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AFL
An acronym for the Congress of Industrial Organizations, originally formed in 1935 as the Committee for Industrial Organization by labor leader John L. Lewis. Like the AFL, the CIO was formed as an umbrella organization for other unions. The CIO found immediate success quickly after its formation by organizing workers in the rubber, steel, coal, and automobile industries, among others. In contrast to previous labor organizations such as the AFL, which represented skilled workers, the CIO worked to organize unskilled laborers in large industrial companies. In Bell’s novel, the CIO’s formation leads to the inclusion of steelworkers under the umbrella of labor unions that eventually secure contracts with their respective industries.
CIO Quotes in Out of This Furnace
The Out of This Furnace quotes below are all either spoken by CIO or refer to CIO. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Part 4, Chapter 16
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They were all sorts of men, Scotch and Irish and Polish and Italian and Slovak and German and Jew, but they didn't talk and act the way the steel towns expected men who were Scotch and Irish and Polish and Italian and Slovak and German and Jew to talk and act.
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That was where a hearing of this kind should have been held, in the mill yard or in one of the First Ward's noisome alleys, where words and names were actual things and living people, beyond any lawyer's dismissal—smoke and machinery and blast furnaces, crumbling hovels and underfed children, and lives without beauty or peace.
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Part 4, Chapter 18
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All over America men had been permitted, as a matter of business, as a matter of dollars and cents, to destroy what neither money nor men could ever restore or replace.
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CIO Term Timeline in Out of This Furnace
The timeline below shows where the term CIO appears in Out of This Furnace. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Part 4, Dobie: Chapter 12
...union. The tussle inspires Lewis to announce the formation of the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO) “for the purpose of encouraging and promoting the organization of the unorganized workers in mass...
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Part 4, Dobie: Chapter 16
Not long after its formation, the CIO swings into action. It forms the Steelworkers’ Organizing Committee (SWOC), which takes over the Amalgamated....
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Dobie is impressed with not only the competence and aggressiveness of the CIO men, but also their diverse backgrounds. Among them are Slovaks, Irish, Germans, Jews, Scotch, and...
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The new CIO campaign reaches a climax after the November elections, when it rejects the company’s proposed sliding-scale...
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A CIO representative in Pittsburgh had told Dobie that the company has no right to fire union...
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...seven in the morning, making a stop at the hotel before heading over to the CIO offices. There, Dobie meets John Lewis himself.
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...are “politely incredulous of everything and surprised or shocked at nothing.” He wonders how the CIO lawyers’ dry descriptions of company unions and steelworker intimidation could communicate effectively the human impact...
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