20. Merger

Episode 20 of Fragile Juggernaut takes us from 1950 to 1955—the end of the line for the CIO. At the beginning of the story, the expulsion of the left-led unions was a recent wound, and the Cold War liberalism of figures like Walter Reuther seemed like a viable and vital project for the CIO’s future, with the landmark 1950 GM contract, the “Treaty of Detroit,” marking a new phase in how industrial unions related to management. The Korean War seemed like a proving ground for this hypothesis, and proved a brutal disappointment. By 1955, the CIO threw in the towel, merging back in to the AFL on the older federation’s terms. 

To tell this story, we talk with guest Toni Gilpin, author of The Long Deep Grudge: A Story of Big Capital, Radical Labor, and Class War in the American Heartland. Toni helps us see this story from the perspective of the UAW’s left-wing rival, the Farm Equipment Workers (FE), who resisted the direction charted by Reuther in 1950—as long as they could. And with Toni, we talk about some of the long-term legacies of CIO radicalism for the civil rights movement.

This is our last narrative episode. It will be followed by one summary and reflection discussion.

Featured music: “Sixteen Tons” by Tennessee Ernie Ford

Archival audio credits:

CIO debate on the merger; Truman 1949 State of the Union; Walter Reuther on fringe benefit programs; Reuther on “Reutherism”; Truman on seizing the steel industry; Eisenhower message to the merger convention; interview with Anne Braden (1); interview with Anne Braden (2);       

Fragile Juggernaut is a Haymarket Originals podcast exploring the history, politics, and strategic lessons of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the rank and file insurgency that produced it. Support Fragile Juggernaut on Patreon and receive our exclusive bimonthly newsletter, full of additional insights, reading recommendations, and archival materials we’ve amassed along the way.

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