III.

History

The AFL was founded in Columbus, Ohio, in 1886, during a period of widespread strikes by workers seeking an eight-hour day. The Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada, established in 1881 to encourage labor legislation, and several unaffiliated trade unions merged to form the AFL. Its primary objectives were unionization of skilled workers, support of legislation beneficial to labor, reduction of working hours, and improvement of working conditions and wages. The American labor leader Samuel Gompers was elected president, and, under his leadership, the AFL adopted a policy of supporting political candidates considered friendly to labor, regardless of party affiliation. The AFL welcomed groups with various political and economic philosophies. The AFL started out with 25 unions with a total of about 140,000 members. By 1900 the organization had about 1 million members.

AFL membership decreased during the 1920s and the early years of the Great Depression of the 1930s. Later the federation grew rapidly as union organization was encouraged and protected by New Deal legislation begun in 1933 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The New Deal improved opportunities for trade union growth, raising the issue of whether the AFL should organize by occupation or by industry.

In late 1935 John L. Lewis led the formation of the Committee for Industrial Organization within the AFL. The committee sought to organize workers—including unskilled workers not represented by the AFL—by industry as opposed to by occupation or skill. In addition to accepting unskilled workers, the CIO accepted blacks and others previously not accepted into unions. Its purpose was to organize workers rapidly, notably workers in mass production industries, assigning them to existing or new industrial unions. A majority of the unions challenged the committee’s organizing efforts. Within three years, the eight unions that founded the CIO were expelled from the AFL. These eight unions formally established the Congress of Industrial Organizations with Lewis as president in 1938. Rivalry between the AFL and the CIO produced an increase in total union membership.

During World War II (1939-1945) the AFL and the CIO supported government defense efforts. A number of unions instituted no strike policies in support of the federal government, which helped enhance the stature of the AFL and the CIO. In 1942 Congress established the War Labor Board to settle labor disputes and many union representatives were appointed to federal agencies. Unions also took advantage of the industrial expansion during this period. By the end of World War II unions had more than 14 million members combined, up from about 8.5 million members in 1940.

At the end of the war American voters elected a more conservative Congress, which acted to limit union privileges. This encouraged cooperation among unions to conserve gains and ward off further attacks. During the Korean War (1950-1953), the AFL and the CIO formed a United Labor Policy Committee to deal with government labor policies. The committee soon became involved in other areas of organizational cooperation.

In November 1952 Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected president of the United States, the first Republican in the White House in 20 years. The election result sharpened labor’s perceived need for united action in facing the government. Shortly thereafter, the deaths of William Green, president of the AFL, and Philip Murray, who had succeeded Lewis as president of the CIO in 1940, removed two of the major participants in the formerly bitter rivalry between the two organizations. These events brought the AFL and CIO closer to a merger.

Early in 1955 a Joint Unity Committee was formed, and a new constitution was drafted. The formal merger of the AFL-CIO took place at a convention held in New York City in December 1955. George Meany, who had succeeded Green as head of the AFL, was elected president of the new organization. The AFL-CIO had 16 million members, about 30 percent of all those employed, in 1955. In 1957, however, the organization lost some three million members when the largest union in the nation, the Teamsters Union, was expelled from the AFL-CIO on charges of corruption. The union was reinstated 30 years later.

In 1979 Lane Kirkland succeeded Meany as president. During his presidency Kirkland worked to negotiate affiliations with unions outside the AFL-CIO. Nevertheless, membership in the organization began to decrease around 1980. After reinstatement of the Teamsters Union in 1987, the AFL-CIO had about 14 million members. By the early 1990s AFL-CIO members constituted only about 16 percent of all those employed. The general decline in membership has been attributed to the shift in concentration from the relatively well-organized mass-production industries to the white-collar and service sectors, where union strength has traditionally been weak.

In August 1995 the 73-year-old Kirkland retired. AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer Thomas R. Donahue served as interim president from August to October 1995, when John J. Sweeney won the AFL-CIO presidential election. After taking office Sweeney focused on increasing union membership, especially of women, minorities, and low-paid workers. Sweeney also organized a summer program designed to introduce young people to union issues.

Nevertheless, union membership continued to decline. In 2004, 13 million union members were affiliated with the AFL-CIO, and only 12.5 percent of the workforce in the United States was unionized. In July 2005 three of the largest unions in the AFL-CIO—the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the Teamsters Union, and the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW)—broke away to form the Change to Win Coalition. The move represented the largest split in the labor movement since the AFL and the CIO split of the 1930s. The SEIU represents 1.8 million workers, mostly in the service sector; the Teamsters Union represents 1.4 million members, mainly in the transportation sector; and the UFCW represents about 1.3 million workers in the supermarket, meatpacking, and poultry-processing industries. Their departure depleted the AFL-CIO’s ranks by about 25 percent, leaving the federation with only about 9 million members.

One other major union, UNITE HERE, representing about 450,000 apparel, textile, and hotel and restaurant workers, split from the AFL-CIO in August 2005. Both unions, along with the Laborers’ International Union of North America, representing construction workers, the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, and the United Farm Workers (UFW) union, joined the Change to Win Coalition. The Laborers’ Union and the UFW said they would be represented in both the AFL-CIO and the Change to Win Coalition. However, in February 2006 the Laborers’ Union broke from the AFL-CIO’s Building and Construction Trades Department and indicated that it would probably leave the federation entirely. The International Union of Operating Engineers also defected from the Building and Construction Trades Department but remained part of the AFL-CIO. The United Brotherhood of Carpenters left the AFL-CIO in 2001.

The split registered dissatisfaction with the AFL-CIO’s commitment to organizing nonunion workers. SEIU president Andrew Stern and Teamsters president James Hoffa argued that 50 percent of dues money paid to the AFL-CIO should be allotted to organizing efforts. The dissidents also sought the creation of a board that would oversee a merger movement among small unions with the goal of seeking larger international unions to combat globalization and the outsourcing of jobs. AFL-CIO president Sweeney worked for a compromise that would divert a smaller percentage of dues to organizing, arguing that substantial funds were still needed for political campaigns and lobbying. Sweeney’s compromise proposals were rejected by Stern and Hoffa who led their unions out of the AFL-CIO in response. The two labor leaders said the Change to Win Coalition would be primarily dedicated to organizing unorganized workers.