How the CIA used American unions to undermine workers at home and subvert democracy abroad
Blue-Collar Empire tells the shocking story of the AFL-CIO’s global anticommunist crusade—and its devastating consequences for workers around the world.
Unions have the power not only to secure pay raises and employee benefits but to bring economies to a screeching halt and overthrow governments. Recognizing this, in the late twentieth century, the US government sought to control labor movements abroad as part of the Cold War contest for worldwide supremacy. In this work, Washington found an enthusiastic partner in the AFL-CIO’s anticommunist officials, who, in a shocking betrayal, for decades expended their energies to block revolutionary ideologies and militant class consciousness from taking hold in the workers’ movements of Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia.
What People Are Saying
In this comprehensive and consequential study, Jeff Schuhrke sheds light on the often nefarious international agenda of the AFL-CIO. During the Cold War, as Schuhrke documents, the top leaders of the U.S. labor establishment, driven by fervent and indiscriminate anti-communism, helped sabotage nascent union movements in countries across the globe. In doing so, the AFL-CIO undermined cross-border working class unity and bolstered multinational corporate power. Blue-Collar Empire thus offers much vital information and insight, both for scholars seeking to understand the rise and decline of the 20th century labor movement, and for union activists working today to build (or re-build) international networks of solidarity." Toni Gilpin, author of The Long Deep Grudge: A Story of Big Capital, Radical Labor, and Class War in the American Heartland
"In this highly readable and engaging book, Jeff Schuhrke explores the disastrous history of American labor's role bolstering U.S. imperialism in Latin America and elsewhere. He explains that Cold War anti-Communism was not the only key to the AFL-CIO's own "foreign policy." Equally crucial were the ideological linkages that put a liberal brand of industrial pluralism close to the heart of the modernization theory celebrated by the State Department and the CIA. Thus, in trying to transplant a North American version of "free" collective bargaining to the oligarchic regimes of Latin America, U.S. trade unions, whether funded by the CIA or not, found themselves complicit with repressive elites that could tolerate neither left wing insurgencies nor conservative enterprise-based trade unionism." Nelson Lichtenstein, author of A Fabulous Failure: the Clinton Presidency and the Transformation of American Capitalism
"For too many years, too many unions followed the State Department like sheep, supporting lethal, union-member-killing anti-communist policies abroad in the hope of keeping at least a small seat at the table. Jeff Schuhrke’s eye-opening new book, Blue-Collar Empire, is an indispensable history of this devil’s bargain, a chilling lesson why, as a new, different kind of labor movement awakens, unions must never fight for economic justice at home while denying it to those abroad." Greg Grandin, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning The End of the Myth
"An important contribution to how we got here and how we can move forward." Joe Allen, Counterpunch
"Labor journalist and historian Jeff Schuhrke’s first book, Blue-Collar Empire, dives into American labor unions’ role in Cold War-era interventions across Asia, Latin America, and Africa, and their lasting impacts today." Isabela Escalona, Workday Magazine
"Schuhrke expertly guides the reader through the dizzying array of committees, confederations, agencies, institutes, centers and foundations set up by the AFL-CIO and the U.S. government over the decades to split (or directly suppress) militant labor movements and undermine pro-worker governments around the world. He also provides concise, and often heartbreaking, accounts of their “accomplishments” in various countries." Jonathan Kissam, UE News
"Blue Collar Empire is a testament of the power of union internationalism. It shows us that U.S imperialism and with that militaristic industries are not just tertiary issues for workers. Workers throughout history and across borders have longed for peace, solidarity and with that the resistance to war is central to unionism." Aminah Sheikh, Spring Magazine
"An invaluable contribution to the field, essential for curious novices and specialists alike.." Henry De Groot, Cosmonaut
"If you have ever heard the derisive term “AFL-CIA,” you will want to read Jeff Schuhrke’s new book. In Blue Collar Empire, Schuhrke, a long time labor journalist and scholar, lays out the entire disturbing history of the American labor movement’s decades of close involvement in anticommunist crusades around the world. The reality of the AFL-CIO’s ties with the Cold War, the CIA, and America’s bloody foreign policy is, I assure you, much more astounding than you might think." Hamilton Nolan
"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." Gail Lindenberg, New York Labor History Association
"Schuhrke has done a truly remarkable job simply telling us in detail about the AFL and the AFL-CIO operations around the world during these years. He has weaved together a sprawling, extremely complicated chain of events that extend around the world, and over roughly a 50 year period ... A tour de force, this book should be read by every trade unionist and people studying US global operations over these years." Kim Scipes, Counter Currents