The CIO’s Left-Led Unions

Description

Edited by Steve Rosswurm
Rutgers University Press

In 1949 and 1950, the CIO expelled many left-wing unions, representing 750,000 workers, because they were supposedly Communist-dominated. This collection explores the history of those eleven left-led unions. Some essays consider specific aspects of several unions—the Longshoremen, United Electric (UE), the Fur Workers, and the Food and Tobacco Workers—while others take up the impact of the federal government’s and the Catholic church’s anticommunism upon the unions as a whole.

This collection also addresses central domestic issues of twentieth-century America: race and government policy in the shaping of trade unionism; the impact of anticommunism and the cold war on race relations and working conditions; and the short- and long-range impact of the expulsions on the labor movement. With groundbreaking essays that also concern the post-World War II period, Southern workers, and workers in non-basic industries, this book will appeal to students of radicalism, race relations, anticommunism, and labor history.