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Blue Collar Empire: the untold story of US Labor’s global anti-communist crusade, Jeff Schuhrke, Verso

Jeff Schuhrke's book is a history of the collaboration between trade union leaders and the US state through the Cold War up until the 2000s.

It provides a detailed account of the dealings of key figures in the leadership of the American Federation of Labour (AFL) and the Congress of Industrial Organisations (CIO) with the US political establishment and the CIA, earning the name “AFL-CIA.”

Schuhrke exposes the labyrinth of personal contacts, committees, and associations through which the US government channelled funds and shaped labour organisations across the world.

It is essential reading for anyone, regardless of their political orientation, who is involved in trade union struggles.

The leadership of the AFL had long been exponents of “business unionism,” a position which, seeking common ground between labour and capital, morphed into virulent anti-communism.

In 1944 this went international with the formation of the “Free Trade Union Committee” to promote “free” (ie non-communist trade unions) at home and abroad, scoring some success in splitting the union movements in France and Italy.

Meanwhile the CIO, which had helped to found the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), engineered a split by walking out of a WFTU meeting in 1949 and, with the AFL, the British TUC and others, forming the International Federation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) with an HQ in Brussels.

These successes alerted the newly formed CIA which between 1949 and 1959 transferred nearly £0.4 million (£5,300,000 by today’s rates) to the FTUC and the AFL for joint work to “attack and break down communist control of labour groups and unions wherever it existed” and to “unmask and discredit the WFTU.”

The US Agency for International Development (USAid) acted to combat the growing anti-colonial movements. In Africa, USAid together with the AFL-CIO established the All-African Trade Union Federation in 1961.

In 1962, in the wake of the Cuban revolution, USAid again worked with the AFL-CIO in the formation in South America of the American Institute for Free Labour Development (AIFLD).

The Asian American Free Labour Institute (1968) was similarly a joint AFL-CIO / USAID project with a main focus on financial support for the militantly anti-communist Vietnam Confederation of Christian Workers.

In finding channels to disburse funds to the Polish union Solidarnosc, the AFL-CIO and the then US president Ronald Reagan sought a new agency to “bankroll anti-communist movements... in the name of ‘democracy promotion’.” An Act of 1983 created the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and in its first year Congress allocated £8.8m via the NED to the FTUC (now the FTUI).

The activities of AFL-CIO-trained trade unionists and not infrequently helped to precipitate coups against popular democratic politicians, outstandingly Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala, Jeddi Chagan of Guyana, Joao Goulart in Brazil, and Salvador Allende of Chile.

The AFL’s leadership openly rejoiced at such events. It promised “unstinting support” for US policy in Vietnam prompting a backlash among affiliated unions.

By the 1960s revelations made clear that “the purpose of the AFL-CIO’s foreign institutes had less to do with the development of labour rights and more to do with neutralising leftist movements around the world.” Although the disclosures forced apparent reconstruction of the overseas activities of the AFL-CIO, much was superficial — the AIFLD, for instance, was simply replaced by the NED-funded Solidarity Centre.

Schuhrke has marshalled an impressive body of evidence that adds to the already extensive literature on the West’s subversion of democratic organisations. The book is heavily empirical and no attempt is made to address theoretical analyses, but that very empiricism provides ample proof of Lenin’s insights into the political allegiances of a labour aristocracy.

US union leaders like George Meany, AFL–CIO’s first president, and Walther Reuther, president of the United Automobile Workers (UAW) from 1946 until his death in 1970, made a “strategic wager” at the end of the war that support for US foreign policy and hence influence with Washington would allow organised labour to thrive.

But, instead of thriving, Schuhrke argues that Cold War anti-communism ultimately “directly contributed to US labour’s decline in the latter half of the 20th century.” That is a betrayal, at home and abroad, of the interests of the working class they were elected to represent.