New Book On How US Labor Unions Partnered With The CIA

'Blue Collar Empire' by Jeff Schuhrke details the efforts by the AFL and the CIO between the 1940s and 1990s to subvert workers

For the “Unauthorized Disclosure” podcast, host Kevin Gosztola interviews Jeff Schuhrke, labor historian, journalist, union activist, and author of Blue Collar Empire: The Untold Story Of US Labor's Global Anticommunist Crusade.

Renewed "great power" rivalries threaten billions of lives, along with a host of planetary crises. Within that context, Schuhrke provides an overview of U.S. labor history that involves the partnership that the American Federation of Labor (AFL), the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) had with the CIA, the State Department, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

The book details the efforts by the AFL and the CIO between the 1940s and 1990s to subvert overseas unions in service to the Cold War agenda of the U.S. government. After the two merged to form the AFL-CIO in 1955, this alignment continued as U.S. labor leaders became responsible or complicit in coups and atrocities in Latin America and the African continent.

Blue Collar Empire is available from Verso Books on September 24.

*Note: This is the free version of the episode. Full episode can be found at patreon.com/UnauthorizedDisclosure or by subscribing to the show at TheDissenter.org