John L. Lewis
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John L. Lewis
John Llewellyn Lewiswas an American leader of organized labor who served as president of the United Mine Workers of Americafrom 1920 to 1960. A major player in the history of coal mining, he was the driving force behind the founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, which established the United Steel Workers of America and helped organize millions of other industrial workers in the 1930s. After resigning as head of the CIO in 1941, he took the Mine Workers out...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionLeader
Date of Birth12 February 1880
CountryUnited States of America
Ordinary problems affecting wages, hours, and working conditions, in most instances, will quickly respond to negotiation in the council room.
Five of the corporations in the steel industry elected to resist collective bargaining and undertook to destroy the steel workers' union.
Increased interest and participation by labor in the affairs of government should make for economic and political stability in the future. Labor has a constitutional and statutory right to participate.
If there is to be peace in our industrial life let the employer recognize his obligation to his employees - at least to the degree set forth in existing statutes.
Let the workers organize. Let the toilers assemble. Let their crystallized voice proclaim their injustices and demand their privileges. Let all thoughtful citizens sustain them, for the future of Labor is the future of America.
Workers have kept faith in American institutions. Most of the conflicts, which have occurred have been when labor's right to live has been challenged and denied.
Out of the agony and travail of economic America the Committee for Industrial Organization was born.
The labor movement is organized upon a principle that the strong shall help the weak.
While the men of the steel industry were going through blood and gas in defense of their rights and their homes and their families, elsewhere on the far-flung C.I.O. front the hosts of labor were advancing and intelligent and permanent progress was being made.
The men in the steel industry who sacrificed their all were nor merely aiding their fellows at home but were adding strength to the cause of their comrades in all industry.
The workers of the nation were tired of waiting for corporate industry to right their economic wrongs, to alleviate their social agony and to grant them their political rights. Despairing of fair treatment, they resolved to do something for themselves.
The organized workers of America, free in their industrial life, conscious partners in production, secure in their homes and enjoying a decent standard of living, will prove the finest bulwark against the intrusion of alien doctrines of government.
Who gets the bird, the hunter or the dog.
In the steel industry the corporations generally have accepted collective bargaining and negotiated wage agreements with the Committee for Industrial Organization.