failed to change AFL policy from within. On September 10, 1936, the AFL suspended all 10 CIO unions (two more CIO unions had joined the AFL during the previous year). In 1938, these unions formed the Congress of Industrial Organizations as a rival labor federation.
Section 504 of the Taft–Hartley Act of 1947 required union leaders to swear that they were not Communists, which some CIO leaders refused to do; they were expelled. In 1955, the CIO rejoined the AFL, forming the new entity known as the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL–CIO).
The CIO was born out of a fundamental dispute within the United States labor movement over whether and how to organize industrial workers. The eight union chiefs who founded the CIO were not happy with how the AFL was unwilling to work with America's manufacturing combines. Those who favored craft unionism believed the most effective way to represent workers was to defend the advantages they had secured through their skills.
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