There have been many moments of labor upsurge in America, including the influx of members into the Knights of Labor in 1886, the dramatic growth of unions during and in the immediate aftermath of World War I, and the great public sector unionism surge of the 1960s and 70s, but none matches the scale of the 1930s, when millions of workers were unionized under the aegis of the great labor federation, the Congress of Industrial Organizations, or CIO. If we’re looking to get millions of private-sector workers into the labor movement, there’s really one time to look to, and that is the ascendant period of the CIO.

In Organize the Unorganized, a forthcoming podcast from the Center for Work & Democracy at Arizona State University and Jacobin Magazine, we’ll be telling the story of the CIO through the voices of prominent labor historians, including Jeremy Brecher, Robert Cherny, Dorothy Sue Cobble, Lizabeth Cohen, David Brody, Melvyn Dubofsky, Steve Fraser, Rick Halpern, William P. Jones, Nelson Lichtenstein, Erik Loomis, Ruth Milkman, Daniel Nelson, Bryan Palmer, Lisa Phillips, Ahmed White, and Jim Young. These interviews have been spliced together into an account of the rise, importance, and legacy of the CIO. In addition to being released on soundcloud.com/organizetheunorganized, these episodes will also be released on Jacobin magazine’s podcast feed. Jacobin will also be publishing the individual interview transcriptions while the podcast is running.