The Great Depression and the New Deal
During the earliest days of the Great Depression union activity came to a standstill. With many men out of work and the economy in near total collapse union membership began to lag, since so many men could not afford to pay their membership fees and dues. Contrary to common belief today, the Hoover administration was not inactive regarding the depression nor towards organized labor during the depression, and in 1932 passed legislation which was pro-union. Among these was an act which prohibited the sort of injunction which had made the Great Railroad Strike of 1922 illegal. The act applied to the federal judiciary. Soon states passed similar laws.
Hoover also made it illegal for employers to demand prospective employees sign a promise that they would not join a union, known as a yellow dog contract. These two actions had been pushed by the AFL in Congress for years, and signified its growing political power. When Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt entered the Presidency, the AFL flexed its growing muscle, and the result of the lobby and the Democratic input was the National Industrial Recovery Act, which gave workers the right to organize and denied their employers the right to refuse to bargain with them, as well as made coercion and other intimidation of workers illegal.
By 1936 membership in the AFL was over 3.4 million. The AFL still supported the organization of unions by crafts rather than by industry. For example, electricians within the automotive industry were in the craft electrician unions, rather than in the automotive industry unions. By 1936 there was sufficient opposition to this approach for the formation of the Committee for Industrial Organization, which later changed its name to the Congress of Industrial Organizations. In 1938 the AFL and the CIO separated and they became rivals for membership, though both labor organizations supported the Democratic Party and Franklin Roosevelt.
John L. Lewis was the first president of the CIO and he used money from his United Mine Workers, which he brought into the CIO, to fund recruiting drives in the auto industry, oil industry, steel, and textiles. The CIO grew rapidly, and as it did it encouraged its members to support FDR with their votes, while the union supported him with its money. In 1936-37 the CIO successfully brought unionization to General Motors and most of the auto industry, though Ford would not yield for several years. The auto industry emerged from World War II with many new factories and industries, birthed to support the war effort.
As the labor unions grew in membership, political influence, and financial power they found within themselves was targeted by other groups. One was a free press investigating increasingly rumored and later confirmed incidents of corruption within the unions. Another was organized crime. Government investigations into the latter frequently led them to links within the labor movement. Despite organized labor’s overwhelming support of the war effort during World War II there was still a perception of anti-labor groups that it was supportive of communism in the United States. In the early days of television these links were explored by Congressional committees with Americans watching.