National Affairs: Steel Workers' First

In June 1936 when John L. Lewis set up the Steel Workers' Organizing Committee, the moribund Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel & Tin Workers had some 10,000 members and no important contracts. Working from a big modern office covering the entire 36th floor of Pittsburgh's Grant Building—a few floors above Ernest Tener Weir's anti-union National Steel Corp.—the S. W. O. C. has since then put on the most efficient organizing campaign in the history of U. S. labor. In 18 months it 1) opened company towns to union organizers, 2) jacked the Amalgamated membership...

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