Take It Easy, But Take It

"We, the shipyard workers, will be able best to achieve our aims as an integral part of the working class only by combining our collective strength to defend the interests of all the workers in the industry. We must at all times maintain strong unity for the achievement of a higher standard of living, and guard all gains won by standing ever alert against any encroachment on the part of the employers of the industry. Recognizing that craft unionism, as practiced in the past, has been proved during the course of history to be both ineffective and dangerous to the interests of the workers. The Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of America advocates and practices the program and tactics of militant industrial unionism, based on the principle of One Industry - One Union. The Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of America calls for the united front of all workers in the industry, regardless of creed, color, nationality, religion, sex or politic...

In 1937, Harry Bridges was named West Coast director of the C.I.O. in exchange for the West Coast longshoremen joining the C.I.O. The International Longshoremen's Association Pacific Coast District joined the CIO just months before they broke off from the ILA and chartered as the International Longshoremen's & Warehousemen's Union C.I.O.  This pamphlet, advocating Industrial Unionism, comes out of Harry Bridges West Coast C.I.O. headquarters the year the ILWU was founded. This pamphlet holds the AFL leadership to account for their hypocritical stance on Industrial Unionism.

United Railroad Workers of America C.I.O. - 1949-1951 Contract with the Pennsylvania Railroad Company

" MEET THE SSEU This is our union - The Social Service Employees Union, more familiarly known as the SSEU. Elevator operators, case workers, group workers, clerks, fund-raisers, janitors, research workers, maids, and others - we are all members of SSEU because we have a common aim in life. We are a division of the United Office & Professional Workers of America. And we have decided that working together in the union is the best way to win job security, higher pay, better working and living conditions, and improved standards of social service to the community. OUR GOALS These are our goals: -To advance and protect the economic interests of the  employees of private social and non-profit agencies. - To further the interests of organized labor. - To promote an adequate welfare program, and to  advance standards of service. IT'S A RANK AND FILE UNION SSEU is a rank-and-file union, run by the membership. The union starts in ...

"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.

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