Take It Easy, But Take It

"The CIO is a people's movement, a people's movement for security, for jobs, for civil rights and peace. It speaks for all the working men and women of America, negro and white. It does not ask questions of race and color of its members or the people it aids. The CIO fights to bring the benefits of industrial organization to all working people. The CIO does this job in the only way it can be done - by organizing all the workers, excluding none, discriminating against none. That is why the CIO is the strongest force for progress in America today. That is why the CIO will not rest until all the working men and women of our country have a measure of economic security, until they have the assurance of peace, until they all enjoy the equal rights and liberties of American citizenship." This is a very brittle pamphlet and I went a bit to far trying to get this scan. Will get the rest of the pages up soon.

CIO Publication No. 85 -WORKING AND FIGHTING TOGETHER regardless of race, creed, color or national origin -  produced by the CIO Committee to Abolish Racial Discrimination 1943 A hallmark of CIO organizing was tearing down racial barriers to worker solidarity and union power. The AFL's craft based unionism almost exclusively saw white workers in high paying skill jobs with poor workers of color left unorganized in the mass production industries. The C.I.O. had a huge challenge on their hands, building multi-racial international unions in Jim Crow America. I have read many accounts by organizers with the United Auto Workers regarding just how difficult it was to win white workers over to these new C.I.O. unions. These organizing drives literally transformed communities and racial equality might just be the most radical concept of all the CIO's legacy.

C.I.O. publication no. 4 from the Committee for Industrial Organization, published March of 1936. One year before the committees unions were expelled from the AFL for advocating industrial unionism and 2 years before the formal creation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations. The flag in the drawing reads "Don't divide us! Mass production workers belong in industrial unions" The 8 unions that comprised the committee at this time were: - United Mine Workers of America - International Typographical Union - Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America - International Ladies Garment Workers Union - United Textile Workers of America - Oil Field, Gas Well and Refinery Workers of America - United Hatters, Cap and Millinery Workers International Union - International Union of Mine Mill and Smelter Workers