TOWARD THE HISTORY OF THE CIO: A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REPORT.

SIT-Down (Book); UNION Politic, The (Book)

This article discusses the history of Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). CIO was established in 1935 in the U.S. Prior to the mid-1970s, students of the CIO had a narrow range of publications and perspectives with which to contend. A mainstream literature, confidently reflecting the liberal- pluralist and industrial relations perspectives of its authors, dominated the field. In 1969, two important books appeared, breaking the pattern of CIO scholarship. Irving Bernstein's "Turbulent Years" and Sidney Fine's "Sit-Down" implicitly shared the main outlines of the mainstream political perspective and posited no interpretive breakthroughs. CIO involvement in political operations is yet another area of emerging discourse. James C. Foster's "The Union Politic" chronicles and analyzes the modest successes and severe limitations of the Political Action Committee, in one of the first monographs about the CIO to rest largely on archival materials. No topic in CIO history has remained so contentious and so productive of scholarship as the role of the left. In particular, the contributions, activities, and fate of Communists and other pro-Soviet CIO activists and organizations are an unending stimulus of new investigations and continued disputation.