286

After the partial crisis in 1949, industrial activity began to pick up, as a result of which employment grew and unemployment decreased. This may be seen from the following figures for 1949-1955 (in millions)  [286•1 :

Table 4 Year Workers employed in all nonagricultural fields Fully unemployed Per cent of all wage earners unemployed 1949 50.4 3.7 5.9 1950 52.2 3.3 5.3 1951 53.7 2.1 3.3 1952 54.2 1.9 3.1 1953 55.4 1.9 2.9 1954 54.4 3.6 5.6 1955 56.2 2.9 4.4

p Statistics indicate that the employment level varied from industry to industry. While it rose in defense-related industries, it fell somewhat in the textile, shoe and leather, and food industries. Furthermore, hourly wage rates and weekly and annual earnings in industries producing durable goods and especially in the defense industry, were higher than in consumer goods industries unrelated to defense. An even 287 greater difference existed between wages in the defense industries and wages in the trade and service fields.

p Discrimination because of race and nationality was another reason for differences in living standards. Negro, Mexican, and Puerto Rican workers were, as before, at the lowest level. Such factors as the government’s tax policy and working and safety conditions also had an effect on the economic condition of American workers. The US aggression in Korea was used as a pretext to further mobilize industry in accordance with the Defense Production Act of September 8, 1950. This act conferred authority upon the President in matters relating to the supply of raw and other materials to the war industry; the regulation of labor relations, wages and prices; and the distribution of war orders.

p In the first months of the Korean war, a number of agencies were set up under the War Board. Their task was to regulate the economy in the interests of big business. The Board was headed by one of the most prominent captains of industry of those years, General Electric President Charles Wilson. An Office of Price Stabilization and a Wage Stabilization Board were created in late 1950, in accordance with the Defense Production Act. Theoretically, they were called upon to do what their names implied, but actually, the OPS did nothing to prevent prices and, consequently, the cost of living, from rising. On the other hand, the Wage Stabilization Board carried out a definite policy of wage control.

p On January 26, 1951, the Truman administration ordered the imposition of wage and price controls. Trade unions were forbidden to demand more than a 10 per cent wage increase over the January 1950 level. This was accompanied by a ban on price increases for consumer goods above the January 1951 level. It is not difficult to see the resemblance between Truman’s wage stabilization and the notorious Little Steel formula of 1942.

p The AFL, CIO and independent trade unions came out against this second edition of the formula. In March 1951, they formed a coordinating United Labor Policy Committee, which denounced the ways and means used to stabilize wages. A Declaration on Principles issued by the Committee stressed that while wages were controlled, prices in fact were not. But 288 the attempt to secure a united labor front failed because of the conciliatory line taken by AFL leaders. Instead of fighting for working-class demands, all they did was talk about “equal sacrifices" by all strata of American society.

p The authors of the Declaration reproached Congress for ignoring the principle of “equal sacrifices”, and advanced seven points demanding the establishment of effective price control, an excess profits tax, a cut in taxes on low incomes, etc. These points had already been set forth during World War II, but in the wartime conditions the unions were obliged to hold back considerably as they supported Roosevelt’s program to fight inflation. Now, under Truman, no groundless declarations could substitute for militant trade union action. But militant action is just what the United Labor Policy Committee did not want to take, for it was made up of opportunists bogged down in behind-the-scenes deals with employers.

p The Committee did not call the masses to support its line, in the first place because it had no policy that was in their interests, and in the second place because it feared they might display too much initiative. Evaluating the Committee’s activities, the April 1951 meeting of the Communist Party National Committee stressed that the trade union leaders were clumsily trying to hide their latest capitulation to monopoly behind their phony “equal sacrifices" catchword.  [288•1  Their economic opportunism was actually leading to inactivity, and in a great many cases bordered on an unwillingness to organize a truly mass struggle of the workers for their class interests. On August 5 of the same year, the AFL representatives withdrew from the United Labor Policy Committee, thereby putting an end to illusions of unity. This move determined the Committee’s fate; it ceased to exist, having failed to accomplish the tasks it was assigned.

p The condition of the workers was aggravated by inflation. In the first half of 1953, Eisenhower lifted even the purely formal price controls, and on July 31, rent controls were also removed. Landlords immediately took advantage of this, with the result that over the first half of the 1950s rents went up by 50-60 per cent, chiefly for low-income families. The mortgage debt 289 increased from $33.3 billion to $99 billion between 1948 and 1956.  [289•1 

Besides this, taxes went up. In the 1952/53 fiscal year they totalled $92.6 billion, or almost twice as much as during the war years.  [289•2  The income tax law that went into effect in October 1950, provided for a 14 per cent tax increase on annual incomes of $100,000 or more, and a 20 per cent increase on incomes of up to $3,000. In 1954, families with incomes of $3,000 to $3,500 were paying $1,055 a year, or 30 per cent of their annual incomes.  [289•3 

p k.

p Before the Korean war it took an average of $75 a week, or $3,900 a year, to support a family of four, whereas in 1951 the figures were, respectively, $81.60 and $4,242. In 1953, according to Federal Reserve Board data, of the 55 million families taken into account, about 38 million, or 69 per cent, had annual incomes considerably below the official minimum subsistence level. One-fourth of the families earned less than $2,000 a year.  [289•4  In other words, these families were living in poverty.

