Emil Rieve

Who was Emil Rieve?

Emil Rieve was a Polish American labor leader. He was president of the Textile Workers Union of America from 1939 to 1956, a vice president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations from 1939 to 1955, and a vice president of the AFL-CIO from 1955 to 1960.

Emil Rieve was born in Poland and moved to Pennsylvania as a child. He left school early and first became a union member at age fifteen, quickly rising within the union hierarchy. He organized his first strike in 1930 in Reading, Pennsylvania. His aggressive drives to unionize the region's textile workers and achieve union recognition led to the Reading Formula of 1933 in negotiatin with the National Labor Board, a precedent which resolved large numbers of other labor disputes. Rieve was a major figure in the unsuccessful textile workers strike of 1934. When the Congress of Industrial Organizations formed the following year, Rieve received international recognition for his efforts to avoid a rift with the American Federation of Labor.

In 1937 Rieve pioneered a successful sit-down strike of 50,000 textile workers that resulted in wage increases. He became acting chairman of the Textile Workers Organizing Committee in 1938 and organized the Textile Workers Union of America in 1939. The union was quite strong under Rieve's stewardship and he played a role in the merger of the AFL with the CIO in 1952.