Blue Collar Empire: The Untold Story of US Labor’s Global Anticommunist Crusade
Blue Collar Empire: The Untold Story of US Labor’s Global Anticommunist Crusade by Jeff Schuhrke (Brooklyn: Verso Books, 2024)
This is not Boyer and Morais’, Labor’s Untold Story but a newer story about labor’s anti-communist crusade. It is an important book which will be read by scholars but I don’t see these readers as key. The younger readers who have more recently entered the labor force and are beginning to learn about organized labor seem to me to be the key readers. The odds are that they have not been exposed to the massive anti-communism of the earlier Cold War and probably are new/confused by the red-baiting they might be confronting. For these readers the introduction to the book provides the post WWII domestic Cold War background to the foreign policy that follows and is the focus of most of this book. After the massive strikes (electrical, steel, and auto) of 1946, and after Churchill’s 1946 “Iron Curtain” speech in Missouri, the partners of corporate America in Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947. By the late 1940s the CIO had expelled many of its left-wing affiliates and the influence of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearings had managed to jail many of those who refused to co-operate. In reality the US anti-Soviet policy was not a result of post-war spontaneous generation. The history of the AFL (particularly the role of Gompers) was clearly antagonistic to class struggle interpretation. The AFL’s George Meany’s speech in NYC (even before the conclusion of WWII while the US and USSR were officially allies) talked about the evils of Soviet labor unions. Within weeks of FDR’s death, Truman told “the Russians to go to hell”. This is an extensive anti-communism that dominated the second half of the 20th century. Clearly the chief beneficiary of the history detailed here is corporate America. We should keep this in mind when thinking about labor’s complicity with US foreign policy during this time. At
the 1949 CIO convention Phillip Murray claimed that the CIO pulled out of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) because of its opposition to the Marshall Plan. However, CIO news reports from 1950 claimed that US money provided under the Marshall Plan was not used to address the needs of European workers but for propping up corporate interests to re-build and modernize capitalist infrastructure. The Marshall Plan was key in establishing a post-war capitalist order (specifically in the Europe most devastated by the war). Jeff Schuhrke’s book has three parts: 1)1945-1960, 2)1960-1973, and 3)1973-1995. By presenting AFL-CIO and US government foreign interventions chronologically, we can trace the developments at home and abroad and understand how these actions affect each other.
Part One focuses on the Free Trade Union Committee (FTUC, created in 1944). The key players are Meany, Woll and Dubinsky. Minor introductions to the club include Lovestone, Zimmerman, Martin and Brown. The early efforts of the FTUC were concentrated on France in an effort to split the French trade unions federation (CGT) and substantially weaken French labor unions. This was an integral goal of the Marshall Plan. During this first part of the book we see the entrance of what was to become the CIA’s influence in Latin American labor unions. Here Romualdi is Dubinsky’s man who represented Rockefeller interests as well as those of the State Department. Also during this time we trace the role of UAW’s Walter Reuther from one of the militant founders of the CIO to one of the auto union’s major anti-communists during and after the war. The National War Labor Board was instrumental in recruiting union members (9 million in 1940 to 15 million in 1946). This, of course, guaranteed production of war materiel but also required no strikes during the war. In this transition from war to peacetime, Walter Reuther was instrumental in creating a less democratic, organizationally top-down UAW where he was key in expelling left-wing UAW members as well as CIO affiliates after the enactment of Taft-Hartley. He said, in 1946, “Labor is not fighting for a larger slice of the pie. Labor is fighting for a larger pie” (p. 69). Thus begins the economic hegemony of the US which relies on broadening imperialism. This is an early link to organized labor’s support of the military-industrial complex (to which Eisenhower later alludes). Here part one of the book describes the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) and collaboration with the CIA in Argentina, Guatemala and Cuba. Part One concludes with the merger of the AFL and the CIO because by 1955 the two were not defined by the differences they once had. By 1958 the FTUC was dead and Lovestone and Brown had cemented their relationship to the CIA for the next decades. By the end of the Korean War it was becoming clear, if one was paying attention, that by yielding to Cold War pressures, organized labor had been significantly weakened.
Part Two talks about capitalist modernization theory and the 1961 American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) “schools” to train foreign labor leaders. The AIFLD board of trustees included prominent corporate leaders as it was based on this modernization theory of economic powers working together…not in opposition. Between 1962 and 1974 AIFLD received $52+million in funds from USAID compared to $2+million from AFL-CIO and $1+ million from big business (p.127). Part Two also talks about the changes in US society…industry leaving the unionized northeast and Midwest and the resulting loss of union membership during the 1960s. Between 20-25% of AFL-CIO’s annual budget was devoted to foreign activities, while new union organization was largely ignored. The big AFL-CIO expenditures were in Guyana, Brazil, and the Dominican Republic, involving the nastiest installations of right-wing military coups in the hemisphere. The role of the AFL-CIO during the war in Vietnam was explained during this period. This was certainly the first time US foreign policy was seriously challenged. Schuhrke claims it was a turning point in the Cold War. Not only did large numbers of Americans oppose the US role in Vietnam, but we find important labor voices leading the opposition. Meany’s support for LBJ’s aggressive intervention was countered by Victor Reuther, Emil Mazey, and Frank Rosenblum and a somewhat lukewarm Walter Reuther. By July 1968 the 1.3 million member UAW formally broke with the AFL-CIO over the huge rifts in the way the war was viewed. Finally, in 1974, George Meany admitted to making a mistake in supporting the war. The Vietnam war brought to light the CIA involvement which explained much of foreign policy during the late 20th century.
