1930's Business and the Economy | The CIO and the Triumph of Unionization

Growth.

The 1930s witnessed an incredible growth in union membership. Many factors came together at a crucial time to allow the phenomenal growth, including governmental support for unions and dynamic leadership within the labor movement. The most central issue was the creation of the Committee for Industrial Organizations (CIO), later renamed the Congress of Industrial Organizations, in 1935. Because of the success of the CIO nearly all the major industries in the United States were organized by the end of the decade.

Split.

The American Federation of Labor (AFL) failed to meet the needs of the unorganized workers in the mass-production industries in the early 1930s. The fundamental problem was that the AFL did not want to let unskilled workers into the organization, which was dominated by craft unions. The stubbornness of the AFL led United Mine Workers (UMW) leader John L. Lewis to split from the AFL and found...