Little Steel strike

The Little Steel strike was a 1937 labor strike by the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and its branch the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC), against a number of smaller steel producing companies, principally Republic Steel, Inland Steel, and Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company. The strike affected a total of thirty different mills belonging to the three companies, which employed 80,000 workers. The strike, which was one of the most violent labor disputes of the 1930s, ended without the strikers achieving their principal goal, recognition by the companies of the union as the bargaining agent for the workers.

On March 13, 1937, the United States Steel Corporation (US Steel) signed a historic collective bargaining agreement with SWOC. The agreement provided for a standard pay scale, an 8-hour work day, and time and a half for overtime. Although US Steel ("Big Steel") signed the deal, there were smaller companies that refused to sign. That is why the strike is known as the "Little Steel" strike: US Steel Corporation was so massive that it gave rise to the moniker "Little Steel" for its four smaller competitors, Republic Steel Corporation, Bethlehem Steel Corporation, Youngstown Sheet & Tube Company, and Inland Steel Company, each ranked among the hundred largest firms in America.

The strike did not start immediately. In fact, there was an expectation that Little Steel would follow Big Steel's lead and sign a deal with SWOC. On March 30, 1937, SWOC proposed an agreement similar to the one with US Steel to Little Steel. The proposal sought an eight-hour work day, a forty-hour work week, overtime pay, a $5-per-day minimum wage, paid vacations, health and safety standards, seniority, and procedures for resolving grievances. Rather than sign, Little Steel representatives met, debated, dragged their feet, sent spies to infiltrate SWOC, and prepared for actual battle. The companies bought poison gas and other weapons, hired private police, donated weapons to law enforcement, encouraged law enforcement to hire more deputies, stocked their plants with food and bedding, installed search lights and barbed wire, and fired hundreds of union workers.

The Little Steel Strike started on May 26, 1937, when the US economy was just starting to recover from the Great Depression. Steel workers, represented by the CIO affiliated Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC) participated in protests ranging from sit-ins to picket lines. Within days of SWOC's authorization of the strike, 67,000 workers were off the job and the scattered violence that began to erupt was a harbinger of more dire things to come.

The strike is characterized as one of the most violent strikes of the 1930s, with thousands of strikers arrested, three hundred injured and eighteen dead. The Little Steel companies eventually defeated the strike, which lasted just over five months time. However, groundwork for the unionization of the Little Steel industry was set and the goal to unionize Little Steel occurred five years later, in 1942, during the early years of World War II.

Early in 1937 the large American steel companies ("big steel") were facing union pressure. The success of several sit down strikes in the automobile industry and the rising strength of unions made US Steel chairman Myron C. Taylor very hesitant to confront the unions. The pressure from other union successes throughout the industry and also the persistent work of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) made Taylor decide to agree with CIO president John L. Lewis to recognize the newly created branch of the CIO, the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC), as the sole agent for his company on March 2, 1937. By signing the union contract, Taylor started a domino effect, and other steel companies began signing union contracts with very little fight, many just at the slightest rumor of a strike. Several steel companies, who held very strong anti-union, anti-labor stances, such as Jones and Laughlin, signed union contracts following US Steel, sending a message through the industry, and giving SWOC legitimacy. The contracts had greater benefits than simply turning the mills into closed shops. Workers also received pay raises, forty-hour workweeks, and one-week vacations, along with three guaranteed holidays. The achievements gave SWOC and the CIO the confidence to expand into the smaller-market Little Steel Industry.

After Jones & Laughlin signed union contracts, signing with the smaller steel producers ("little steel") became the next goal of the CIO. The three main targets were decided to be Republic Steel, Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company, and Inland Steel Corporation, which owned mills across the Midwest and Northeast United States, with close to thirty mills between the three of them. The three companies became the focus of the CIO from status that they held within the Little Steel industry, like that of US Steel in the Big Steel industry, powerhouses of their industry. After big steel unionized, Lewis immediately tried to convince these little steel companies to sign SWOC union contracts similar to those signed by US Steel, just weeks earlier. The hope was to hit the powerhouses early in the movement to send a message throughout the industry for negotiations with smaller companies. However, the three companies refused the contracts without hesitation, as they had withstood unionization before, and refused to sign with SWOC.

After the contracts were rejected, CIO and SWOC immediately began planning to organize the smaller steel companies. The SWOC had two major ideas behind their organizing drive: "overcoming, by successfully organizing all groups of workers, the racial and ethnic conflicts that had crippled earlier efforts to organize steel workers; and infiltrating and co-opting the company unions." The CIO immediately began placing union representatives within the mills of the companies. The representatives were often met with harassment and beatings by spies placed within the union by the companies to prevent unionization. As word of unionization spread, the SWOC was able to gain the quick support of many black steel workers mainly in the Chicago mills from their openness and willingness to accept black steel workers into the union. It was due to the black support that the SWOC was able to gain momentum so quickly, allowing whole mills to be involved in the movement. As May approached, it was clear that the companies were preparing for a strike. Republic Steel fired many union supporters and conducted lockouts at several other locations as a way weaken union support.