Green, William

(1870-1952)

   William Green was born in Coshocton, Ohio. He left school at the age of 16 and became a coal miner and active trade unionist. From 1912 to 1914, Green was secretary-treasurer of the American Federation of Labor, and he became vice president in 1913. In 1924, he succeeded Samuel Gompers as president and continued his predecessor’s conservative and rather undynamic approach. He opposed strikes, instead preaching the need for cooperation with business and management. Although Green agreed with industrial trade unions, having been an officer in the United Mine Workers of America, he resisted those people who founded the Committee of Industrial Organizations and the Congress of Industrial Organizations when it was formed in 1938, and he was highly critical of sit-down strikes.

   Green supported much of the New Deal and served on the President’s Committee on Economic Security, National Recovery Administration, Management-Labor Policy Committee of the War Production Board, Economic Stabilization Committee in the Office of Economic Stabilization, and Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion. During World War II, Green firmly supported the no-strike pledge. After the war, he mobilized opposition to the Taft-Hartley Act and disavowed any links with communism and established an International Confederation of Free Trade Unions. Such policies were supportive of President Harry S. Truman’s Cold War initiatives, like the Marshall Plan.