p In September 1953, workers in the manufacturing industries were making an average of $71.42 a week, or $3,718 a year, while the lowest wages in the shoe industry were $45.41 a week, or $2,361 a year.  [289•5 

p As a result of the strike struggle, however, average annual wages in the manufacturing industry rose from $3,214 in 1950 to $4,135 in 1955.  [289•6 

p Wage levels, however, differed greatly from industry to industry and between various groups and categories of workers. The steelworkers’ union pointed out in 1952 that the average hourly wage in steel was $ 1.31 ($ 1.21 in the South), or only $52.40 a week, which called for an increase of 67.5 cents per hour (and not 15 cents as indicated in the 1951 collective 290 bargaining agreement) in order to bring earnings up to a level adequate to cover the expenses in the budget compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The average wage rate for the first 16 of the 32 wage categories was $1.68 an hour, or $67.20 a week and $3,494 a year; in other words, 84.6 per cent of the subsistence minimum. And this group included even skilled workers: crane operators, gas welders, excavator operators, locomotive engineers, furnace operators and so on.  [290•1 

p In 1953, there were 544,600 production workers employed in the steel industry. Of these, 370,000, or 70 per cent, were in the first 10-12 wage categories (semiskilled and unskilled workers). The difference between categories 10 and 32 was $1.10 in 1951, and $1.21 in 1952-53. In 1954, wage rates were $57.20 a week, or $2,974 a year, for the lowest category; $90.40 a week, or $4,700 a year, for the middle category; and $125.60 a week, or $6,531 a year, for the highest.

p Thus, workers in the latter two groups had relatively high wages, especially those in the top skill bracket. This pattern was characteristic of many industries producing durable goods, where there was, at the same time, a high percentage of organized workers. In 1950, for instance, the average wage at the auto plants in Detroit was $1.78 an hour, while workers in the top skill categories received from $2.50 to $4.00 an hour.  [290•2  The same picture obtained in the electrical machinery and equipment, aircraft, and transport equipment industries. On the whole, wages of skilled workers in most branches of heavy industry (there were about ten million of them in 1954) averaged from $80 to $125 a week, or $4,000 to $6,500 a year. However, in such industries as, for example, food, tobacco, textile, apparel, lumber and wood-working, the average wage in 1954 and 1955 was one-half to one-third that of highly skilled workers in the iron and steel, automobile, electrical and other industries. Obviously, the workers in the lower wage bracket were in a tough situation.

p As for the condition of Negro workers, the Committee on Segregation Questions, Washington, reported that most of 291 them were still employed in low-pay jobs. In 1952, of 3.5 million working Negro men, 1.5 million were unskilled workers. Twenty-three per cent of working Negroes had jobs as manual laborers, while among whites only seven per cent were in this category. Only four per cent of working Negro women were office workers, as compared with a 30 per cent figure for white women. On the other hand, 58 per cent of the working Negro women were employed as domestic servants.

p A sharp wage differential continued to exist between white and Negro workers. The average annual wages of Negroes in the years 1950-1953 were a little over one-half those of white workers, and Negro women made only one-fifth as much as white workers.  [291•1  In 1950, the average annual income of a Negro family was $1,869, or 54 per cent of the average income of $3,445 of a white family.

p In the early 1950s, automation became an important factor in production and the cause of growing concern to workers. With the development of automation came even greater speedup and increasing layoffs of “redundant” workers. At the United States Steel mill in Morrisville, New York, for example, the capacity of the open-hearth furnaces was increased from 200 to 410 tons per furnace per melt, while the number of workers per furnace remained the same. In the first postwar decade, automation led to the dismissal of over 300,000 persons in the textile industry, and 200,000 in the electrical and radio industry. In the coal industry, the number of workers was reduced by more than half between 1947 and 1957. About 400,000 miners lost their jobs as a result of new technology.

p In these years automation and intensification of production brought about the gradual disappearance of obsolete trades and “redundant” jobs, displacement of workers over 40-45 years of age, and changes in the structure of the industrial proletariat in terms of skills. An average of 400 to 600 new trades and professions appeared in the American economy annually.  [291•2 

292

p It should be noted that unemployment averaged approximately five per cent of the civilian labor force during 1954, as against 2.4 per cent in 1953.  [292•1 

p Such were the facts characterizing the economic position of the workers in the first half of the 1950s. Yet, in the two-and-a-half years of the American aggression in Korea, the monopolies reaped $107 billion in profits (before taxes), or only $7 billion less than in the entire five years of World War II.  [292•2 

p The war in Korea stimulated a growth of industrial production in the United States that continued right up to

p 1953, at which time the volume of production exceeded the 1948 level by 33.8 per cent. The Korean armistice led to a drop in the production level in 1954. The production index, according to Federal Reserve Board data, taking 1957-1959 as 100, rose from 64.7 in 1949 to 91.3 in 1953. It fell to 85.8 in 1954, only to rise again in 1955 to a high of 96.6.

p Employers expected that while the war was on in Korea, the same situation would obtain in industry as existed during World War II. They thought that the 5.4 million workers employed in war production (the end of 1951) would not strike.  [292•3 

But contrary to their expectations, the number of strikes, the number of workers involved and man-days lost in the major industries all increased in the first half of the 1950s, as can be seen from the following figures  [292•4 :

1950 1051 1952 1953 1954 1955 Work stoppages 4,843 4,737 5,117 5,091 3,468 4,320 Workers involved (in thousands) 2,410 2,220 3,540 2,400 1,530 2,650 Man-days idle (in millions) 38.8 22.9 59.1 28.3 22.6 28.2

p Strikes took place in most of the country’s industrial centers, and involved auto workers, teamsters, steelworkers, electricians, machinists, ship builders, chemical workers, construction 293 workers, seamen, communications workers, public utilities and atomic plant workers. Tension mounted throughout the country.

