A Cold War Thaw in the International Working Class Movement? The World Federation of Trade Unions and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, 1967-1977

The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) emerged from the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) in 1949 after Western trade union affiliates in the latter organization expressed major policy differences over the Marshall Plan. For its first 20 years, the ICFTU refused all forms of collaboration with the WFTU, contending that the Federation advocated a politically monolithic Communism with its primary function being the promotion of Soviet policy. The ICF-TU\u27s position was disingenuous, given the WFTU\u27s polycentric nature encompassing variants of Communist theory and practice dating back at least to October 1965. Moreover, even when the WFTU Secretariat condemned the August 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, the ICFTU still refused cooperation. While a minor thaw between the ICFTU and the WFTU occurred during the early through the late 1970s, it was, at best, tentative, minimal and inconsequential

Beyond Mythology: A Reply to Paul Garver

[Excerpt] Unlike many critics of the AFL-CIO\u27s foreign policies, and especially of its International Affairs Department, Paul Garver speaks with a reasonable, almost academic voice. Only the stonehearted can fail to be moved by his call for serious dialogue and open discussion to replace the sporadic swapping of charges and counter-charges as well as denunciations, red-baiting and innuendo. The differences between us, at home and abroad, he says, are not as deep as our need to stand united in the global workplace. Amen. The foreign policy debate initiated at the AFL-CIO convention four years ago was entirely healthy. It needs to be broadened and better informed if the Federation is to act abroad with the understanding and support of its membership. Assuming Brother Garver means what he said, I decided his article deserved a response and that the resulting debate might indeed promote rational dialogue, diminish demagoguery, and dispel misinformation. Regrettably, Brother Garver\u27s article falls short of the standards he proclaims. He hurls charges that must provoke counter-charges, indulges in the denunciations he denounces, dispenses misinformation unconducive to serious dialogue, and stoops to innuendos that are not helpful to open discussion

Beyond the Cold War: New Directions for Labor Internationalism

[Excerpt] Achieving real solidarity across national borders and around the globe is a difficult undertaking, one which little in our experience has prepared us for. Language barriers, differences in cultures and political traditions, very different styles of unionism — all these make simple communication, let alone real understanding of foreign workers\u27 interests and concerns, difficult. Unfortunately, the AFL-CIO\u27s official agency for helping us sort through these difficulties — the Department of International Affairs (DIA) — is not much help in doing so. In fact, as I argue here, the DIA is often an obstacle to building real solidarity. After making this case, I will make some suggestions for how U.S. unions can move toward solidarity by avoiding the DIA structure — through direct participation in the International Trade Secretariats (ITSs), like the Metalworkers Federation mentioned above, and through forming sister union relationships with relevant unionists in other countries. But, eventually, the DIA must be opened up to reflect the broad and diverse interests of labor\u27s rank-and-file rather than the narrow sectarian face it has shown the world for the past several decades

Going Global

[Excerpt] What power can counter the growing strength of MNCs and the forces of globalization? National governments have an important role to play, singly and together, as do international institutions of regulation such as the European Commission, the World Trade Organization, and the International Labor Organization (ILO). Equally important, we would suggest, is the countervailing power of modernized labor movements working actively at local, national, and transnational levels. Further, we suggest that in the current era, the renewal of national and local labor movements may in fact depend greatly on increased coordination with the labor movements of other countries. Transnational collaboration will be—and should be—an increasingly important feature of tomorrow\u27s global economy

Asian lessons in the cold war classroom: Trade union networks and the multidirectional pedagogies of the cold war in Asia

Abstract This paper invites us to move beyond an elite, “pedagogical” view of Third World diplomatic non-alignment, by examining trade unions as sites of “subaltern internationalism” in the early Cold War. Trade unions were targets of both communist and anticommunist pedagogical programs, spearheaded principally by the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) and the rival International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), both of which competed to teach Asians how to be good trade unionists. But despite their ideological designs, I argue that these internationalist structures of the “Cold War classroom” facilitated, instead, unexpected encounters and fraternal connections that were experienced, and are best seen, at the level of the personal. After offering an overview of these Cold War macrostructures, the paper moves to the microhistorical scale to highlight one such set of personal networks that coalesced around a single “trade union expert.” George L-P Weaver was an African-American trade unionist whose pedagogical work took him to Okinawa and Singapore in the 1950s but whose dialogical encounters with Asian trade unionists had transformative effects on his ideological convictions afterward, challenging, in particular, his views on the role of the People’s Republic of China in the Cold War and of the “communism” of Chinese overseas communities in Singapore. In all, this paper suggests that trade unions offer us a rich site in which to recover individual dynamics that challenge and complicate, from below, the binary logics of the Cold War in Asia.</jats:p

