Word: cio
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...conclusion of last week's AFL-CIO unity meeting in New York, one pundit called the merger "the miracle on Thirty-Fourth Street." Few people, remembering the rancorous night when John L. Lewis pulled his Committee of Industrial Organizations out of the American Federation of Labor, could imagine the new labor group as anything except a battleground for rival bigwigs. When Mike Quill and some of the more militant CIO leaders protested the merger heatedly, observers predicted that the miraculous enterprise would shortly founder...
...amazement of many, however, the first formal conclave of the new united organization was marked by a serene meeting of minds between the former heads of the AFL and CIO. Both George Meany and Walter Reuther spoke of the internal amity and potential of the newly-built AFL-CIO. More significantly, both agreed fully on the important subject of labor's future in politics. They attacked the recent statement of Arizona's Senator Barry Goldwater, that the AFL-CIO had "no right to endorse a political nominee" and his suggestion that labor be "politically disfranchised." Reuther replied to Goldwater directly...
...more active role on the national scene. In 1947, the AFL established a political subsidiary--Labor's League for Political Education which promised, with AFL financing, to "support candidates on the basis of their record, and not on the basis of personal party favors and party prejudices." The CIO had fewer qualms about direct political activity, setting up the Political Action Committee...
...that year, labor made its first entry into the national political arena since the abortive 1924 campaign when the CIO endorsed FDR's candidacy. The AFL was somewhat slower but no less fervent in its political affiliations. Although it did not back Truman in 1948, it allowed its top men to aid the Democrats on an unofficial basis. The struggle to repeal the Taft-Hartley Bill made the actions of the LLPE and the PAC even more partisan and, in 1952, both AFL and CIO conventions formally approved Stevenson. American labor had finally, and perhaps irrevocably, entered the ground upon...
...CIO promises, on the basis of Reuther's and Meany's statements, to extend this political action even farther. There are, however, numerous stumbling blocks to organized labor as a political force. Many professional politicians, while openly welcoming the prestige and financial support that goes with big labor's support, privately deprecate AFL and CIO endorsement as a "kiss of death" in many campaigns. They point to the Ohio Senatorial election of 1950 where the CIO tried to make the Taft-Hartley Act a major issue. The attempt failed miserably; Bob Taft, the Act's sponsor, won by thumping pluralities...