MikeDunnAuthorToday in Labor History February 12, 1880: John L. Lewis was born. He was president of the United Mine Workers (UMWA) from 1920-1960, and founder of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). In 1935, he pulled the UMWA from the American Federation of Labor (and punched out Carpenters Union President William Hutcheson in the process) when the AFL refused to endorse industrial unionism. Lewis then formed the CIO, which organized millions of unskilled, mass production workers into unions in the 1930s and 1940s. In the 1920s, he used red-baiting, stolen elections and violence to expel the communists from the UMWA. Yet he refused to make his officials take the non-Communism oath required by the Taft-Hartley bill. Canadian labor leader J.B. McLachlan called Lewis a traitor to the working class.
#workingclass #LaborHistory #cio #union #communism #TaftHartley #JohnLewis #UnitedMineWorkers #IndustrialUnionism
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