THE CIO AFTER 50 YEARS: an INTERVIEW WITH PHILLIP VAN GELDER
Morton, Brian & Levinson, Mark
This past spring two young Dissent writers, Mark Levinson and Brian Morton, went to Baltimore to interview Philip Van Gelder, one of the founders of the CIO and a former secretary-treasurer of...
...We couldn't get the people we organized into unions to join the Socialist party too—there was no real passageway from one to the other...
...Why did that happen when it did...
...A: Oh, no...
...John Lewis was a very heroic figure at that time...
...Let me take my coat off...
...Did Lewis apologize...
...The more organizing drives succeeded, the more confidence people got, the less fear they had...
...After the convention, Lewis called a committee together and they decided to go ahead and organize industrially...
...A: Well, you did have a certain number of people who were antiunion...
...So Lewis looks around and says, "Do I get unanimous consent...
...So when the shipbuilders went on strike the next year, we went over to help them out...
...I was very much impressed by the book, and I got in touch with the Socialist party in Philadelphia, where I was living...
...Instead of ordinary stones we'd throw union-made ball bearings...
...He could be the most charming, attractive person you'd ever met...
...So if you saw a chance to do something, you organized...
...it was a very bitter, very dramatic convention...
...When Hapgood was with the miners, he was organizing against Lewis, and Lewis had him beaten up...
...He had a magnificent sense of theater...
...But in those days, the government representatives would go to the company and say, Look, these people are organized, you've got to deal with them...
...Lewis then called a meeting—it was Sidney Hillman, David Dubinsky, Phil Murray, and several others...
...A friend of mine was organizing the ball-bearing workers in the area, and as a show of solidarity they gave us ball bearings to throw at the windows of the taxicabs...
...they were improving their conditions...
...And he sent him right back into the district where he'd fought against Lewis...
...He wasn't interested in compromising, or having a legal battle with the AFL as to whether they could get a little bit of industrial unionism...
...And the socialists were just a sect of people who discussed utopia...
...People saw the chance to organize, and if there was anybody there to help them, they did...
...Q: Now, all through this period, you were still in the Socialist party...
...Once you've accepted the idea that the best guy is the one who makes the most money, once you've accepted the capitalist system, you've got the law of the jungle...
...Norman Thomas felt that if you didn't vote for him for president, then you weren't a socialist...
...But we still have some very good, very dedicated labor leaders...
...And, in so many words, what he said was, I don't know what the rest of you are going to do, but the United Mine Workers are going to go ahead and organize the workers of this country on an industrial basis...
...They were devoted...
...A: Well, we got in and helped, but we didn't know much more than anybody else...
...And he could be a vicious opponent...
...A: Oh yes...
...A couple of guys knocked at his door—Hapgood knew them, they knew him...
...I think I was paid something like $15 a week...
...He could dominate a crowd...
...I'm sure it has...
...Here is a partial transcript of what they asked and he answered...
...A: When Roosevelt took office in 1933, there was a great wave of hope...
...This was the Committee for Industrial Organization...
...This past spring two young Dissent writers, Mark Levinson and Brian Morton, went to Baltimore to interview Philip Van Gelder, one of the founders of the CIO and a former secretary-treasurer of the Industrial Union of Maritime and Shipbuilding Workers of America...
...So I sort of drifted away...
...And not a soul in that whole damn audience had guts enough to stand up and say no...
...I became an organizer too, for a short time...
...On the other hand, they followed their line come hell or high water, and if it meant wrecking the union they wrecked the union...
...A: I don't think it could have been done without them...
...Q: He must have felt a little strange going to work for Lewis...
...We impinged on the jurisdiction of about a dozen different craft unions—the carpenters, the electricians, the machinists, and so on...
...It was at a miners' convention...
...After most of them had spoken, he got up and he gave a little speech of the kind only he could make...
...The AFL, of course, said the only way to organize the shipyard was to take each craft in its own particular union...
...He gave me a call, and they put me on salary too...
...Q: How would you summarize the role of radicals in the formation of the CIO...
...he inspired people all over the country...
...The shipyard workers organized themselves with great ability, great ingenuity...
...You had to have a real sharp break, and he made it...
...Q: How did you become involved in the labor movement...
...I don't think the public was particularly enthusiastic about unions, but they were very sympathetic to all the people who were being thrown out of work...
...So I challenge contradiction...
...0: How did you get involved in that organizing campaign...
...Lewis was really a remarkable personality...
...0: So there was very fertile ground for the CIO, before it took organizational form...
...And it turned out her wages were $2 a week...
...When he invited Green and me from the shipbuilders' union, it was a clear signal that he intended to break from the AFL...
...So I presume that you saw socialism and trade unionism as complementary...
...But Lewis wasn't buying any of this...
...We would tell the young women working in these shirt factories that if they got fired for union activity we'd pay their wages...
...He just said, "We need guys like you to organize...
...Then, in 1933, Daniel was hired by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, to organize the shirt workers in eastern Pennsylvania...
...If the union won an election, the company would sit down and negotiate with you...
...The AFL denounced the committee as a dual union movement, and ordered them to dissolve...
...We had the advantage over the AFL in that respect—nobody could see the sense of having eight different unions with one employer, and the constant arguments about whether the electrician was doing the pipe fitter's work, and the carpenter the sheet-metal man's work...
...Q: Tell us a little about the formation of the CIO...
...We've got to organize the steel industry or we won't have any labor movement in this country...
