U.S. Steel Recognition Strike of 1901 - Aftermath

Aftermath

In A History of American Labor, Joseph G. Rayback has written,

After the strike was lost, the Amalgamated charged Gompers with "lukewarmness" and Mitchell of the U.M.W. with failure to keep a promise to support steelworkers. Although Gompers and Mitchell were exonerated by a committee of the federation, the indictment made an impression. It served to focus attention upon Gompers' and Mitchell's association with industrialists in the National Civic Federation. The more aggressive labor leaders began to reveal a suspicion of the alliance; socialists became convinced that Gompers had sold out; even some middle-class reformers sympathetic to labor began to doubt. Such attitudes became the basis for Mitchell's removal as U.M.W. head in 1908 and for attacks upon Gompers by radical labor elements until his death in the mid-twenties. They served to retard the A.F.L.'s development for more than a generation.

The AA never recovered from the U.S. Steel strike. It turned strongly conservative, hoping through submissiveness and cooperation to maintain its few remaining contracts.

U.S. Steel slowly dismantled AA unions in its plants. When the company merged its National Steel and American Steel Hoop subsidiaries into its Carnegie Steel arm in 1903, the union found itself servicing contracts with the now-nonexistent Steel Hoop company rather than Carnegie. In the depression of 1904, the Carnegie Company demanded significant wage cuts. The union balked and struck, but by December the strike had been broken and the union had lost almost all of its Western affiliates. U.S. Steel idled AA mills whenever possible, breaking the union through attrition.

Local AA unions often assisted in their own destruction. To make up for lower wages, AA members often worked overtime at regular pay rates or violated restrictions on speed-ups—in violation of their own union contracts. AA locals agreed time and again to wage cuts, eliminating the positive wage differential union shops had over nonunion facilities. This discouraged non-members from joining the union. U.S. Steel drove down wages so much that independent, nonunion plants had to cut salaries in order to stay competitive.

By 1909, membership in the AA had sunk to 6,300, and the union was finished as a force in the American labor movement.