American Labor’s Global Ambassadors: The International History of the AFL–CIO during the Cold War, by Robert Anthony Waters Jr. and Geert van Goethem, eds.

Abstract

Robert Anthony Waters Jr. and Geert van Goethem, eds. American Labor's Global Ambassadors: The International History of the AFL-CIO during the Cold War New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. 316 pp., $1 15.00 (cloth) ISBN 9781 137360212The foreign policy of the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations, particularly with regard to the rebuilding of postwar Western Europe, the Cold War, and the decolonization struggles of the 1950s and 1960s, is often overlooked. Its omission from the historiography on these subjects is surprising given the prominent and often controversial role that the AFL-CIO played. Historians' neglect of the AFL-CIO's international role has been typical of the treatment of many national or international labour organizations. However, the situation is starting to improve. There are now a number of excellent studies that examine the history of international labour organizations, including the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions and the International Labour Organization.1 Arguably the emergence of these studies is indicative of a broader trend within the historiography of the twentieth century, with historians paying increasing attention to the role of international organizations, the emergence of ideas and discourses relating to global governance and human rights, and the harnessing of technical expertise to development initiatives.2American Labor's Global Ambassadors, a collection of essays edited by Robert Anthony Waters Jr. and Geert van Goethem, is a welcome addition to this literature. Based on a series of papers presented at a workshop in October 2011, the essays are meticulously researched, drawing on a range of archival sources, including the George Meany Memorial Archives, the International Institute for Social History, and the National Archives and Record Administration, College Park. The book is divided into five parts. Three of the parts are geographic in focus, examining the AFL-CIO's involvement in (part II), Latin America and the Caribbean (part III), and Africa and Asia (part IV), while the remaining sections (parts I and V) analyze the AFL-CIO's international role from a more general, global perspective.In part I, Geert van Goetham's article, From dollars to deeds, investigates the origins of the AFL's international activism. According to van Goetham, the AFL's engagement with international affairs was very haphazard during the first half of the twentieth century, veering between short bouts of intense activity and sustained periods of international isolation (10). The 1930s, he argues, marked a turning point in the AFL's international policy, when the United States' decision to join the ILO and fears of being usurped by its erstwhile domestic rival, the CIO, forced the AFL to take greater interest in international affairs (12). As well changing domestic and international factors, van Goetham documents how the most militant US unions, which often included Jewish and Italian immigrants, exploited ethnic networks in both the US and to collect funds in order to support refugees, distribute anti-fascist propaganda, and provide material assistance to those oppressed by authoritarian regimes in (12-13). As subsequent chapters in the volume demonstrate, this desire to fight totalitarianism among US labour leaders is critical to understanding the direction of AFL-CIO foreign policy, with many within the organization regarding postwar efforts to contain the global spread of communism simply an extension of the struggle against fascism during the 1930s and 1940s.In part II, essays by Barrett Dower and Alessandro Brogi examine the American labour movement's attempts to combat communist influence in postwar France and Italy, respectively. In both cases the American labour movement did not serve as a mere corollary to US plans of political and economic stabilization in Europe (Brogi, 60). US trade unions actually acted ahead of the State Department, recognizing that the labour movement would constitute a key Cold War battleground. …