On June 5, 1939, the Supreme Court decided Hague v. CIO. This case decided that the streets were public spaces where unions could organize under the principle of the First Amendment, ending decades of
On March 2, 1937, U.S. Steel signed a contract with the Steel Workers Organizing Committee. This victory for SWOC was not only a critical early win for what would soon become the Congress of Industria
As far as it goes, this history of communists and the CIO in the 1930s and 1940s that Jacobin published is sound, both factually and historiographically, except for saying Though its role is rarely me
This is the grave of Sidney Hillman. Hillman was born into a Jewish family in Lithuania in 1887. He was training to be a rabbi, but fell in with political radicals, joined the Bund, and fled Tsarist a
On October 19, 1935, the American Federation of Labor was holding its convention in Atlantic City. While usually a staid affair, this convention was rocked by a fight on stage between United Mine Work
I’ve been reading and rereading some key books of American labor history of late and I have a few thoughts. First on the CIO, after reading Robert Zieger’s 1995’s book, The CIO, 1935
On this date in 1937, Chicago police opened fire on strikers in front of the Republic Steel mill, killing 10 workers. Part of the “Little Steel” strike, where smaller steel corporations re