Haymarket Originals: Fragile Juggernaut

Episode 20 of Fragile Juggernaut takes us from 1950 to 1955—the end of the line for the CIO. At the beginning of the story, the expulsion of the left-led unions was a recent wound, and the Cold War liberalism of figures like Walter Reuther seemed like a viable and vital project for the CIO’s future, with the landmark 1950 GM contract, the “Treaty of Detroit,” marking a new phase in how industrial unions related to management. The Korean War seemed like a proving ground for this hypothesis, and proved a brutal disappointment. By 1955, the CIO threw in the towel, merging back in to the AFL on the older federation’s terms.  To tell this story, we talk with guest Toni Gilpin, author of The Long Deep Grudge: A Story of Big Capital, Radical Labor, and Class War in the American Heartland [https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1383-the-long-deep-grudge]. Toni helps us see this story from the perspective of the UAW’s left-wing rival, the Farm Equipment Workers (FE), who resisted the direction charted by Reuther in 1950—as long as they could. And with Toni, we talk about some of the long-term legacies of CIO radicalism for the civil rights movement. This is our last narrative episode. It will be followed by one summary and reflection discussion. Featured music: “Sixteen Tons” by Tennessee Ernie Ford [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTbQxPlfI94] Archival audio credits: CIO debate on the merger [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcLFhRES380]; Truman 1949 State of the Union [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdcP-BGdEQA]; Walter Reuther on fringe benefit programs [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqTXm3gdjgs]; Reuther on “Reutherism”; [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgKsBNMAo8g] Truman on seizing the steel industry [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcvnrm4jvCQ]; Eisenhower message to the merger convention [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClWm_EXj4WM]; interview with Anne Braden (1); [https://nunncenter.net/ohms-spokedb/render.php?cachefile=2006oh193_ab002_ohm.xml] interview with Anne Braden (2); [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMMQ9KzidcE]        Fragile Juggernaut is a Haymarket Originals podcast exploring the history, politics, and strategic lessons of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the rank and file insurgency that produced it. Support Fragile Juggernaut on Patreon and receive our exclusive bimonthly newsletter, full of additional insights, reading recommendations, and archival materials we’ve amassed along the way. Buy Tramps and Trade Union Travelers, 20% off: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/985-tramps-and-trade-union-travelers

Episode 19 of Fragile Juggernaut weighs up the results of the struggle for hegemony in the 1945-1946 strike wave over the next several years. While millions of workers participated in militant actions, their strikes were uncoordinated and politically isolated, opening the way for the political right to organize a backlash and recapture Congress in the midterm elections. At the center of the agenda of the new Republican Congress: labor law reform, codified in the form of the notorious 1947 Taft-Hartley Act. We dive into the details and consequences of the law, restraining workers’ right to organize and, most significantly, driving a wedge between the left wing of the CIO and the rest of the federation. Featured music: The OPA Shout (Pete Seeger); The Same Old Merry Go-Round (Oscar Brand); Taft-Hartley Blues (unidentified); The New Walls of Jericho (Richard Huey and Chorus); The Peekskill Story (The Weavers). Fragile Juggernaut is a Haymarket Originals podcast exploring the history, politics, and strategic lessons of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the rank and file insurgency that produced it. Support Fragile Juggernaut on Patreon and receive our exclusive bimonthly newsletter, full of additional insights, reading recommendations, and archival materials we’ve amassed along the way.  Support us on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FragileJuggernaut/posts [https://www.patreon.com/FragileJuggernaut/posts] Buy Set the Earth on Fire: The Great Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902 and the Birth of the Police: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2220-set-the-earth-on-fire [https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2220-set-the-earth-on-fire]

The sudden end of World War II was met with both exultation and terror. While millions of Americans understood that the killing abroad could come to an end, the fate of the depression economy that had only been revived by wartime mobilization now hung uncertainly in the balance. The saga of demobilization and reconversion, the name for the process of converting the economy back to civilian production and the winding down of military contracts, is the subject of Episode 18 of Fragile Juggernaut: a battle between business interests and a revived CIO social democracy for hegemony over the reconversion process, fought in the backdrop of the largest strike wave in American history.  Buy Detroit: I Do Mind Dying, 20% Off: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/458-detroit-i-do-mind-dying [https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/458-detroit-i-do-mind-dying]

Episode 17 of Fragile Juggernaut concerns the momentous arrival of long-dreaded events abroad that broke US politics out of its political and economic impasse during Roosevelt’s second term: Europe’s descent into fascist war. Foreign policy dislodged the American elite from their indecision over the nature of domestic reform; dislodged President Roosevelt from his indecision over whether to run for a third term; and dislodged the leadership of the CIO from its political cul-de-sac of battling employers at the bargaining table and their own government at the ballot boxes. With Roosevelt’s third term, CIO founder John L. Lewis surrendered his presidency of the industrial union center. In the process, the drift into war dramatically transformed the relationship of the industrial union movement to electoral politics and the Democratic Party—and of union leaders to the Depression society now energized and organized around war production.  Fragile Juggernaut is a Haymarket Originals [https://www.haymarketbooks.org/blogs/505-introducing-haymarket-originals] podcast exploring the history, politics, and strategic lessons of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the rank and file insurgency that produced it. Support Fragile Juggernaut on Patreon [https://www.patreon.com/FragileJuggernaut] and receive our exclusive bimonthly newsletter, full of additional insights, reading recommendations, and archival materials we’ve amassed along the way. Buy The Tragedy of American Science, 20% Off: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1888-the-tragedy-of-american-science [https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1888-the-tragedy-of-american-science] Support us on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FragileJuggernaut/posts

Episode 16 is the last in our three-episode regional series, offering a view of the CIO from the West Coast. Andrew, Ben, Emma, and Tim discuss what was distinct about the economy of the West: in this underdeveloped imperial context, working-class activity followed the supply chain, from coastal ports to inland warehouses and processing centers to the fertile valleys of California. This distribution-transportation nexus became a key battleground of jurisdictional disputes with the AFL, only to be scrambled again by an influx of wartime defense spending.  Fragile Juggernaut is a Haymarket Originals [https://www.haymarketbooks.org/blogs/505-introducing-haymarket-originals] podcast exploring the history, politics, and strategic lessons of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the rank and file insurgency that produced it. Support Fragile Juggernaut on Patreon [https://www.patreon.com/FragileJuggernaut] and receive our exclusive bimonthly newsletter, full of additional insights, reading recommendations, and archival materials we’ve amassed along the way. Support us on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FragileJuggernaut/posts Buy Revolution in Seattle, 20% Off: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/872-revolution-in-seattle