Left Out
Reds and America's Industrial Unions

This book, first published in 2002, analyzes the legacy of the Communists in the CIO between the 1930s and 1950s.

Judith Stepan-Norris (Author), Maurice Zeitlin (Author)

9780521792127, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 21 October 2002

392 pages, 2 b/w illus. 22 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.5 cm, 0.74 kg

"...the authors' conslusions and insights help to illuminate not only the history of organized labor and the ILWU, but the present and future as well...Stephen-Norris and Zeitlin have helped us understand the importance of not repeating the mistakes of the Red Scare, and not letting another member of the House of Labor be left out." The Dispatcher

From the late 1930s through the mid-1950s, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) brought together America's working men and women under a united class banner. Of the 38 CIO unions, 18 were 'left-wing' or 'Communist-dominated'. Yet the political struggle between the CIO's 'Communist dominated' and right-leaning unions was immensely divisive and self-destructive. How did the Communists win, hold, and wield power in the CIO unions? Did they subordinate the needs of workers to those of the Soviet regime? The authors of this book, first published in 2002, provide testable answers to these questions with historically specific quantitative analyses of data on the CIO's origins, internal struggles, and political relations. They find that among the CIO unions, the Communists were more egalitarian, the most progressive on class, race, and gender issues, and leading fighters in struggles to enlarge the freedom and enhance the human dignity of America's workers.

1. The congress of industrial organizations (CIO): left, right, and center
2. 'Who gets the bird?'
3. Insurgency, radicalism, and democracy
4. Lived democracy: UAW local 600
5. 'Red company unions'?
6. Rank-and-file democracy and the 'class struggle in production'
7. Strangers to their own class?
8. 'Pin money' and 'pink slips'
9. The 'big 3' and interracial solidarity
10. The red and the black
11. Conclusion: an American tragedy
12. Epilogue: the specter of a 'third labor federation'.

Subject Areas: Politics & government [JP], Sociology & anthropology [JH]