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In 1935 eight unions within the AFL created the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO) in order to launch a campaign to organize workers in such mass-production industries as automobiles and steel. But the craft unions that controlled the AFL opposed efforts to unionize these generally unskilled or semiskilled workers. Despite this opposition, the Committee's aggressive unionization drives succeeded in unionizing many plants that had been previously unorganized.
But the dispute over industrial organization did not abate. In 1938 the AFL leadership expelled the unions that formed the CIO, and the CIO established its own federation using a new name, the Congress of Industrial Organizations. The CIO rapidly developed into a full competitor with the AFL.