282 ChaPter^5
and gotten benefits like job security and health care, they pledged to support
the war effort by not striking or slowing down production, a vow mostly kept.
The great class conflict embodied in the labor struggles of the late 1870s up
through Flint was over, and corporations, despite continuing rhetoric about
the threat of unions, had clear and convincing control over labor.
With 16 million Americans, almost all men, in uniform, workers could find
jobs at better wages, while companies, getting rich off government contracts,
had an interest in keeping production going and were less hostile, for the most
part, to unions. In big industries like automobiles, steel, electricity, rubber, and
shipbuilding, the CIO ran organizing campaigns and saw a real boost in mem-
bership. Labor [like African Americans] wanted and expected the government
to give it more rights and better benefits in return for its contribution to the
war effort. Unions expected FDR to institute a system of wartime labor rela-
tions that would benefit working people. Though labor had time and again
shown it was not radical, corporations continued to protest that giving labor
even a small role in decisions on production and working conditions could
lead to bigger, and more dangerous, challenges to their capitalist enterprises.
Labor’s hopes were generally thwarted. They did gain better wages and
some benefits, but remained subordinate to their employers and with little
support from the government for real change. Significant numbers of defense
contracts, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, still went to anti-union firms,
though the CIO pled with Roosevelt to deny government work to companies
not in compliance with the Wagner Act. The chiefs of the various administra-
tive agencies FDR set up were the corporate “dollar a year men.” FDR was
focused on the war, not labor relations at home. Little Steel was still fighting,
the Big 4 Meatpackers rejected unions, Westinghouse was in conflict with the
United Electrical Workers, and even where companies had recognized unions
and signed contracts with them—places like GM, Chrysler, GE, and U.S.
Steel—labor and management were embroiled in disputes. Even before the
war began, in May 1940, FDR began to make plans for labor’s role in the
coming fight. The president set up the National Defense Advisory Commission
[NDAC] with Sidney Hillman, head of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of
America, as the labor representative. Hillman, a liberal, was disliked by the
CIO’s Lewis and the NDAC was only “advisory.” Decisions were still made
by government officials and the “dollar a year men.” When the CIO tried to
tie their interests to the war, as in their demand that FDR not offer contracts