ABSTRACT
Workers in the packinghouses had become restive by the late 1930s. They had suffered through the speedups and capricious behavior of foremen of the depression years, and had been enticed into both company unions and the decades’ old Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen (BW) of the AFL following the NIRA. In the fall of 1937, Van Bittner, the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC) midwest director, prevailed on John L.Lewis to let him take on the task of organizing the packinghouse industry. The Packinghouse Workers Organizing Committee (PWOC) was formed, modeled after the SWOC, and the industrial organizing drives of the CIO came to the meat-packing industry.
