EDITOR'S NOTE: Knowing our past is vital to the future of our labor movement. We thank Baltimore historian and labor activist Bill Barry for alerting us to this podcast, which we think is especially timely with the UAW's historic contract victory with Detroit's Big Three automakers.
Listen to the first episode of our new podcast Organize the Unorganized: The Rise of the CIO, a limited-run series on the rise and legacy of the Congress of Industrial Organizations.
Listen to Episode 1 and subscribe
There have been many moments of labor upsurge in America: the influx of members into the Knights of Labor in 1886, the dramatic growth of unions during and after World War I, and the great wave of public sector unionism in the 1960s and ’70s. But none matches the period of the 1930s and ’40s, when millions of workers unionized under the aegis of the great labor federation the Congress of Industrial Organizations, or CIO. If we’re looking to get millions of private sector workers into the labor movement today, there’s no better example than the ascendant period of the CIO.
In Organize the Unorganized: The Rise of the CIO, produced by Jacobin and the Center for Work and Democracy at Arizona State University, author Benjamin Y. Fong tells the story of how the CIO remade America, weaving archival sound with rare interviews with prominent labor historians and activists.
The multipart series begins with a short history of the organization from which the CIO broke off, the American Federation of Labor, and explores the central causes of the CIO’s founding: the broken promises of welfare capitalism, the National Industrial Recovery Act, and the mass strikes of 1934.
Organize the Unorganized: The Rise of the CIO will be available weekly on Jacobin Radio, with a new episode released every Tuesday.
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