Congress of Industrial Organizations

The Congress of Industrial Organizations, or CIO, was a federation of unions that organized industrial workers in the United States and Canada in the 1930s through the 1950s. Originally known as the Committee for Industrial Organization, it was founded in 1935 by eight international unions within the American Federation of Labor to pressure the AFL, which had either opposed or given only lukewarm support to organizing mass production industries, to change its policies. After failing to change AFL policy from within, five of these eight unions split from the AFL to found the Congress of Industrial Organizations as a rival federation in 1938. The CIO rejoined the AFL, forming the new entity known as the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), in 1955.

The Red Scare

Persons associated with the Communist Party did, in fact, exercise a good deal of influence in a number of CIO unions in the 1940s, both in the leadership of unions such as the ILWU, UE, TWU and Fur and Leather Workers and in staff positions in a number of other unions.

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Those persons had an uneasy relationship with Murray while he headed the CIO. He mistrusted the radicalism of some of their positions and was innately far more sympathetic to anti-Communist organizations such as the Association of Catholic Trade Unionists. He also believed, however, that making anti-Communism a crusade would only strengthen labor?s enemies and the rival AFL at a time when labor unity was most important.

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Murray might have let the status quo continue, even while Walter Reuther and others within the CIO attacked Communists in their unions, if the CPUSA had not chosen to back Henry Wallace's third party campaign for President in 1948. That, and an increasingly bitter division over whether the CIO should support the Marshall Plan, brought Murray to the conclusion that peaceful co-existence with Communists within the CIO was impossible.

Related Topics:
Walter Reuther - Henry Wallace - Third party - Marshall Plan

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Murray began by removing Bridges from his position as the California Regional Director for the CIO and firing Lee Pressman as General Counsel of both the Steelworkers and the CIO. Anti-communist unionists then took the battle to the City and State Councils where they attempted to oust Communist leaders who did not support the CIO?s position on the Marshall Plan and Wallace.

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After the 1948 election, the CIO took the fight one step further, expelling the ILWU, Mine, Mill, the Farm Equipment Union, the Food and Tobacco Workers, and the Fur and Leather Workers after a series of internal trials in the first few months of 1950, while creating a new union, the International Union of Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers, to replace the UE, which left the CIO.

Related Topics:
1950 - International Union of Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers

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