In Commemoration
of the AFL-CIO’s 60th Anniversary

Before 1955, the AFL (American Federation of Labor) and the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations) were separate, competing organizations.

The two organizations chose to merge in 1955 to strengthen the labor movement and help eliminate competition between unions and workers.

This is a “behind the scenes” look at the logistics involved in working out the details of the merger among members of the AFL-CIO Unity Subcommittee and the earliest attempts at unity with the No-Raiding Agreement. See Meany’s notes on the constitution draft, handwritten minutes from the Unity Subcommittee about early plans for merging departmental staff, and correspondence between Meany and Reuther about the progress of the merger.

Listen to clips from AFL-CIO’s merger convention, held on December 5, 1955:

• USW President Dave McDonald, Report of the Joint AFL-CIO Unity Committee
• CIO President Walter Reuther’s nomination of George Meany as the AFL-CIO’s First President
• AFL-CIO President George Meany’s speech to the first AFL-CIO Convention

Click photo to enter Flicker Gallery

Selected documents, photos, and artifacts from the AFL-CIO Archive are on display in Hornbake Library, University of Maryland until Friday, March 4, 2016.

To learn more about what’s in the AFL-CIO Archive go online to go.umd.edu/laborarchives

E-mail us for more info at askhornbake@umd.edu

To see additional digital photos and documents from UMD’s labor archives, check out go.umd.edu/digilabor

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