This paper traces the history of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) from its founding in 1886 through its 1955 merger with the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). It examines Samuel Gompers's philosophy of "pure and simple unionism," the AFL's preference for craft unions over industrial unions, and the challenges posed by the CIO's rise in the late 1930s. The paper concludes by describing the structure and political role of the AFL-CIO as a federation of autonomous labor unions across North America.
Growing out of the earlier Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) was organized as an association of trade unions in 1886. Its president, Samuel Gompers, who served almost every year until 1924, believed that unions open to workers of all skill types within a given industry — called industrial unions — were too undisciplined to survive the repressive tactics that government and management used to break American unions. Gompers was convinced that the solution was "craft unions," each limited to the skilled workers in a single trade.
His philosophy of "pure and simple unionism" was based on the belief that labor should not waste its energies fighting capitalism, but rather devote itself to hammering out the best arrangement it could under the existing system. This meant employing strikes, boycotts, and negotiations to win better working conditions, higher wages, and greater union recognition.
The AFL was the largest union grouping in the United States for the first half of the twentieth century, even after the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) was organized in 1938 by unions that had left the AFL due to its opposition to organizing mass production industries. Although the AFL was founded and dominated by craft unions throughout its first fifty years, many of its craft union affiliates turned to organizing on an industrial basis during the 1940s in order to meet the challenge posed by the CIO.
"AFL and CIO merge into North American labor federation"
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