p As early as the spring of 1950, mass strikes broke out on the railroads. The Railroad Brotherhoods were demanding a 40-hour week and higher wages, but the companies refused to negotiate. In response, the locomotive engineers on the Rock Island and Pacific RR of Chicago struck in May, followed by the switchmen in June.  [293•1 

p Truman stepped in with an appeal to terminate the strikes in the national interest. However, in August, railroad workers struck in Chicago, Washington, St. Louis, Alexandria (Virginia) and other key centers. The companies asked the President to establish government control over the railroads, and on August 25, on orders of President Truman, the army seized all railroads.

p In Chicago, Washington and Cleveland the courts issued injunctions against “illegal” strikes. The President declared a state of emergency, and the strikes were temporarily halted. In an effort to prevent a further spread of unrest, some companies said they were prepared to raise wages. Thus, the railroad workers forced the government and the companies to make concessions. Their demands were met. Army control over the railroads was lifted in May 1952.

p The first half of 1951 saw a series of textile strikes. In one of the conflicts, the American Woollen Company refused to meet the demands of the Textile Workers Union (CIO) for a wage increase of 15 cents per hour, as a result of which 70,000 workers at 160 mills in the Atlantic Coast states went out on strike in February. Soon, however, the company granted a 12-cent-an-hour rise and agreed to review wage rates in the future in response to changes in the cost of living; that is, it virtually accepted the principle of an automatic cost-of-living wage adjustment.

p The strike movement did not wane in the second half of 1951. One of the biggest strikes at that time involved 100,000 workers in the copper industry. A court order was issued to put off the strike for 80 days. The strike was halted, but the union, 294 meeting in convention, decided to renew it after the 80-day period had elapsed. The firm stand taken by the union and the workers’ determination compelled the companies to make concessions. Kennecott Copper, for example, signed a oneyear contract which provided for a wage raise of 15 cents per hour and a payment of 4.5 cents per hour into a pension fund.

p At about the same time, a strike of 30,000 longshoremen in New York and Boston began. The dispute centered around certain objectionable points in the contract. In 1950, 60 per cent of the longshoremen on the Atlantic Coast worked less than 800 hours a year. The contract, however, stipulated that a worker had to put in at least 700 hours a year to qualify for certain welfare benefits. The strikers were demanding that this minimum be reduced to 500 hours. Even at that, half of the longshoremen would not qualify for the benefits.

p Other demands were for a 25-cent-an-hour rise, a guaranteed eight-hour workday and certain fringe benefits. The president of the union, Joseph Ryan, used every means to suppress the workers who stood in opposition to their leadership. He even brought in gangsters, and police intervened in the conflict.

p Although the strike failed, the East Coast longshoremen long remembered it, and later demanded Ryan’s ouster.

p The total number of workers involved in strikes during the first 18 months of the war in Korea reached 3.5 million. The year 1952 saw the greatest upsurge of the strike movement since 1946. In the beginning of that year, there were strikes of teamsters, locomotive engineers and railway conductors, telegraph and telephone operators, and oil refinery workers, involving, in all, tens of thousands of workers. By May 1, 1952, a total of 887,000 workers, including 650,000 steelworkers,’ were on strike. The steelworkers’ strike was the longest and toughest since the 1919 steel strike. It drew worldwide attention.  [294•1 

p The standard of living of the steelworkers had deteriorated. In 1952, about 60 per cent of them were making less than the subsistence minimum.  [294•2 

295

p In negotiating a new contract in early 1952, the United Steelworkers of America demanded a wage increase of 24 cents per hour, eight paid holidays, time and one-half and double time for work on Saturdays and Sundays, and an increase of shift premiums to 10 and 15 cents over and above the 24-cent-an-hour raise demanded for day shifts. The union declared that it would not tolerate violation of the hiring rules that were based on the closed shop principle. The steelworkers also sought elimination of the 10-cent-an-hour Southern differential. And finally, the union demanded improvements in safety conditions. The steel companies rejected these demands.  [295•1  The union had no other alternative than to call a general strike. It set April 9 as the deadline.

p The government immediately intervened. Truman ordered government control over the nation’s steel mills to be established on April 8. The companies filed a complaint in court, claiming that the seizure was illegal. In the meantime, the Wage Stabilization Board proposed that the sides agree to a compromise 17.5-cent-an-hour wage raise. The union leaders regarded this proposal as a way to settle the dispute, but the companies were adamant in their refusal to raise wages. On April 28, a federal court ruled that the government’s seizure of the steel industry was illegal and control must be lifted.

p Murray and his assistants still hoped to avoid a strike, telling the workers that the court’s decision would be overruled by the Supreme Court. However, when on June 2 the latter upheld the federal court’s ruling, the union had no other choice but to call a strike in the steel industry.

p The strike lasted for almost two months. It ended on July 25 after the companies made concessions. The new contract provided for an increase of the hourly wage from 12.6 to 16 cents, employer contributions to a welfare fund, paid holidays (for the first time in the steel industry), and a five-cent reduction in the North-South hourly wage differential.

p The strike had widespread repercussions, for almost 85 per cent of the nation’s steel mills were shut down by it. In the two months of idleness, US industry suffered a shortfall of 17 million tons of steel at a time when the annual output was 110 296 million tons. The overall losses from the strike amounted to 23.8 million man-days lost, out of a total of 59.1 million lost in all strikes in 1952.

p In August 1952, national attention was attracted to a three-month strike of 30,000 workers at the farm machinery plants of International Harvester Company in Chicago and other cities.

