After the passage of the Recovery Act of 1933, under the provisions of which the Congress of the United States provided for the guarantee of Labor's fundamental right to organize and bargain collectively and despite the

further fact that the exploited workers in many of these industries spontaneously

and on their own initiative

revolted and formed their own unions, the craft unions of the American

Federation of Labor made no effort to consolidate these gains or to establish an organization of their own.

On the contrary, they oppose real plans for organization and left the new unions to their faith.

This tragic fear upon the part of the craft unions

was the logical outgrowth of their fundamental weaknesses and

in the effort to secure a unity of action in mass production industries which they were attempting to organize because of

jurisdictional claims arising between the different craft organization, they were

unable to develop that unity of purpose, which is one of the

leading values of industrial unionism and which is indispensable to successful

collective bargaining in our basic industries.

These workers should have the opportunities to support their families

under conditions of health, decency, and comfort, to own their own homes, to educate their

children and possess sufficient leisure to take part in wholesome social and political activities.

It is for the purpose of enabling them to acquire and enjoy these rights that the eight international unions of the American

Federation of Labor, including the United Mine Workers of America, have formed the Committee for Industrial Organization.

It is our purpose to encourage the formation of industrial unions,

equal in economic strength of management in the steel, automobile,

rubber, glass, textile, radio, and all other basic industry. podcast from the Center for Work and Democracy and Jacobin magazine. I'm your

host Benjamin Fong. On the last episode we covered the prehistory of the

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