CIO-PAC

The first-ever "political action committee" in the United States of America was the Congress of Industrial Organizations - Political Action Committee or CIO-PAC. What distinguished the CIO-PAC from previous political groups (including the AFL's political operations) was its "open, public operation, soliciting support from non-CIO unionists and from the progressive public... Moreover, CIO political operatives would actively participate in intraparty platform, policy, and candidate selection processes, pressing the broad agenda of the industrial union movement."

In his 1999 memoir, John Abt, general counsel for the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America under Sidney Hillman, claimed the leaders of the Communist Party of the USA had inspired the idea of the CIO-PAC:

In 1943, Gene Dennis came to me and Lee Pressman to first raise the idea of a political action committee to organize labor support for Roosevelt in the approaching 1944 election. Pressman approached Murray with the idea, as I did with Hillman. Both men seized upon the proposla with great enthusiasm.

Abt and Pressman become the CIO-PAC's co-counsels. Thus, in 1943, as American spy Elizabeth Bentley resurrected the Ware Group (of which Abt had been a member), could not risk involvement with her or the group. Instead, the group reformed under Victor Perlo as the Perlo Group.

Momentum for the CIO-PAC came from the Smith–Connally Act or War Labor Disputes Act (50 U.S.C. App. 1501 et seq.) was an American law passed on June 25, 1943, over President Franklin D. Roosevelt's veto. The legislation was hurriedly created after 400,000 coal miners, their wages significantly lowered because of high wartime inflation, struck for a $2-a-day wage increase. The Act allowed the federal government to seize and operate industries threatened by or under strikes that would interfere with war production, and prohibited unions from making contributions in federal elections.