p American workers well remember the International Harvester. It was during a strike at this company in 1886, when it was called the McCormick Harvester Company, that its owners instigated one of the most vicious provocations in American labor history, leading to the tragic events at the Haymarket Square in Chicago. Now, using the same methods to fight the strike in 1952, the new owners crashed down on the union, aiming to destroy it and reduce the workers’ wages.

p Police dispersed the picket lines, beating and arresting pickets. The bourgeois press baited and slandered the strikers, and called for harsh measures to be taken against them. The Chicago Tribune, mouthpiece of the McCormick publishing company, even demanded death sentences for the strike leaders. One of these leaders, Harry Ward, a Negro, was arrested and tried on a frame-up charge of killing a strikebreaker. He was saved from the electric chair only because the United Electrical Workers, a leading force in the strike, organized a broad campaign in his defense.

p The House Un-American Activities Committee came to Chicago just at the time of the strike. But this did not intimidate the workers; in fact, the building where it was holding its hearings was picketed. Among the strikers was John Bernard, one of the leaders of the Chicago local of the electrical workers union, a former member of the US House of Representatives, and an eminent figure in the Farmer-Labor Party of Minnesota in the 1930s. The committee called Bernard to testify before it, hoping to discredit him in the eyes of the workers. But the interrogation backfired on the committee. In the presence of many workers, Bernard lambasted the committee and exposed the aims of its arrival in Chicago. Other unionists called up before the committee spoke out just as boldly and directly. The result was that the committee was compelled to terminate its hearings and return 297 to Washington ahead of schedule. The plans to reduce wages and destroy the union organizations at the International Harvester enterprises failed.  [297•1 

p In January 1953, the Republicans took over the reins of government for the first time in twenty years. At about the same time, new leaders rose to power in the AFL and CIO due to the deaths in 1952 of AFL president Green and CIO president Murray. The new presidents, George Meany and Walter Reuther, both hastened to declare their willingness to “cooperate” with the new administration in Washington. At the same time, the statements they made about having the Taft-Hartley Act amended were designed to instill in the minds of workers the hope that Eisenhower would carry out his promises in this respect. The conciliatory policy of the union leadership and the threat of the Taft-Hartley Act combined to affect the scope of strike action in 1953. Although the number of strikes was no smaller than in 1952, they involved fewer participants and were of shorter duration.

p The strike struggle in 1953 was characterized largely by the growth of wildcat strikes, that is, strikes not sanctioned by the central union leadership. Two hundred such strikes were registered in the iron and steel industry alone.

p In 1955, due to a renewed upswing in industry, the overall wage fund of blue- and white-collar workers and the purchasing power of the population rose somewhat in comparison with 1954. However, as contracts with major monopolies expired and the cost of living continued to rise, the unions demanded increases in wages, pension funds and unemployment benefits, and better working conditions. A total of 4,320 strikes took place that year, involving 2,650,000 workers and resulting in 28 million man-days idle.  [297•2 

p In assessing the strike struggle of the American working class between 1950 and 1955, it should be noted that its characteristic features were, as in the preceding years, its broad scope and mass nature, as well as the predominance of economic demands. The issues had mainly to do with wages, the size of unemployment benefits and pensions, working conditions and length of the work day or week. There were no 298 political strikes. There were no big industry-wide strikes during this period, since still in force were contracts concluded between 1950 and 1952 under which the unions had agreed not to strike for the duration of the contracts. The strike movement was also restrained by anti-labor legislation (the Taft-Hartley, McCarran-Walter and other laws) and the baiting and persecution of union figures.

p Nonetheless, the strike movement in the first half of the 1950s indicated increasing contradictions between the working class, especially its low-paid section, and the monopolies.

p Back in 1927, members of the first American worker delegation ever to visit the Soviet Union explained that it was not easy to cultivate even trade-unionist thinking in the American masses, to instill in them even an elementary understanding of the need for workers to unite in trade unions to defend their economic interests. But much had changed since then. History had not stood still. The widespread emergence of mass unions, and the scope and force of the strike movement, showed that American workers were becoming more and more active. Indications of this were also found in the speeches and resolutions at union conventions and conferences on urgent economic questions and the problems of war and peace.

p At the same time, bourgeois propaganda and the opportunism of many labor leaders acted as a brake on the development of the workers’ class consciousness. Nonetheless, this development, although slow, did take place. It was not without alarm that the bourgeoisie watched the changes in the awareness of workingmen. Lenin summed up this phenomenon when he wrote: “The ruling classes all over the world are particularly apprehensive of the changes that are taking place in the trade union movement.,.. But every capitalist sees the trade unions, and knows that they unite millions of workers and that the machinery of capitalism is bound to break down, unless the capitalists control them through the leaders who call themselves socialists but pursue the policy of the capitalists. This they know, feel and sense.”   [298•1 

299

p The political consciousness of the American workingmen developed in their struggle against the employers, above all during mass strikes. The strike struggle runs through the whole history of the labor movement in the USA, and in the postwar period the number of workers involved in strikes every year was never below the two-million mark.

p And yet one of the main obstacles to the labor movement was the contradiction between the enormous scope of strike actions and their lack of an independent, working-class strategy. Because of the opportunist policy of right-wing leaders, the labor movement in the USA lagged considerably behind the labor movement in many other capitalist countries in terms of organization and ideology. Labor organizations were split up into different trade union centers that were frequently at loggerheads with each other. Moreover, about two-thirds of the American working people were not unionized.

p Progressive unionists had long sought a united labor movement, but this urge was particularly strong in the postwar period, when it became clear that none of major labor federations could, by itself, effectively counter the monopolies’ offensive against the vital rights of labor. West Coast longshoremen at their union convention in April 1951 and steelworkers at theirs in September 1954 both stressed the urgent necessity of unity for American labor.

