As background, there were several concepts of democracy that were part and parcel to the building of the industrial union movement, the building of the CIO, and the industrial unions that formed it. Those concepts of democracy included three aspects: first is the more familiar general political aspect (organized workers are more powerful politically); second is the concept of industrial democracy (having a voice and a say about conditions of employment); and third is internal organizational democracy (democracy within the organization).
Symbolizing the respect that industrial unionists everywhere have for diverse peoples, the rights of minorities, and the importance of civil rights struggles, Martin Luther King is portrayed. King was a strong supporter of the trade union movement in addition to his leadership of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. King learned that the enemies of black civil rights were often extremely hostile to the labor movement. He became an earnest crusader for labor, particularly municipal and hospital workers. At the time of his assassination, King was leading a strike of Memphis, TN sanitation workers. King, in the best tradition of industrial unions, represents a concern for organizing diverse groups of people.
Near Martin Luther King is the infamous silhouette of a policeman with raised club in the South Chicago Memorial Day Massacre of 1937. That massacre was a terrible event; some described it as a police riot in the building of the CIO in "Little Steel". It occurred during a rally held around the Republic Steel strike, and multitudes of strikers and their families were tear- gassed, brutally beaten and shot in the back at point blank range as they retreated from the surprise police attack. Patrol wagons were piled full of wounded and dying people. Ten men were killed and more than a hundred men, women and children were wounded and maimed. "Out of their deaths came the organization of Republic Steel and Little Steel, 10 percent raises for thousands of their brother unionists, recognition of the union and the five-day, forty- hour week. Out of their deaths, and the deaths of others like them, out of the unity of millions, came the triumph that was the CIO." (Labor's Untold Story)
In the early days, as now, an operative strategy for employers is divide and conquer; for the industrial unions, racial unity meant victory. The lower left of this panel portrays the early racism in unions. It was common, even in the Oil Workers and Gas, Coke, to have black locals and white locals. When black locals supported white locals in strikes, employers would bring in the Ku Klux Klan and others to terrorize the black workers. J. Paul Getty in his top hat represents a common occurrence -- an employer hiding behind an up-front terrorist group, in this case, the Klan.
The Working Man's Advocate, an early labor newspaper, symbolizes early impulses to have a political party to represent working people. As such, it is a forerunner to our own historic efforts to found a Labor Party.
The workers with signs appear as a counterpoint to the Memorial Day Massacre symbols on the left. The signs call for black and white unity, fighting police brutality, and a seven-hour day and a five-day week.
When early unionists began organizing in the plants that were formed after the Civil War in this country, they found many women workers, immigrants, and newly-freed slaves that had moved up from the South. CIO organizers who were recruited and trained from the ranks of those they were attempting to organize, had to build the necessary unity among all these diverse groups in the workforce.
The woman holding the sign on strike against MidContinent DX and the CIO women strikers provide the recognition that women workers played a key part in the building of the Oil Workers International Union and the building of the Gas, Coke and Chemical union, as well as the building of the CIO.
At the 1936 convention there was much dissatisfaction with the way leaders of the Oil Workers Union had performed in years prior to that convention. Many rank-and-file members wanted to reform their union and make it more like a CIO union. Thus Local 210 from Hammond, Indiana, which had always been a key local union in the building of the Oil Workers Organization, spearheaded a move to reorganize the union. This reform movement is represented by the convention delegates' hands raised in support of a reform measure sponsored by Local 210.
A central part of that reorganization was the development of the rank-and-file executive board, a singular symbol of our internal organizational democracy, which we have today. That rank-and- file executive board was charged with the responsibility of overseeing the officers' operations in between conventions and making sure that the officers adopted programs and carried them out in the interest of the rank-and-file.
A corresponding singular event in the history of the other forerunner union, the United Gas, Coke and Chemical Workers, occurred with the exit of the Chemical Workers from the United Mine Workers District 50 in 1942. That event is characterized by John L. Lewis, president of the UMW, whose face is visible under the CIO charter to the UGCCW. Again, this was a specific singular reaction on the part of the Chemical Workers to the fact the UMW District 50 did not afford them any internal democracy; they had no say within that organization and to rectify that, they petitioned Lewis for democracy, and when he refused to respond, they petitioned the CIO for their own individual industrial union charter.
How does this drive for internal democracy tie into the necessities facing the industrial union movement? Industrial unions have to rely on unifying diverse groups of workers in (1) every facility a company owns and (2) within all facilities of every company in a given industry. These groups must then be organized into a single, solid force to compel employers to agree to improvements in wages, hours and working conditions. The central tenet is the fact that workers must not compete with each other, thereby driving down each other's living standards.
Building such unity requires that people have a stake in the organization-- a democratic ownership in the entire process. Bringing people together against the corporations requires that people have a real voice in the union. That's the link between industrial unionism and internal democracy.
But where craft unions were concerned, internal democracy was not as much a requirement. Their source of power in dealing with employers was that they controlled the supply of skilled labor. The same was true in regard to diversity -- because there was no diversity. The skilled craft jobs were reserved for white, Anglo-Saxon men. The early craft unions represented no minorities, immigrants, women or children. Democratic, mass organization was thus not a part of their makeup and history. Unlike industrial unions, those were not things they had to do in order to be successful.