AFL-CIO’s 50-Year Organizing Record Under Meany, Kirkland and Sweeney LaborTalk by Harry Kelber
When the American Federation of Labor (AFL) merged with the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in 1955, the combined organization had 16 million members, compared with about 13 million members 50 years later.
At that time, roughly one in three workers in the country belonged to a trade union; today, the figure is one in eight, and in the private sector, fewer than one in twelve.
The merger, it was expected, would end the fratricidal warfare within the House of Labor and usher in a new era of labor’s growth. So what happened? Why the continuing decline of the AFL-CIO in numbers and economic power?