p A resolution on labor unity adopted by the United Steelworkers convention said that unity would release the energies of the entire American labor movement for the larger effort to organize the unorganized, and that it would secure a more abundant life for the workers of America.  [299•1  Other unions came out with similar calls.

p More and more labor organizations were joining the movement for AFL and CIO unity. Their members were well aware of the need for it. They realized that the future of their unions depended on concerted action against the monopolies. The absence of unity was one reason why the strike struggle more and more often became defensive in character.

p Rank-and-file unionists persistently called upon their leaders to put an end to the mutual animosity between the AFL and 300 CIO, and to stop raiding activities (union rivalry, with one union seeking to win over membership of another). From 1951 to 1953 alone, there were 1,245 cases of raiding between AFL and CIO unions, involving 350,000 workers.  [300•1  Within the three years, the AFL filed 791 complaints with the Labor Relations Board, challenging the right of CIO unions to act as the collective bargaining agents, and the CIO filed 936 such complaints against the AFL. The AFL leaders spent $11.5 million on organizing raids and bringing action against the CIO.  [300•2 

p Some unions found that if they wanted to strengthen their positions they had to unite on their own.The CIO Packinghouse Workers Union and the AFL Butchers and Slaughterhouse Workers Union, for example, merged, as did a few other AFL and CIO unions. The anti-labor policies of the monopolies increased the impulsion of organized workers toward unity of action, and this was one of the things that forced the union leaders to speed up negotiations to bring the AFL and CIO together.

p It was no accident that Walter Reuther was to admit at a press conference in late October 1955 that “if the merger were up to the rank and file only, it would have occurred long ago. They have been asking for it for years, and the pressure actually came from the rank and file".  [300•3 

p Back in 1950, on April 4, Murray issued an appeal for unity to the AFL and the independent unions. The AFL executive council responded by appointing a committee to conduct negotiations with the CIO. In July of that year, the CIO and AFL committees met and decided to form a subcommittee made up of representatives of both labor centers. Its job was to work out recommendations on the ways and means of merger. The subcommittee expressed the hope that total unity between the AFL and CIO would be accomplished in the very near future.

p In November 1950, the 12th convention of the CIO in Chicago called for further contacts between the two 301 associations and expressed confidence that meetings would be resumed in the near future. The CIO leadership urged the union members to be patient, and warned of the difficulties involved in uniting the AFL, CIO, the United Mine Workers and the Railroad Brotherhoods. A convention resolution emphasized the need for new efforts to achieve the unity of the entire American labor movement.

p The 70th convention of the AFL, held in San Francisco in September 1951, resolved that the “organic unity" of the American labor movement was more imperative than at any time since the split of the AFL and that negotiations with the CIO should be resumed. Persistent references by the AFL leaders to “organic unity" put the CIO leaders on guard. Speaking at the 13th convention of the CIO in November 1951 in New York, Murray argued that talks on “organic” unity might imply absorption of the CIO by the AFL and that he strongly rejected that possibility. “Unity without prior understanding on jurisdictional questions ... would not lead to peace in the labor movement,” he said.  [301•1 

p At the 14th convention of the CIO, held in December 1952 in Atlantic City, Walter Reuther, now president of the CIO after Murray’s death that year, promised to make a determined effort to achieve unity without prejudicing the principle of industrial unionism in the mass production industries. The convention expressed confidence that organic unity would be achieved. Meany, who succeeded Green as AFL president, spoke in favor of resuming unity talks with the CIO. In early February 1953, the CIO executive board named a new committee of eleven officials headed by Reuther to meet with an AFL committee headed by Meany, to discuss unity.

p After the progressive unions were expelled from the CIO, its position on domestic and especially on foreign policy differed little from that of the AFL leadership. The CIO annual conventions from 1951 to 1954 clearly showed this to be the case. For example, the 14th convention, held in Atlantic City in December 1952, passed a resolution which fully approved the US government’s cold war foreign policy course.

p On the eve of the unity talks, Reuther said at a press 302 conference in Washington: “The CIO wants a united labor movement with all the Communists and racketeers kicked out”, and recalled that the CIO had “rid itself of nine Communist unions some years ago”.  [302•1  This statement with its obvious anti-Communist emphasis attested to the fact that the top CIO and AFL leaders were wholly in tune ideologically and that they intended to effect the merger on a reactionary, anti-democratic platform.

p The Communist Party was an active participant in the struggle for the unity of the working class, and the initiator of many mass actions in which various trade unions took part. At every stage of its history it waged a struggle against cleavage, exposing the advocates of craft separatism and disunity. What attitude did the party take to the events leading up to the merger of the AFL and CIO? It assessed the coming merger on the whole as an unquestionable step forward, stressing at the same time that it could do a lot for the workers if effected democratically, from below, that is, by drawing the broad masses of rank-and-file union members into the movement for unity. If, however, the merger were left up to the bureaucratic upper echelons, then it could do more harm than good.

p The AFL and CIO committees first met on April 9, 1953. The AFL press reported: “Labor unity negotiations between AFL and CIO committees got off to a good start at the first meeting. The conference named a 6-man subcommittee—headed by AFL President George Meany and- CIO President Walter P. Reuther—to make preliminary studies of the main problems involved and to draw up a report and agenda for the next joint meeting of the full committees to be held early next June. Chief emphasis was placed by both sides on the need for eliminating ‘raiding’ between rival unions....

