In
1935 several union leaders were dissatisfied with the policies of
American Federation of Labour (AFL). Led
by John L. Lewis, the leader of the United
Mine Workers of America, seven unions formed the Committee for
Industrial Organisation (CIO). Three years later they changed the
name of the organisation to the Congress for Industrial Organisation.
John L. Lewis became president of the
CIO and over the next few years attempted to organize workers in the
new mass production industries. This strategy
was successful and by 1937 the CIO had more members than the American
Federation of Labour.
In 1955 the CIO merged with the American Federation
of Labour. Walter Reuther, the president
of the CIO became vice-president of the AFL-CIO. George
Meany became president of this new organisation that now had a
membership of 15,000,000.
Walter Reuther found George
Meany conservative and dictatorial and in 1968 led the out of
the AFL-CIO federation. The following year he joined with the Teamsters
Union to form Alliance for Labor Action.
(1)
John
T. Flynn,
The Roosevelt Myth (1944)
Roosevelt was interested
in bringing into American labor unions as many voters as possible
and in capturing their leadership to be used to build up a powerful
labor faction which could control the Democratic party and which he
and his allies could control through the vast power of the government
and the vast powers of the labor leaders, along with the immense financial
resources that so great a labor movement would have. The Communists
were interested in getting into key positions as union officers, statisticians,
economists, etc., in order to utilize the apparatus of the unions
to promote the cause of revolution. I think we have to be fair in
saying at this point that neither Roosevelt nor Lewis realized the
peril to which they were exposing both the unions and the country.
This thing called revolutionary propaganda and activity is something
of an art in itself. It has been developed to a high degree in Europe
where revolutionary groups have been active for half a century and
where Communist revolutionary groups have achieved such success during
the past 25 years. It was, at this time of which I write, practically
unknown to political and labor leaders in this country and is still
unknown to the vast majority of political leaders. The time came when
Lewis saw the gravity of the situation and faced it frankly and dealt
with it immediately. But as we shall see, Roosevelt, through a combination
of events and influences, fell deeper and deeper into the toils of
various revolutionary operators, not because he was interested in
revolution but because he was interested in votes.
For the time being, however,
he capitalized heavily on the activities of the CIO. The CIO put up
half a million dollars for Roosevelt's 1936 campaign and provided
him with an immense group of active labor workers who played a large
part in the sweeping victory he won at the polls. But among them now
were a large number of Communists in positions of great power within
the new union movement, some of them actually moving close to the
center of power. This was the crack in the wall through which they
entered. Their power was to grow and prosper.
Available from Amazon Books
(order below)
