American Labor's Global Ambassadors : The International History of the AFL-CIO During the Cold War

After World War II, the AFL-CIO pursued an ambitious agenda of containing global communism and helping to throw off the shackles of colonialism. This sweeping collection brings together contributions from leading historians to explore its successes, challenges, and inevitable compromises as it pursued these initiatives during the Cold War. Following World War II, the AFL-CIO pursued an ambitious international agenda. To its leaders, the imperatives of saving Western Europe from Stalinism, rolling back Soviet gains in Eastern Europe, containing Communism around the world, throwing off the shackles of colonialism, and overcoming "uneven development" justified extraordinary measures. They sought to protect international labor while fostering American-style "business unionism," which used collective bargaining and strikes to capture a greater share of the capitalist system's economic pie. At the same time, they believed that thwarting Communist designs on local organizations was a prerequisite to cultivating free labor movements and creating prosperity for the world's workers - and battling Communism often meant working in conjunction with the US government, including even the Central Intelligence Agency. This sweeping state-of-the-field collection brings together contributions from leading diplomatic, labor, and transnational historians to explore and assess the AFL-CIO's successes, challenges, and inevitable compromises as it pursued these varied initiatives during the Cold War era Front Matter....Pages i-xi Introduction....Pages 1-6 Front Matter....Pages 7-7 From Dollars to Deeds: Exploring the Sources of Active Interventionism, 1934–1945....Pages 9-22 The American Federation of Labor’s Cold War Campaign against “Slave Labor” at the United Nations....Pages 23-38 Marred by Dissimulation: The AFL-CIO, the Women’s Committee, and Transnational Labor Relations....Pages 39-55 Front Matter....Pages 57-57 The AFL and CIO between “Crusade” and Pluralism in Italy, 1944–1963....Pages 59-83 The Influence of the American Federation of Labor on the Force Ouvrière, 1944–1954....Pages 85-101 AFL-CIO Support for Solidarity: Moral, Political, Financial....Pages 103-119 Front Matter....Pages 121-121 Reforming Latin American Labor: The AFL-CIO and Latin America’s Cold War....Pages 123-135 The AFL-CIO and ORIT in Latin America’s Andean Region, from the 1950s to the 1960s....Pages 137-163 More Subtle than We Knew: The AFL in the British Caribbean....Pages 165-175 “Democracy and Freedom” in Brazilian Trade Unionism during the Civil-Military Dictatorship: The Activities of the American Institute for Free Labor Development....Pages 177-199 Chilean Workers and the US Labor Movement: From Solidarity to Intervention, 1950s–1970s....Pages 201-214 Front Matter....Pages 215-215 Irving Brown and ICFTU Labor Diplomacy during Algeria’s Struggle for Independence, 1954–1962....Pages 217-236 “We Will Follow a Nationalist Policy; but We Will Never Be Neutral”: American Labor and Neutralism in Cold War Africa, 1957–1962....Pages 237-251 “Free Labor versus Slave Labor”: Free Trade Unionism and the Challenge of War-Torn Asia....Pages 253-265 Front Matter....Pages 267-267 Transnational Labor Politics in the Global Cold War....Pages 269-282 Back Matter....Pages 283-302