p “The first obstacle to progress of the negotiations was removed when Reuther and the other CIO representatives assured the AFL group that they had no ’prior conditions’ to submit."  [302•2 

p At a press conference in Washington in June 1953, AFL representatives said that while the two sides had agreed on the 303 raiding issue, they had not yet reached agreement regarding the settlement of jurisdictional disputes between AFL and CIO unions. CIO representatives added that a two-year no-raiding pact would go into effect, in January 1954, and that they regarded the proposed agreement as real progress toward organic unity.  [303•1 

p The CIO executive board approved the agreement in August 1953, and urged the convention to ratify it in November stressing that “the elimination of raiding constitutes a necessary first condition to the achievement of unity".  [303•2  The AFL executive council also approved the agreement, characterizing it as a “cease-fire”. In September 1953, the 72nd convention of the AFL in St. Louis ratified the agreement, declaring that it was “the first and indispensable step toward achievement of organic unity between the AFL and CIO" and emphasizing the need of exerting trade union energy to organizing millions of unorganized workers instead of to the “costly fraternal strife involved in raiding".  [303•3 

p In November 1953, Reuther told the 15th convention of the CIO in Cleveland: “We seek honorable organic unity based firmly on the principles of free democratic unionism....

p “In these negotiations we will not sacrifice any of the basic principles for which the CIO stands, and which are essential to the building of a strong, democratic and socially responsible labor movement."  [303•4  The convention instructed the CIO officials to sign the no-raiding agreement as a first step toward unity. The Unity Committee signed the agreement in Washington on December 16.

p But before the agreement could go into effrct, individual AFL and CIO unions had to affix their signatures to it, and this matter proceeded with some difficulty. The AFL executive council noted in February 1954 that only 40 of its 111 unions were ready to sign.  [303•5  At the same time, the CIO executive board said that 98 per cent of its unions had stated their readiness to 304 sign if the AFL unions did the same.  [304•1  On March 22, 1954, the CIO executive board expressed concern over the fact that the agreement could not go into effect because of the small number of unions that had accepted it.  [304•2  Finally, on June 9, Reuther signed the document on behalf of 29 CIO unions, and Meany on behalf of 65 AFL unions, and the agreement went into effect. The unions signatory to it represented over ten million of the nation’s almost sixteen million organized workers’.  [304•3 

p Reuther called the agreement “a reflection of the growing maturity in both movements".  [304•4  It was a promising beginning. Clear signs of progress in the mood and conditions for unity with the CIO were shown at the 73rd convention of the AFL held in Los Angeles in September 1954. The report of the executive council advocated that “negotiations move ahead immediately toward achieving organic labor unity".  [304•5 

p The program for unity adopted by the CIO convention looked toward “fair and honorable unity with the American Federation of Labor, to a continued drive to organize the unorganized, and to domestic economic and social legislation designed to end stagnation"  [304•6  The convention approved the decision of the Unity Committee regarding the creation of , a single trade union center, and noted that since the last convention, 102 unions had signed the no-raiding agreement (72 AFL unions and 30 CIO unions), and that raiding had virtually ceased.  [304•7 

p On February 9, 1955, the Unity Committee finally reached agreement on the creation of a single trade union center. It was announced that all AFL and CIO unions would automatically become affiliated to the new labor federation, at the same time retaining their constitutions and organizational integrity. The agreement recognized both the craft and the industrial 305 principles of organization. Discrimination because of race, color or religion was prohibited in the organizations. The leaders of the federation promised to fight against all forms of corruption. At the same time, they included anti-communist points in the agreement, labelling the Communist Party a “subversive organization”. Moreover, the “communist threat" that allegedly hung over the labor movement was given as one of the main reasons for the merger.

p The seat of all authority in the federation would be the national convention, which would meet biennially. Between conventions, the federation would be governed by (1) an executive council composed of a president, secretary-treasurer and twenty-seven vice-presidents, seventeen from the AFL and ten from the CIO, and (2) a general board, consisting of the members of the executive council and a principal officer of each affiliated union. The president and secretary-treasurer of the merging federation would be initially from the AFL. The CIO was to turn over all of its funds to the AFL treasury, and the AFL and CIO machinery would then gradually merge. These were the terms that had to be approved by AFL and CIO conventions and then by a unity convention. In late February 1955, Reuther stated at a press conference in Washington that only the Transport Workers Union opposed the merger.

p The text of a CIO executive board resolution published in February 1955 said: “We deem it important to note that the Merger Agreement recognizes and underwrites the integrity of each affiliated union; that it guarantees and provides equal status for industrial unionism."  [305•1  An Industrial Union Department was set up within the new trade union center.

p The AFL organ wrote: “Announcement that the AFL and CIO have agreed on terms for a merger ... was hailed throughout the Nation as a highly constructive step. In labor circles, the reaction was almost universally favorable. A great upsurge in union membership by means of a united drive to organize the unorganized was predicted as the inevitable consequence of labor unity. Another major benefit immediately forecast was a much stronger position for labor in the political and legislative fields.” The paper added, however, 306 that “the combined membership of the AFL and the CIO amounts to about 15,000,000 of the country’s 62 million workers, or less than 25 per cent.”  [306•1  In August 1955, a conference of AFL officials in Chicago approved the terms of the merger agreement. And in October, Meany and Reuther said at a press conference that complete agreement on the merger had been reached. Meany stressed that the feeling among union members was overwhelmingly in favor of the merger.

p Thus, it took almost ten years for agreement to be reached on the organizational merger of the AFL and CIO. The leaders of the two trade union centers finally assumed the role of champions of unity and came to an understanding as to how the spheres of influence in the new labor federation would be divided. The situation was favorable for them. In 1949 and 1950, the CIO leaders had engineered the expulsion of a number of left-wing unions, thereby seriously weakening and then completely undermining the progressive activity of the CIO. They altered its course, especially compared to what it was just before and during World War II, when the left wing played a substantial role in the trade unions.

