Union president Michael F. Tighe, 76, was referred to as "Grandmother" due to his advanced age and timidity,[3] and he suspended locals that called for aggressive action.
The locals coalesced into the Rank and File Movement and challenged the conservative leadership to act, demanding that the AA reorganize along industrial union lines.
[7] At its annual convention in San Francisco in October 1934, the AFL called for an organizing campaign in the steel industry.
As early as 1926, AFL president William Green had convinced the federation's executive council to re-establish federal labor unions (FLUs) as a compromise between workers' desires to belong to an industrial union and the jurisdictional rights of existing AFL affiliates.
Theoretically, after organizing in an industry was complete, the FLUs would be broken up and the workers parceled out to the appropriate craft union.
The AFL executive council meeting in January 1935 considered organizing steel workers into FLUs, but only Green and two other vice presidents supported the plan.
[10] Green dared not refuse the AFL executive council's instructions to undertake a joint organizing drive, but he did not wholeheartedly implement a plan, either.
Continued pressure by the steel companies—including the widespread establishment of company unions, the use of violence, spies and unwarranted dismissal—had decimated the AA's membership.
At the AFL's convention in Atlantic City in October 1935, the executive council issued a report in which it claimed it had not been "advisable to launch an organizing campaign for the steel industry" in the previous year.
[14] Under the leadership of John L. Lewis, the United Mine Workers of America (UMW) had rapidly expanded its membership.
In order to avoid antagonizing the AFL but eager to begin an organizing drive in steel along industrial union lines, the CIO resolved to work through the AA instead.
[16] The CIO first attempted to push a steelworker industrial organizing plan through the January 1936 AFL executive council meeting.
To maintain the pretense of action, the executive council then passed a resolution instructing Green to come up with his own organizing plan for the steel industry.
He denounced what he saw as the takeover of the AA on June 5, and declared that the CIO steelworker organizing drive would fail.
After specious charges were drawn up and an illegal trial conducted, the AFL suspended the 10 unions which belonged to the CIO—the AA among them.
The AA authorized SWOC to handle all matters regarding organizing and to negotiate contracts on behalf of new locals.
The only provision for internal governance was that the chairman of the CIO was empowered to appoint a director for SWOC and a policy committee.
Worker sentiment for a strike was strong, leading to a walkout in 1937 but SWOC was financially exhausted and had not adequately planned for a protracted dispute.
The worst incidence of violence occurred in Chicago Illinois, when 10 people were killed and 30 wounded during the Memorial Day Massacre.
[26] At least six other people, all union members or supporters, were killed before the strike ended later that summer [27] The AA—and SWOC—had a role in the most important labor relations court case of the modern era.
During SWOC's attempt to organize Jones and Laughlin Steel in 1936, the company summarily fired hundreds of union supporters.
Republic Steel appealed in court, alleging that the National Labor Relations Act was unconstitutional.
But in National Labor Relations Board v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation, 301 U.S. 1 (1937), the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the NLRA.
SWOC made little inroad below the Mason-Dixon line, except for a few beachheads in border states which came about as part of its agreements with U.S. Steel.
However, the callous treatment of workers displaced by technological change occasionally helped SWOC organize a plant here or there.
Improving economic conditions had not led to rising salaries, and worker walk-outs involving tens of thousands of employees lashed Bethlehem Steel in New York and Pennsylvania.