 Under the leadership of Sidney Hillman, it played a central role in forming the militant Congress of Industrial Organizations in the mid-1930s, and giving Hillman a powerful voice in the New Deal Coalition.After 1970, both unions lost membership and merged in 1995.With the Democratic Party in the city largely controlled by the conservative Irish, Dubinsky and Hillman and their unions formed a new political party in 1936, the American Labor Party.