p The progressive unions had to wage a debilitating struggle for their very existence. One of those to suffer heavy losses was the Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America. But even so many of these unions held out even against the repression they were subjected to by the police and the courts. Nor did they fall into internal disarray. Time and again they proved their ability to win wage increases and better conditions for the members. From 1945 through 1951, the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Union, for example, conducted 13 major strikes, and another 8 in 1952. The general strike which it organized in the copper industry in 1951 dealt the first serious blow to the wage-freeze system. And in 1952, it gave substantial material assistance to striking steelworkers.

p Progressive unionists sparked the formation of trade union committees composed of representatives of their unions and of CIO and AFL locals. In 1951, there were committees of this kind in fifteen major cities.

p A vivid example of the drive for unity among progressive 307 forces in the US labor movement was the formation at a convention in Cincinnati in late 1951 of a National Negro Labor Council. It was supported by trade unions that defended the rights of Negroes and fought racial discrimination. The Council organized its activity on the basis of joint struggle by white and Black workers for equal opportunities for Negroes in employment, wages and working conditions. That this struggle developed successfully was indicated by the rapidly increasing number of local Negro labor councils, whose work was coordinated by the National Council.

p However, as a result of prolonged persecution, the condition of the expelled progressive unions continued to worsen. Some faced the necessity of merging with related or stronger unions, so that by the end of the 1950s only four, with a total membership of 300,000, remained in existence. These were the Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America; the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers; the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union, Pacific Coast; and the Communications Association of America. But a whole number of unions ceased to exist.

p Such were the results of the splitting activities of CIO leaders, who hypocritically assured the rank and file of their desire for unity. Once they embarked on the AFL-CIO merger, they did everything they could to prevent a really democratic unification of American workers from taking place.

p What enabled the rightist labor leaders to effect the merger according to their own plans and under their aegis? In the first place, the overwhelming majority of the local union officials and trade union convention delegates were high-paid workers of Anglo-Saxon origin; in the second place, during the postwar years the composition of the working class was considerably renewed, especially through the influx of youth and women, who had not gone through the school of class struggle and were therefore not particularly class conscious; and in the third place, the intensified arms race was causing a rising level of employment, and the labor movement was in a relative lull. The labor leaders controlled the governing bodies of the trade unions and had substantial means at their disposal. They took advantage of these possibilities and seized the initiative.

p In the early 1950s, most of the CIO leaders went over 308 completely to the positions of the AFL leaders on all major issues. The organ of the Department of Labor, Monthly Labor Review, said in September 1954: “In fact, the AFL and CIO have begun to resemble each other more closely in recent years—in structure, activity, and ideology."  [308•1  The AFL introduced some structural changes. Besides the craft unions, the AFL now also had some unions built along industrial lines—the teamsters, textile, clothing, atomic, aircraft, construction, electrical and others. These changes were largely the result of the workers’ struggle for industrial unions.

p Common views on a number of questions relating to the struggle for labor’s vital interests, and a certain similarity in organizational structure helped the two trade union centers to draw closer together. A certain role in this was also played by the change in the leadership of both the AFL and CIO, for Green and Murray had for many years been at each other’s throats.

p But even so, the process of merging dragged on for many years. The leaders of both centers hesitated for a long time before making the decision. In early December 1955, AFL and CIO conventions accepted the terms of the merger and the draft constitution of the new federation.  [308•2 

p The First Constitutional Convention of the AFL and CIO took place on December 5, 1955, in New York. In attendance were 1,487 delegates representing 13.7 million organized workers. The convention proclaimed the creation of the AFL-CIO, composed of 138 national and international unions, 108 from the AFL and 30 from the CIO. The new federation also took in 93 state labor councils, 490 central labor unions and local industrial councils, and 146 federal labor unions and local industrial organizations.

p The convention ratified the terms of the merger and the constitution of the federation, and elected the governing bodies. The president and secretary-treasurer, George Meany and William F. Schnitzler, were selected from the AFL. The convention also elected all the vice-presidents that would sit on the executive council. Of the 29 members of the council, 309 about two-thirds were from the AFL, including, among others, Meany, Dubinsky, Woll, Hutcheson, Harrison, Beck, Schnitzler, Brown and Bates; from the CIO there were Reuther, McDonald, Carey, Rieve, Curran, Quill, Potofsky and others. The 31 CIO unions formed an Industrial Union Department within the federation. It was headed by Walter Reuther, and included Albert Whitehouse as executive director and Carey as treasurer. Each union affiliated with the new federation retained its former status and integrity. Since the federation recognized both the craft and industrial principles of union structure, this meant that duplication remained. The terms of the merger did not provide for the merger of parallel AFL-CIO unions or any organizational restructuring to eliminate the existence of more than one union at any one enterprise.

p The AFL-CIO executive council was given broad powers, including the power to expel unions it considered to be “Communist infiltrated”. What political line the AFL-CIO leadership would follow could be judged from an article by Meany published in The New York Times Magazine on the eve of the merger convention. He offered the monopolies nothing more nor less than a “non-aggression” pact, implying consent to a no-strike policy.

p The merger was accomplished from above by conservative leaders and on an undemocratic basis. One of the points in the AFL-CIO constitution was that the new federation would “protect the labor movement from ... the undermining efforts of communist agencies".  [309•1  Thus, the leaders of the new federation sought to make anti-communism—that is, the further persecution and baiting of progressive forces in the US labor movement—a basic policy of the AFL-CIO. This, of course, favorably impressed some of the nation’s business and political leaders. In a speech delivered before the convention, in which he welcomed the merger of the AFL and CIO, Governor Averell Harriman of New York said that American trade unions had done more to combat “Communist subversive activities" in the country and abroad than any other organizations in the USA. It was a kind of testimonial to the 310 real activity and contributions of the top men in the new federation.

