Unions In The 1930s Essay

Klarizsa Padilla Prof. Joseph A. McCartin Hist Focus: Great Depression - HIST 099 – 01 11 November 2014

A Critical Moment for the Rights of U.S. Labor: 1930s Unions

Although the future of labor unions looked grim in the early 1930s, their fortunes would soon change. The tremendous gains labor unions experienced in the late 1930s was in part from the result of the Roosevelt administration’s pro-union stance and from legislation enacted

by Congress during the early New Deal. Furthermore, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) became much more aggressive in organizing unskilled workers who had not been represented before.

By the end of the 1930s most Americans realized that unions were one of the keys to genuine democracy because it provided a voice to workers and the inclusion of the racial minorities and industrial workers in collective bargaining opportunities.

Business owners in the 1930s unleashed the greatest period of social disruption that has ever taken place in the United States as they slashed wages and showed no sympathy for the starving masses that worked for them. Most employers flatly refused to bargain with any union, and used the economic crisis as an excuse to slash all employees’ wages. When the working-class opposed them, they often responded with violence. This violence discouraged many from joining unions. In Julius Fry’s case, who worked in a textile mill, this was his primary reason for not having joined a union. He explains "… when we joined the union in the '30s...I never

had bought anything for myself. I had no money,” and but even then the reason he hadn’t joined the union, “…wasn't for fear of losing the job then, for the most part. It was the fear of being harassed by the police for each little thing, or the company police, being put out of the company house.” But when President Franklin Roosevelt granted workers the right to organize into unions in the National Recovery Act workers rushed to join unions. The impact of the National Recovery Administration on the southern textile mill where Julius Fry worked speaks to the hope it gave workers. Julius recalled “… my hours were reduced from 12 to eight and the pay was increased from $8 to $12 and that was such a tremendous thing to me and I was so attunded to it that I kept that date on one of the posts in the mill there." Like many other workers, Julius felt he had attained a certain level of freedom as a result of the NRA policies. In fact, Julius compares how much time he had on his hands and the feeling of freedom to the emancipation of the slaves. New NRA policies support for unions represented not only the opportunity for better wages and working conditions but also a new measure of democracy.
Americans of many backgrounds now believed that the right to vote was not enough, that rights should also extend to the work place.

The workers believed the union voice and its collective bargaining power could realize an extensive reform agenda. Cary Joseph Allen Jr., who was an aluminum worker in the 1930s remembers, the promotion of "…better working conditions, for one thing. A higher wage, possibly, if it could be negotiated, was another…a clean-up modification campaign in the houses…” as gains the union could potentially make. When the CIO formally became as a section of the American Federation of Labor industrial workers flooded in. The groups of workers who were already at the forefront of struggle for a greater voice in their workplace, such as the auto and aluminum workers, quickly affiliated their unions with the CIO. This was true for Cary Joseph Allen Jr.’s union, where according to him "… they could see the advantages of being in one bargaining unit; whereas when the union was divided up into activities, then the company could play the machinists off against the electricians … So we agreed to switch over to the CIO." During the tumultuous times of the 1930s, the CIO and unions became a highly bureaucratic machine, that organized any and all workers, Black and white, skilled and unskilled, on an equal basis united under the belief that collective bargaining as a democratic right. The newfound commitment to ending racial discrimination in some unions like the CIO

represented a distinct break with past other organizations’ practices and made it possible for the first time to build a multiracial labor movement in the United States. Cary J Allen remembered his union as "a brotherhood of blacks and whites” where they settled “potential racial problems way back in the very beginning with the brotherhood in the union hall...” Thus, it is clear that some unions in the 1930s represented a new breed of unionism that no longer excluded the participation of minority workers, including African American. It appears unions of the 1930s evolved to unite workers of all races and all creeds in a common struggle for freedom, for democracy, and for a better life.
What is clearly evident is that the working people of America have had to unite in the struggle to achieve the gains that they have accumulated during the 1930s. Improvements did not come easily. Through organizing unions, winning the right to representation, using the collective bargaining process as the core of their activities, and struggling against discrimination, the working men and women of America built a union movement of alarming proportions. As Union membership in the U.S. has dropped to pre-1930s levels, it is important to continue to consider the critical role unions play in winning and maintaining democracy within the U.S. labor force.