37:575:100 Chap.6 The New Deal and the Rise of Industrial Unions
The New Deal and the Rise of Industrial Unions
A new relationship with government
Week 10 opens Unit III with the 1930s, when the federal government took on a new role in working Americans' lives.
The central law is the National Labor Relations Act, or Wagner Act, passed on July 5, 1935. The Metzgar reading argues it was not special-interest legislation but the centerpiece of a New Deal strategy to build unions that would shift wealth and power toward workers and create lasting support for federal economic policy.
The CIO and industrial unionism
The Committee for Industrial Organization formed on November 9, 1935 and set out to organize whole industries rather than single crafts.
It gained 3.7 million members in its first twenty months, won recognition at General Motors and U.S.
Steel, and completed its sweep of the core industrial economy with contracts at Ford and Bethlehem Steel in 1941. It was costly: eighteen workers were killed in steel organizing in 1937. Union membership rose from 12 percent of non-farm workers before the Wagner Act to 27 percent by late 1941 and 35 percent by the end of the war.
The postwar settlement
After the war, more than five million workers struck within a year of V-J Day.
The wave won raises but frightened much of the public, and in 1947 Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act over President Truman's veto.
Steelworkers nonetheless kept winning: a pension and health insurance in 1949, supplemental unemployment benefits in 1956, and a 110 percent rise in real wages between 1936 and 1959.
What changed on the shop floor
Metzgar's father described his life as before the union and since the union. Before, fear of losing the job gave the foreman power over everything.
Since, contract rules decided layoffs, overtime and shifts, and a grievance could go over the foreman's head. The historian David Brody calls this a workplace rule of law.
The strike wave in numbers
The Metzgar chapter gives the scale of the 1945 to 1946 wave.
When steelworkers walked out on January 21, 1946, almost two million basic-industry workers were out at once, and more than five million struck in the year after V-J Day. The settlement pattern, eighteen and a half cents an hour, was about a 15 percent raise, not enough to offset inflation and lost overtime, and the public backlash shaped labor law for decades.
What this chapter covers
- 01
The Wagner Act as New Deal strategy
- 02
The CIO and industrial unionism
- 03
Membership growth from 1935 to 1945
- 04
The 1945 to 1946 strike wave and Taft-Hartley
- 05
Pensions, health insurance and SUB
- 06
The workplace rule of law
Worked example · free
Compare two steel strikes a generation apart
- 1Identify the 1946 union's legal footing under the Wagner Act, which the 1919 strikers lacked.
- 2Explain wartime union security and steady dues, which built lasting organization.
- 1Point to the shop steward and grievance system that kept members connected.
- 1Conclude that organization and law, not just grievances, produced discipline.
Key terms
- Industrial Union
- A union that organizes all the workers in an industry, whatever their craft, rather than one trade at a time.
- Taft-Hartley Act
- The 1947 federal law, passed over President Truman's veto, that placed new restrictions on unions after the postwar strike wave.
- Workplace Rule of Law
- David Brody's phrase for contract rules and grievance procedures that replace a supervisor's arbitrary authority.
The New Deal and the Rise of Industrial Unions FAQ
Why does the course treat the Wagner Act as a turning point?
Metzgar presents it as the centerpiece of a New Deal strategy to foster unions and redistribute power, and membership grew from about 12 percent of non-farm workers before it to 35 percent by the end of the war.
What did the CIO do differently from older unions?
It organized entire industries, such as steel and autos, instead of single crafts, and in its early years it acted as an organization of organizers, building shop committees and locals inside the plants it won.
What were the limits of the New Deal system?
The postwar strike wave alarmed the public, Republicans won Congress in 1946 and the Taft-Hartley Act followed in 1947, and the broader CIO goal of industrial democracy was largely unmet in the Cold War years.
What were supplemental unemployment benefits?
They were payments the Steelworkers won during a 58-day strike in 1956 that topped up state unemployment compensation to about 80 percent of wages for laid-off workers, one of the security gains Metzgar credits to the union.
Exam move
Memorize a short timeline: 1935 Wagner Act and CIO, 1937 U.S. Steel, 1941 Ford and Bethlehem, 1946 strike wave, 1947 Taft-Hartley, 1949 pensions, 1956 SUB, 1959 steel strike. Then practise one answer on what unions changed beyond wages, using the before-and-since contrast.
