page_title: Meyer Bernstein
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Meyer Bernstein / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: The current flag of the United States Department of Labor (DOL), adopted in 1960.
context_page_description: Meyer Bernstein was a 20th-Century American labor leader and educator who worked for the Steel Workers Organizing Committee, the United Steel Workers of America, the U.S. Department of Labor, and the United Mine Workers of America.
context_section_description: In 1936, Bernstein joined the SWOC.  In 1937, he helped SWOC in the Little Steel strike, which he described later in his writings.  In 1938, Lee Pressman, general counsel of the Congress of Industrial Organizations CIO) as well as of SWOC (a CIO member) sent Bernstein into the field with A. W. Smith, a deputy general counsel to research hiring and firing patterns among "Little Steel."  In 1939, he helped Pressman prepare CIO statements.  He worked there until 1941 as a research assistant and national representative.
  During World War II, he served as U.S. Army Air Corps sergeant.
  In 1946, he joined the USWA, became Director of the International Affairs Department, and he worked until 1972.  In 1947, Bernstein wrote as an anti-communist against Pressman (amidst a rising tide led by Walter Reuther against pro-communists in the CIO); Pressman resigned shortly thereafter.  From 1953 through 1969, his efforts focused on the United Steel Workers International elections.
  In 1972, he joined the Labor Department to help observe a rerun of a 1969 United Mine Workers (UMW) election. "He was a union official in District 8 and District 16 of the United Steel Workers."  Later in 1972, he became director of the Public and International Affairs Department of the UMW just as Arnold Miller succeeded W. A. Boyle as the union's president.  He stayed there into 1973.
  In 1975, he became executive secretary of the Labor Advisory Committee for Trade Negotiations at the Labor Department until retiring in 1982.
caption: United States Department of Labor.
exif: {}