In 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected President of an economy that was in shambles. During his Presidency, he enacted several new programs that were part of his "New Deal". One of the programs that were passed was the National Recovery Administration. In this program, Section 7a specifically placed on the statute books the rights of unions to exist and negotiate with employers. Although powerless, Section 7a was seen as permission by the government to join a union.

The NRA was soon declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, and with it, went Section 7a. However, in 1936, Senator Robert Wagner led the force that pushed Congree to enact the National Labor Relations Act a.k.a. the Wagner Act. The Wagner Act went beyond Section 7a in establishing a legal basis for unions, providing for secret ballot elections, and it protected union members from emplyer intimidation and coercion. The membership in unions during the early New Deal year showed a potential for unions in other important mass production industries like steel, automobile, rubber, textile and others. Heads of many of the industrial

unions in the AFL called for increased spending in organizing campaigns in the nonunion industries. In 1935, Lewis, the head of the Mine Workers Union, announced the creation of the CIO - the Commitee for Industrial Organization. The CIO was created to carry on the effort to unionize the different industries. Lewis, an extremely effective orator, voiced increasingly bitter attacks against members of the AFL. In 1936, various CIO unions were expelled from the AFL. According to AFL President Green, they had ignored procedures and had broken the rules of the AFL. Lewis said that the CIO was expelled from the AFL because they favored industrial unionism. The growth in both of the organization's powers', along with Roosevelt's domestic program, led to teh creation of a number of national social programs. These included social security, unemployment workers compensation, and a federal minimum wage-per-hour law.

After many years of disagreements, in 1955, the AFL and the CIO united at a convention in New York and became the AFL-CIO.

The unions weren't perfect themselves. Corruption has scarred them over the years. The most famous of the corrupted union members was Jimmy Hoffa. The son of

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