Founding Convention of the CIO
Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Near here on Nov. 14, 1938, the first convention of the Congress of Industrial Organizations was held. 34 international unions were represented. Pittsburgh's Philip Murray was president from 1940 to 1952.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
As the Great Depression reshaped American industry, thirty-four international unions sent delegates to Pittsburgh in November 1938 for the first convention of the Congress of Industrial Organizations. Breaking from the older craft-based model, the CIO organized entire industries—steel, autos, rubber—bringing millions of mass-production workers into the labor movement. Pittsburgh's own Philip Murray led the organization as president from 1940 to 1952.
Why it matters
The CIO's founding brought industrial workers into organized labor on a massive scale, transforming the balance of power in America's factories and its politics.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the late 1930s, America was still climbing out of the Great Depression, the worst economic collapse in the nation's history. Millions had lost jobs, savings, and homes, and the federal government under the New Deal had begun rewriting the rules of American economic life — including, for the first time, strong federal protection for workers' right to organize.
Pittsburgh sat at the center of this drama. It was a steel city, and steel was the backbone of American industry. The great mills along its rivers employed enormous numbers of workers who labored not in small skilled crafts but in vast, mechanized plants where thousands did repetitive jobs side by side.
The established labor movement had been built mainly around skilled trades, organizing workers by their particular craft. But that model left out the huge mass of assembly-line and mill workers who had no single trade — the very people who filled the auto plants, rubber factories, and steel mills of industrial America. A new approach was needed, and a fierce debate over how to organize these workers split the labor movement.
People & events
In November 1938, near this site, delegates representing thirty-four international unions came together for the first convention of the Congress of Industrial Organizations. Their idea was to organize workers by entire industry rather than by craft — to bring everyone in a steel mill or an auto plant, skilled and unskilled alike, into one union.
Among the movement's central figures was Pittsburgh's own Philip Murray, a former coal miner who had risen through the ranks of organized labor and understood the lives of industrial workers from the inside. Murray served as president of the CIO from 1940 to 1952, guiding it through the demanding years of World War II and the tense period that followed.
Under leaders like Murray, the CIO organized on a scale the country had never seen, pulling millions of mass-production workers into the labor movement in a remarkably short span. It was a bold experiment, and it worked.
Its place in the American story
The founding of the CIO transformed the balance of power in America's factories. For the first time, the workers who ran the assembly lines of the world's greatest industrial economy had a strong organized voice. The consequences reached far beyond any single plant gate.
Industrial unionism reshaped not only wages and working conditions but American politics itself. Organized industrial workers became a major force in national elections and public debate, helping to define the character of the mid-20th-century United States and the broad prosperity of the postwar years.
The rivalry between the industrial and craft wings of labor eventually gave way to unity. In 1955 the CIO merged with the older federation to form the AFL-CIO, joining the two great streams of American labor into a single organization — a milestone whose roots run back to conventions like the one held here.
If you visit
This is a place to stand and imagine, more than a place to tour. The mills that made Pittsburgh a steel capital have largely fallen silent, but the river valleys and hillside neighborhoods still tell the story of a city built by industrial labor.
As you read the marker, think about the sheer scale of what happened here: not a small meeting of tradesmen, but the launch of a movement that would sweep millions of factory workers into organized labor within a few short years. The names on the ballots and picket lines are gone, but the world they helped make is all around you.
It pairs naturally with Pittsburgh's other labor and steel-industry landmarks. Together they let you trace how the people who poured the nation's steel also helped forge the modern American workplace.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Philip Murray
Related events
- · Founding Convention of the Congress of Industrial Organizations
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