...Well, some of the people there were a little hesitant about breaking with the AFL...
...That was a very unusual strike...
...A: No, they were all in favor of being in the same union...
...When we went up to organize the shirt workers, we put out a leaflet one day, and the next day the hall was filled...
...They weren't in there to make money...
...A: I think it has...
...He seemed to be opening the way to a better future...
...When we tried to organize the shipyard workers at Newport News, they fired four or five of our people, and when we took a committee in to protest it, they fired the committee...
...Q: But it'seems to me that one of the great tragedies of 20th-century American radicalism is that several years later they came in conflict...
...Q: This is probably one of those impossible questions, but if there had been no John L. Lewis — A: — There wouldn't have been any CIO, I'll promise you that...
...They organized health committees, food-raising committees — Q: Before you got involved as an organizer...
...They said, "John L. sent us—he says we have to beat you up...
...People were in desperate circumstances: there was no established welfare system, and even if you were lucky enough to have a job, you were making miserable wages...
...But on the whole, I think most people agreed that you had to have a union...
...So we have to beat you up...
...Everybody was getting wage increases...
...In order to do that, you had to have unanimous consent...
...In 1936, when your union was 100 percent behind Roosevelt, it just didn't make any sense to say, "Well that's OK for you guys, but I'm for Norman Thomas...
...0: And you didn't find any resistance among the rank and file to industrial unionism...
...He was voted down...
...A great number of the rank-and-file leaders and lower-level officers were either Socialists, Communists, or sympathizers...
...Lee Pressman, for example, was a brilliant lawyer and a very able general counsel...
...When the organizing drive ended I came back to Philadelphia, where I was waiting for another assignment when the Philadelphia taxi strike broke out...
...And, of course, a certain number were just scared of being fired...
...Q: How did you see the role of the Communists in the labor movement...
...They were getting wage increases...
...I remember at the AFL convention in '35, when the votes were against him, Lewis wanted to introduce a resolution when the time for introducing resolutions had passed...
...At this time—from about 1935 till the War—there was a great spirit of exuberance in the air...
...A: In 1933, during the taxi strike, John Green, who was the president of the shipbuilders and also a member of the Socialist party, brought over three bus-loads of shipbuilders to support us...
...convention...
...A: There was a lot of ferment...
...Green and I were both socialists, but we felt more or less the same way...
...To my best knowledge I'm the only survivor of that meeting...
...Whether he was a member of the party or not I don't know, but he went right down the line with them...
...So they let him take his coat off and then they beat him up...
...A: Yes...
...The steel industry, the auto industry, the rubber industry—none of them had been unionized...
...Q: Now, you say that the shipyard workers just about organized themselves...
...He couldn't work with anybody...
...A: It started when I read a book by Norman Thomas, called America's Way Out, in 1931 or '32— the depths of the Depression...
...He kept aloof from the labor movement, and he expected its members to agree with our ideology before they were ready for it...
...A: Some of them were very able...
...they didn't feel any need for a political revolution...
...But then, a couple of years laier, when the CIO was getting off the ground, Lewis gave him a job...
...When Roosevelt began to get the country moving, you might say, through social improvement programs like work relief, home relief, unemployment insurance, the right to organize—for the great majority of workers this was the real, live, practical movement...
...Powers Hapgood, another socialist, saw both sides of that...
...A: At the AFL convention in 1935, John L. Lewis made a long speech about how you had to organize on an industrial-union basis...
...And all the opposition folded up [laughter], and he got a unanimous vote...
...So the Amalgamated lent me to the Teamsters Union to help run the taxi strike...
...0: So you didn't face much of the knee-jerk hostility to unions that organizers encounter today...
...Did you feel that at all...
...They thought they should challenge the AFL executive council's right to suspend them...
...A: Oh yes...
...And they did fire one girl, and we said OK, what are your wages...
...Nowadays, if you win an election they appeal it, and you have to bring charges of refusal to bargain, and the whole thing ends up in court...
...You were for him, or you were against him...
...And he said that's the basic industry in the United States...
...I fell in with Franz Daniel, who was the Socialist-party organizer there...
...Was there much public support for unions...
...It seemed to me that the socialists were not being effective as a political party...
...I know from my own experience that Socialists contributed a great deal to the labor movement...
...But they refused, and as a result they were suspended, and ordered to appear for trial at the (Continued on next page...
...And Hapgood said, "Well at least give me a chance...
...Most of these plants were sweatshops—they had run away from the union in New York...
...So the AFL officials, the bureaucracy, wouldn't have anything to do with us...
...Q: Do you think that today's trade-union movement has lost some of that selflessness...
...We got support and donations from 79 different unions, most of them AFL...
...He was the only person who could lead it: he was strong enough, he had enough money in his treasury, and he went all-out for it...
...He spoke about coming into the city of Pittsburgh by train for this meeting, and seeing all the steel mills down there, none of them organized...
...I think that was a big mistake...
...But many of the local union leaders were very friendly and sympathetic...
...The shipyard workers, for instance, organized themselves with practically no outside support...
...And I would say that today, still, the best of them are infected with socialism, or some similar ideology...
...Q: What was the atmosphere for organizing at that time...
...they weren't personally ambitious...
...Q: What was the AFL's reaction to the strike...
...A: The shipbuilders' union was independent of the AFL, and it was an industrial union: it would take in everybody in the shipyard, regardless of skill...
Vol. 32 • September 1985 • No. 4
