Open the AIFLD Files. The CIA and the Labor Movement, Declassified Documents

by Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

For those people, in particularly, trade union activists who are following what Facts For Working People has been publishing about the resolution calling on the AFL-CIO leadership and President Richard Trumka to allow the University of Maryland to to open the AFL-CIO's AIFLD archives.  We have added three declassified CIA documents to the page at the top of the blog dedicated to this issue that shed some light on the extent of US government covert intervention of the US labor movement and that there was union criticism of AIFLD from the beginning. See the page:  Help Open the AFL-CIO Aifld archives

They are interesting as they reveal how the CIA was keeping close tabs on the US trade union movement and in this case, the UAW's Victor Reuther who survived an assassination attempt in 1949. Victor's brother Walter, the UAW president, survived a similar attempt on his life in 1948. The heads of the AFL-CIO wanted a "free trade union movement" to "combat communism" as Nelson Lichtenstein wrote in his book about Walter Reuther (Victor's brother). AIFLD was used for that purpose and is known to have worked hand in glove with the US government and the CIA in suppressing any independent trade union movement abroad, particularly in low waged countries with repressive regimes, that threatened US corporations and their profits. George Meany, the AFL-CIO head who once boasted about never having walked a picket line was willing to support any repressive government or state controlled unions to curb the rise of independent combative unions.

Victor Reuther UAW convention after 1949 murder attempt

Victor Reuther was an outspoken critic of this referring to the AFL's "cloak and dagger" operations and the "indiscriminate whitewashing of the obvious shortcomings in US foreign policy."*  Victor Reuther died in 2005 aged 92.

Once again we urge trade union activists to take the Duluth resolution that is also on the AIFLD page above with any other documents we get that support or endorse it, in to their locals and the ranks of organized labor.  Knowing that there was a minority voice but an important one within organized labor that stood up to the AFL-CIO's activities in opposition to the rise of independent trade unionism and support of anti-worker US foreign policy, is useful in the efforts to get the AIFLD files opened.

Nelson Lichtenstein:
The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit, Walter Reuther and the Fate of American Labor p332