AFL-CIO

• IDENTIFICATION Federation encompassing more than fifty national and international labor unions
• DATES Founded in 1955; AFL founded in 1886; CIO founded in 1932

The unions represented by the AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations) fought for and won American workers’ rights to collective bargaining, employer-sponsored health care plans, the eight-hour workday, workplace safety provisions, pensions and other retirement plans, and the procedures for addressing grievances arising from workplace issues. The AFL-CIO also influences local and national political elections by endorsing candidates sympathetic to worker-friendly policies and laws.

Founded by Samuel Gompers in 1886, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) was a union limited to skilled craftsmen. This policy distinguished the early AFL from other trade unions such as the Knights of Labor, which admitted semiskilled laborers, employers, and even strikebreakers. Although the early AFL stated that it was open to anyone who wished to join, the organization was openly hostile to African Americans, women, recent immigrants with limited ability to speak English, Chinese railroad workers, and all workers employed in factories manufacturing mass-produced goods. In the few instances when the AFL did support nonwhite or female workers, it did so to the extent that it could while still protecting the jobs and wages of white men.

Averting Violence

Gompers and other high-ranking members of the AFL saw the damage that violent labor strikes organized by the Knights of Labor inflicted on company profits and reputations as well as on those participating in the strikes. He vowed that the AFL would not engage in any tactics that might lead to the deaths of striking workers. He believed that physical confrontations during strikes led to legislation designed to criminalize labor organizing activities. Gompers preferred the AFL to pursue less antagonistic policies. For decades, the AFL concentrated on basic workplace issues such as job safety and security, as well as wage stabilization. One of the AFL’s most significant early achievements was the passage of the Clayton Antitrust Act in 1914, formally granting workers the right to strike. The US Supreme Court, however, ruled that the act did not permit secondary boycotts by sympathetic unions.

Gompers was not particularly interested in political issues. The AFL did not attempt to form a third political party at any point in its history, although the AFL-CIO became strongly aligned with the Democratic Party in the latter part of the 20th century and has endorsed Democratic and Republican candidates in national political races. Before his death in 1924, Gompers organized the AFL to be a national-level administrative body that would provide visibility as well as organizational and fund-raising skills for unions under its umbrella. At one time, more than 50 separate unions, with member rolls numbering in the tens of millions, belonged to the AFL. The AFL is supported by a portion of the dues that union members pay. The unions in the AFL pursue their own policies to benefit each union’s members.

Beginning early in the 20th century, the AFL began to accept unions representing industrial (semiskilled) workers, although it continued to prefer craft unions representing skilled workers. The AFL’s reluctance to fully support the concerns of industrial unions created room for more militant unions affiliated with the AFL, such as the United Mine Workers of America led by John L. Lewis, to pursue their own agendas. This eventually forced a showdown between these unions and the AFL, leading to the expulsion of many of these unions. The AFL remained nonpolitical, even as it continued to stand up for workers’ rights.

During the Great Depression, Congress passed the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 and the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. As a result, union membership grew in unions represented by the AFL and those outside it. Unemployment benefits became a much more common employee benefit.

Postwar Developments

After the start of World War II, most unions cooperated with government policies to limit strikes and demands for higher wages. Many union workers were exempt from military conscription because their labor was considered essential for the war effort. After the war, however, union workers struck for increased wages and the removal of restrictions on union activities. Congress, however, was in no mood to negotiate. In 1947, Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act, which restricted labor union power, before President Harry S. Truman vetoed the bill. Congress overrode the presidential veto, and Truman, despite his initial opposition to the bill, invoked the act 12 times during his eight years in office.

The AFL remained the largest and the most conservative union administrative body. Its rival union administrative body, and sometime partner, is the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). The CIO, first known as the Committee for Industrial Organization and created by John L. Lewis in 1932, distinguished itself by being smaller and more assertive in promoting labor rights.

The CIO accepted unions whose members were organized along industrial and geographical lines, regardless of worker classification as skilled or semiskilled. The CIO actively pursued involvement in national as well as state and local politics. Lewis led CIO union members in battles against AFL procedures for craft unions from 1935-1938, during which the AFL and CIO attempted to operate as a unified body.

Being expelled from the AFL freed the CIO to focus on organizing efforts in the rubber, automotive, and steel industries, as well as among electrical and radio workers. By the end of 1936, the United Electrical Workers claimed more than 600,000 dues-paying members. In 1936-1937, General Motors employees occupied manufacturing buildings in Flint, Michigan, for 44 days, despite attempts by police and National Guard troops to forcibly remove them. As a result of this sit-down strike, the CIO helped workers to organize and form the United Auto Workers (UAW). The CIO-affiliated UAW gained the right to represent General Motors workers. Chrysler and Ford executives also agreed to allow employees to form unions under UAW representation. U.S. Steel, a major supplier to the automotive industry, agreed to a collective bargaining agreement with the CIO-affiliated Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC) and avoided a strike. The CIO sponsored a West Coast longshoremen’s union in 1937. The formation of unions at other steel companies was largely unsuccessful due to the violence that occurred during several strikes throughout the decade. CIO-sponsored attempts to organize southern textile mill workers during the 1940’s also failed because of systematic legal discrimination against African Americans.

During the 1940s, the CIO faced internal challenges due to senior officials who either supported or were sympathetic to communist ideologies. In 1940, Congress enacted the Alien Registration Act—commonly known as the Smith Act—which permitted the prosecution of individuals who advocated violence against the U.S. government. Although union leaders’ socialist or communist remarks may not have posed direct threats, such statements gave conservatives a pretext to target CIO leadership and remove them from their positions. To protect its public image, the CIO ultimately expelled several affiliated unions accused of being led or influenced by communists.

Merger

In 1952 and 1953, the AFL and CIO each saw the departure of their longtime presidents. Recognizing the potential for greater influence and growth in union membership, Walter Reuther of the CIO and George Meany of the AFL led efforts to reunite the two organizations, resulting in the formation of the AFL-CIO in 1955. For the next fifty years, the AFL-CIO represented the majority of craft and industrial workers across the United States. By the 1970s, it boasted over 23 million dues-paying members. However, starting in the 1980s, unionized manufacturing jobs began to be outsourced to countries with cheaper labor and fewer environmental regulations, leading to a decline in membership. In response, union organizers shifted their focus to service-sector workers, including teachers, government employees at various levels, and workers in hospitality and tourism. Tensions sometimes arose between the priorities of industrial and service workers. By 2005, several major service-sector unions broke away from the AFL-CIO to form the Change to Win Federation, which prioritized service worker issues. Despite these changes, the AFL-CIO reported a global membership of 10.5 million across 56 national and international affiliate unions in 2008. By the mid-2020s, the AFL reported 63 affiliate unions with over 15 million members.

Bibliography

Dubofsky, Melvyn, and Joseph McCartin, editors. American Labor: A Documentary Collection. Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

Forbath, William. Law and the Shaping of the American Labor Movement. Harvard University Press, 1991.

Leab, Daniel. The Labor History Reader. 2nd ed., University of Illinois Press, 1985.

Lichtenstein, Nelson. State of the Union: A Century of American Labor. Princeton University Press, 2003.

Quinnell, Kenneth. “Get to Know the AFL-CIO’s Affiliates.” AFL-CIO, 4 Aug. 2025, www.aflcio.org/2025/8/4/get-know-afl-cios-affiliates. Accessed 4 Aug. 2025.

Sinyai, Clayton. Schools of Democracy: A Political History of the American Labor Movement. ILR Press, 2006.