Industrial unionism is a form of union organizing in which all of the workers in a particular industry organize in the same union without regard for the skill or trade of each worker. The purpose of industrial unionism is to provide workers in an industry more leverage in bargaining with employers as well as in strikes. Industrial unionism contrasts with craft unionism which organizes workers into different unions depending on their specific trades.
Industrial unionism began among semiskilled and unskilled labor in mass production industries, as the workers could not rely on the scarcity of labor as leverage. The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) was the largest industrial union federation, before a merger with the craft unionism American Federation of Labor (AFL) to form the AFL-CIO. Modern day unions often employ a mixture of both tendencies.
[Last updated in June of 2023 by the Wex Definitions Team]
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