The CIO and the Negro in the South

Abstract

It was in the very deep South, a few weeks ago, that a man said to me, I don't see how the CIO can organize in this state. Some of our industries employ mostly Negroes and in others both races work. The Negroes won't organize, and the white people won't join unions with them. It just won't work. He was wrong. It does work. Thousands of white and Negro workers are organized in the same unions in his state, and in every state on its borders. Southern wage earners of both race have found that they will not gain better working conditions and wages unless all the workers in a plant get together in one union for their mutual betterment. They know that the same economic problems face them both-problems that cannot be solved unless they tackle them together. The white workers know that to leave Negroes outside of unions gives employers a cheap labor supply constantly dragging wages down. The Negroes know that their best hope for decent wages lies in organization. The Congress of Industrial Organizations has gone about the business of building unions with good sense and realism. It faces the primary fact that potential union members are selected by employers when they are hired-the union's problem is to get all of these employees organized. This is the secret of the CIO's unprecedented success in the nation and in the South. The soundness of the industrial type of union has been shown by the CIO 's phenomenal growth since 1936. When it came into being the nation's basic industries were almost wholly unorganized. Today, CIO's over six million members come from such basic industries as iron, steel, aluminum, copper, brass, rubber, glass, automobiles, aircraft, ship building, farm equipment, industrial and electrical machinery, oil and its by-products, wood-working, furniture, quarrying, meat packing, food processing, chemicals, textiles and their by-products, and many other industries. These unions have brought improved wages and working conditions to millions of people of all races working in American industry.