Part Three talks about problems within US capitalism and American labor. Listed are: slower economic growth, higher unemployment, debt accrued by war spending, inflation, production moved offshore or to “right to work” states, downsizing work force through technology, shrinking unionized work force/low density (between 1960 and 1980 AFL-CIO organized only 2 million of 35 million new workers in the labor force), top-down organization of unions and bureaucracy which limited internal dissent, AIFLD’s argument that Pinochet’s coup would lead to “free trade unionism” in Chile proved to be false, Senator Church’s revelations of the CIA ‘s role in overturning the Unidad Popular, and the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) imposition of neo-liberal priorities as pre-condition for relief. Beginning around 1984 labor partners with President Reagan in the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) which was composed of government, corporate interests and the AFL-CIO. By the end of the decade the US had supported Noriega in Panama, anti-Mitterand forces in France, the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines, attempts to undermine the ANC in South Africa (including honoring Buthelezi), and right-wing activities in Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Grenada. Also at this time Solidarnosc, with NED funding, would lead Poland to be the first non-communist government in eastern Europe since the end of WWII leading later in 1991 to Gorbachev’s resignation and dissolution of the USSR. This marked what appeared to be the official diplomatic triumph of US capitalism worldwide. When Poland later appealed to the IMF for assistance with its $40 billion debt, the IMF’s condition was privatization of the state managed economy (a la Jeffrey Sachs’ “shock therapy” in transitioning from a socialist economy to a capitalist one). This resulted in Poland in increasing unemployment, increasing poverty and declining industrial output. Overall, the standard of living for the Polish working class became worse than under Soviet Bloc influence. Similar patterns prevailed later in Russia under Yeltsin. Meanwhile the 1990s found US organized labor faced at home with neo-liberal policies of union-busting, lack of new organizing, corporate gain through Congressional legislation (the later 2010, Supreme Court “Citizens United” decision would help to codify this), and sky-rocketing economic inequality. The conditions of the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) exacerbated these problems at home and abroad. It was becoming more obvious that AFL-CIO/AIFLD/USAID was not and is not consistent with the well-being of American and foreign workers.
Schuhrke tells us on page 286 that “The AFL-CIO repeatedly demonstrated that it was an instrument for waging the Cold War first, and a vehicle to advance the lot of the working class second.” The cornerstone of the concept of American exceptionalism rests on this idea that only unfettered capitalism can provide the material wealth to allow US dominance. A rabid anti-communism within organized labor and the larger society was assumed to guarantee US hegemony in economic output and political dominance during the post-war generation. Today the US is not the economic world leader it once was. The GDP of China (and the BRICs) has surpassed that of the G7. The US economic empire is in decline. What takes its place is the enormous inequality of wealth which has developed over the last 50 years. The top 1% of the US population has become richer at the expense of most of the rest of us. This has been facilitated for so long by an iron-clad refusal to discuss/consider the work of Marx. The consequences of this anti-communism find us today with union density among the lowest in American history. The 10% (or less) of the work force organized in unions find ourselves marginalized, without the kind of political power we had at the time of the strikes of 1946. Younger workers (who have not been victimized by the worst of the Red Scare of the 1950s) are beginning to recognize this American reality by waging campaigns to win NLRB recognition. The problem with this pervasive red baiting is that it is not only harmful to its recipients (see Ellen Schrecker, Many are the Crimes), but it hurts the body politic by robbing us of the critical thinking and debate necessary in a democracy. Anti-communism is a tool used to dismiss/disable those with whom we disagree…the categorization of good/evil without examining the issue. It has become a substitute for critical thinking and analysis. There is an opening to begin to discuss and learn from the history detailed by Jeff Schuhrke in Blue Collar Empire allowing us to view anti-communism differently…as a tool of class domination which has ruled our country for the last 75 years. This book should be required reading in labor studies classes. More importantly, it should be read by all of us trying to understand developments in our labor movement during the last generation.
Reviewed by Gail Lindenberg, a retired NYC public high school teacher of biology, a current and long-time delegate to the United Federation of Teachers Delegate Assembly (UFT/DA), and an advocate for NYC organization of public service retirees in the long battle to preserve health benefits for 1/4 million of us who made this city function for the last 50 years.