A Most Curious Lack of Curiosity: Global Unions as the Missing Link in Labour Movement Studies

This paper is based on the author’s contribution to ‘The Research Agenda for the Left Today’ panel held during the Society for Socialist Studies 2006 conference. It argues that, despite the recent renewal of academic interest in labour movements, there is a gap in contemporary research on organized labour around the existence of and potential future role for actually existing global trade unions. The purpose of this paper is to spark an interest amongst left academics in a future research project on the organizations which comprise the recently created Council of Global Unions, and in particular the recently created International Trade Union Confederation. After a brief introduction to the history of these organizations and an outline of their activities, the author offers a number of questions that may prove interesting for those concerned about the future direction of organized labour at the global level

Unattainable paradise: American Labor's global activities and the petroleum workers during the cold war era

One of the most remarkable pieces of history of the postwar international Labour movement concerns the International Federation of Petroleum and Chemical Workers (IFPCW). It was the only American-based International Trade Secretariat(ITS) which became very active on a global scale during its short-lived existence (1954-1975). This contribution attempts to address a series of issues raised in a recent study on the history of the IFPCW on the basis of additional research of primary sources. Research so far has been limited to the IFPCW archive itself. These issues include the relationship between IFPCW and the AFL/CIO international department, the work of various CIA ‘front agencies’ within the framework of the international and American labor movement, the discussions about the organization of petroleum workers within the ICFTU, the development of labour standards for the oil industry by the ILO, and the manipulation of the ILO by both the WFTU and IFPCW while they were scrambling for influence in the oil-producing countries. Recent research on the global activities of the American trade union movement (AFL/CIO) has been conducted mainly from a geographical perspective. The example of the petrol industry and the IFPCW gives us the opportunity to adopt an industrial/sectoral approach, which easily allows to bring a transnational and global perspective to this topic. This shift in focus also offers the opportunity to explore another key issue which puzzles labour historians, i.e. the waning influence of labour internationally – an unmistakable fact - from the mid-seventies onwards. The latter were vital to western industrial nations in the short twentieth century. Trade unions, by exerting control over the workforce, were important partners in shaping domestic and foreign policy. From the mid-seventies onwards, this has changed. Détente, increasing globalization and decolonization processes became the breeding ground for neo-liberal economic policies and this resulted in the workers movement being sidelined both culturally and politically. The example of the oil industry includes all these elements and therefore very well serves the purpose of exploring the issues mentioned above

Institutional Decolonization: The Internationalization of the Conflict Over Organized Labor in British Guiana, 1946-1961

This dissertation argues that an internationalized struggle for control of British Guiana\u27s trade unions after 1946 resulted in institutional dysfunction and violence in the early 1960s. Some Guianese nationalists, who eventually became leaders of the People\u27s Progressive Party (PPP), wanted to replace the institutions imported from Great Britain with trade unionism geared towards a Guianese version of communism. Conversely, reformist Guianese labor leaders were intent on establishing a left-leaning capitalist framework of labor relations, primarily based on a British model of unionism. Guianese unionists\u27 ideological proclivities shaped their international affiliations, adding a transnational dimension to the struggle between the colony\u27s nationalist leaders. Thus, this dissertation argues that key British, American, and Eastern-bloc trade union connections were established in the colony in the late 1940s, well before the violent conclusion to Guianese decolonization.;Meanwhile, economic weakness, international pressure, and strategic calculations, convinced British policymakers to allow self-government in the colonies after assuring the territories were integrated into a British-led capitalist system. United States policymakers turned their attention to British Guiana when it became evident that the PPP represented a threat to break the colony\u27s connections with the West and undermine American hegemony at the height of the Cold War. Thus, this dissertation analyzes decolonization and the Cold War through a single analytical frame, arguing that the two dynamics were mutually reinforcing.;In response to the PPP\u27s pursuit of social revolution, the Colonial Office engaged in institution-building projects to preserve pro-British capitalism in the colony. Simultaneously, American trade unionists and policymakers pursued institution-building to replace British influence and design Guiana\u27s post-colonial labor relations based on American trade union practices. This dissertation demonstrates that British trade unionists deferred to American labor leaders in British Guiana after 1960, and argues that the colony\u27s transition into the American sphere of influence among non-governmental actors preceded the end of formal British rule in the colony