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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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on their demands for hours and wages, limitations on their definitions. There was the upgrading of people in a factory which broke up the old, established trades. That was difficult and yet you could never have done the work and met the schedules if you had to keep everybody doing the work he was especially trained for. You upgraded people and you broke the work up into pieces. You didn't have a machinist doing it all. You had a handyman helping out. Of course, the entrance of a lot of untrained women and new workers into the trades was terrible for skilled old mechanics. That was totally against their whole psychology, their whole level of operation.

Of course, this all affected the AF of L more than the CIO, but one must remember that the CIO didn't have anything like the number of contacts with the major problems that the AF of L did. The CIO was a pretty helter-skelter thing at that time. They had the automobile industry, but it was awfully confused and not well-organized at all. They had steel, of course. What they were engaged in at the time was organizing raids to try to get union members in a plant that was already well-organized by the AF of L. You had to persuade them to give this up. Would they give it up? No. Because it was their great time to make hay. Labor was wanted. The employers would put up with anything. The CIO





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