p Speaking before a conference of the National Association of Manufacturers on December 9, 1955, Meany, in turn, indicated that there was so much in common between the views held by labor leaders and employers that it was stupid for them to fight each other. Furthermore, to show his opposition to labor’s use of the strike weapon, he made this statement: “I never went on strike in my life, never ran a strike in my life, never ordered anyone else to run a strike in my life, never had anything to do with a picket line.”   [310•1 

p Nonetheless, the merger had positive significance in that it contained the seeds of real working-class unity. To a certain extent, the documents of the unity convention reflected this. The AFL-CIO constitutibn said that the federation would oppose any legislation that did not correspond to the aims of protecting democratic institutions, rights and liberties and the traditions of American democracy. Convention resolutions urged unionists and all working people to struggle in defense of civil rights, especially those of the Negro people, and called for the organization of unions, above all in the South and in the mass-production chemical and paper industries where they were almost non-existent. The convention pointed to the need for more independent political action by unions at election time, and stressed that they would support those candidates who spoke out against the Taft-Hartley Act, the “right-to-work" laws and racial discrimination, and who favored tax reductions.

p Certain differences came out at the convention with respect to foreign policy questions. Meany’s group of extreme right leaders took a pro-imperialist position, opposing peaceful coexistence of countries with different social systems and supporting the cold war policy. A group composed of most of the CIO union leaders, headed by Reuther, also supported the government’s foreign policy course, but recognized the need for negotiations on some of the most pressing international problems. The presidents of the clothing, slaughterhouse, textile and packinghouse workers’, and hotel and restaurant 311 employees’ unions advocated rejection of the position-ofstrength policy and called for efforts to resolve the problems of disarmament. Because of the differences, the convention passed a compromise—but contradictory—resolution: it condemned the 1955 Geneva conference of foreign ministers, but underscored the possibility of new negotiations; it supported the government’s official foreign policy course, yet condemned colonialism. At the same time, the convention opposed cooperation with Soviet trade unions. Left unresolved was a fundamental disagreement on the question of what kind of aid, economic or military, should be given to other countries.

p The characteristic feature of the AFL-CIO federation was its dual and contradictory nature. On the one hand, it reflected the political backwardness of the labor movement in the USA, and on the other hand, it showed the potential possibilities for stepping up the fight against the monopolies. The Communist Party of the USA greeted the AFL-CIO as the beginning, not the completion, of the process of uniting the trade unions, but at the same time pointed to the danger of its being exploited by the rightist leaders in the interests of the monopolies and the government.

p In looking back on the merger of the two trade union centers, one factor that should not be ignored is that differences in approach to many important domestic and international problems existed within the AFL-CIO leadership, and between George Meany and Walter Reuther in particular.

p Meany relied mainly on the reformist trade unions in the construction industry. The United Auto Workers which Walter Reuther headed was not only the second largest but also the most active union in the US labor movement. The Negro people, above all Negro workers, hated Meany and his supporters for their racist actions, for supporting a policy of discrimination in the AFL unions and, later, for condemning the Negro civil rights march on Washington in 1963. Walter Reuther not only supported that march, but mobilized thousands of members of his union and other unions in the AFL-CIO Industrial Union Department for participation in it.

p Meany ignored the interests of the lowest-paid workers. 312 Reuther, however, got his union to put up $1,000,000 to finance the Citizens Against Poverty, an organization that united Negroes, workers, clergymen, students, etc.

p The AFL-CIO merger did not produce any earth-shaking practical results. Nevertheless, it should be noted that, with all its shortcomings, it had a positive effect on the development of the strike struggle, especially in the first years of the new federation. As we noted earlier, a number of big strikes were conducted in 1955 and 1956 under the sign of unity and solidarity.

p The positive effects of a single trade union center were also felt in drawing up new collective bargaining agreements in 1956 and 1957. Under the agreements reached, five million workers in the automobile, steel, construction, transportation, aircraft and aluminum industries won wage increases of five to eleven cents an hour.

p However, the contradictions lying at the very foundation of the AFL-CIO continued to sharpen. The policies of cold war and class collaboration pursued by the rightist leaders led to stagnation in the American labor movement. This found expression above all in the fact that Meany and other leaders in every way sought to impede the organization of unorganized unskilled workers.

p After the merger, a special organizing committee was set up to head an organizing drive. The executive council allotted several million dollars for this purpose. However, little was done in this respect in the ensuing years. The committee got bogged down in internal disputes over whether the craft or industrial principle should be given preference in the drive.

Moreover, in the second half of the 1950s alone, the AFL-CIO lost 1.5 million members. A session of the AFL-CIO executive council in February 1957 approved new rules providing for the removal of progressive figures from all posts in AFL-CIO unions. The monopolies considered the situation favorable for a new offensive against the working class, and demanded that anti-union legislation be extended to the entire country. Serving the interests of big capital, the government used a Senate subcommittee headed by Senator John McClellan, which was at that time investigating corruption in the 313 unions in connection with the case of David Beck (former head of the teamsters’ union who had misappropriated a sizable sum of union money), for the purpose of discrediting the US labor movement as a whole and causing a split in the AFL-CIO. The monopolies met with partial success. Under their pressure, the AFL-CIO expelled the teamsters, the bakery workers and the laundry workers.