#americanfederationoflabor

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"If I went to work in a factory the first thing I'd do would be to join a union" - Franklin Roosevelt

This poster was released by the CIO Department of Education and Research. Collection 5284 holds hundreds of documents from the AFL-CIO Education Department, including letters and correspondence, testimonies, and information about training schools and institutes created all across the United States during the 1920s-1960s.

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Wipe Out Discrimination!

This poster was distributed by the CIO Committee to Abolish Discrimination, through the Department of Research and Education.

The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), proposed by John L. Lewis in 1928, was a federation of unions that organized workers in industrial unions in the United States and Canada from 1935 to 1955. The Committee for Industrial Organization was formed by the presidents of eight international unions in 1935. The presidents of these unions were dissatisfied with the American Federation of Labor's unwillingness to commit itself to a program of organizing industrial unions. In 1936, the A.F. of L. suspended the ten unions which proceeded to organize an independent federation, the Congress of Industrial Organizations. The CIO subsequently became the A.F. of L.'s chief rival for the leadership of American unions. The groups were reunited in 1955 as the AFL-CIO.