By Tom Kenny
Jeff Schuhrke’s Blue Collar Empire: The Untold Story of US Labour’s Global Anticommunist Crusade is a lucid, urgent and thoroughly researched reckoning with the forgotten history of the American labour movement’s complicity in US Cold War imperialism. Drawing from declassified documents, union records, and international archives, Schuhrke exposes how the AFL-CIO, long presumed to be a bastion of working-class solidarity, functioned as a de facto arm of US foreign policy, actively collaborating with the CIA, the State Department, and successive presidential administrations to destabilise leftist movements and governments around the world.
Schuhrke’s prose is remarkably clear and accessible, even as he navigates a dense and politically charged history. The author guides us deftly through overlapping layers of trade union politics, Cold War geopolitics, and ideological battles within the global left. Particularly commendable is his inclusion of two pages that clearly explain the structure and operational “algorithms” of the AFL-CIO, AIFLD, WFTU, ICFTU, and other major institutions. For readers unfamiliar with the intricate latticework of international labour organisations, this is an invaluable reference point. The book’s footnotes are equally comprehensive, offering deep wells of evidence and allowing interested readers to follow the investigative trail in full.
At the core of Schuhrke’s argument is the charge that American labour, far from acting as a neutral or benevolent actor abroad, often pursued a reactionary, anti-democratic agenda. This was not accidental. The story begins with the historical conservatism of the US labour movement itself, stretching back to the Federation of Organized Trades and Labour Unions (FOTLU) and the early American Federation of Labour (AFL). Unlike its European counterparts, the US labour movement largely rejected Marxism and class struggle in favor of a narrow business unionism that catered to skilled white workers and eschewed broader emancipatory politics. This ideological orientation laid the groundwork for the aggressive anticommunism that would define its international activities during the Cold War.
After World War II, as the United States emerged as a global superpower, the AFL and later the merged AFL-CIO took up a self-appointed role as the vanguard of “free labour” in the fight against communism. But as Schuhrke meticulously shows, “free” was often a euphemism for pro-American, anti-socialist, and compliant with the geopolitical aims of Washington and Wall Street. Nowhere is this more evident than in the clandestine activities carried out in partnership with the CIA. Trade union operatives, particularly figures like Irving Brown and Jay Lovestone—both former communists turned virulent anticommunists—used CIA funds to infiltrate and subvert leftist unions across Western Europe and the Global South.
France and Italy were early laboratories for this model of labour imperialism. In France, the powerful and militant CGT was targeted with financial and political support for breakaway, anti-communist unions. In Italy, Brown facilitated the rise of the CISL, a union federation explicitly created to oppose the influence of the Italian Communist Party and its labour allies. These interventions were not benign—they decisively reshaped the political terrain of postwar Europe, undercutting the potential for socialist transformation and entrenching US hegemony in the heart of the continent.
But it was in the Global South where the AFL-CIO’s interventions became most morally fraught and strategically destructive. Schuhrke devotes a full chapter to British Guiana (now Guyana), where in 1963 the AFL-CIO played a central role in a general strike designed to bring down the government of Cheddi Jagan, a democratically elected Marxist. With CIA coordination and AFL-CIO support, the strike inflamed racial tensions between Afro- and Indo-Guyanese communities and created the pretext for US and British intervention. It is a chilling example of how the AFL-CIO helped to weaponise labour conflict in service of Cold War objectives.
Chile provides another case study in sabotage. Through the American Institute for Free Labour Development (AIFLD), a subsidiary set up and funded in part by the US government, the AFL-CIO undermined Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity government in the early 1970s. AIFLD operatives provided support to right-wing unions, disseminated anti-socialist messaging, and helped lay the groundwork for the 1973 coup that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power. The subsequent torture and murder of unionists and leftists in Chile’s military dictatorship casts an indelible shadow over the AFL-CIO’s claims to champion democracy and workers’ rights.
Yet Schuhrke is careful not to present this history as monolithic or uncontested. He highlights voices of dissent within the American labour movement, most notably Jerry Wurf, president of AFSCME. Wurf was a rare example of a union leader who openly challenged the AFL-CIO’s Cold War orthodoxy. Upon learning of a CIA-linked “International Relations” division operating inside AFSCME, Wurf promptly shut it down. His resistance demonstrates that there were alternatives within American labour—moments when the movement could have chosen international solidarity over imperial complicity.
These moments of conscience, however, were the exception, not the rule. Throughout the Cold War, the AFL-CIO’s international operations became increasingly institutionalised, with layers of foundations, “educational” programs, and regional training centers designed to embed US-friendly labour leaders in movements from Venezuela to South Korea. The strategy, refined over decades, was to build an anti-communist labour elite capable of policing the rank and file, stifling class struggle, and maintaining labour’s alignment with US corporate interests.
Even as the Cold War came to an end, these institutions did not vanish. They evolved. Today, the Solidarity Center continues much of this work under the guise of promoting labour rights and democracy. Funded heavily by USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy, the Center functions as a softer, more palatable face of labour internationalism. Yet Schuhrke’s research suggests that the core logic remains intact: US labour abroad is often less interested in supporting worker-led movements than in shaping them to conform to Washington’s priorities.
One of the book’s most powerful through-lines is how this imperial entanglement damaged the American labour movement itself. In its quest to root out communists and “subversives” abroad, the AFL-CIO also turned inward, purging radicals from its own ranks and narrowing its vision to collective bargaining and legislative lobbying. The very anti-communism that animated its foreign adventures gutted its domestic vitality. By the 1980s and 1990s, US unions were shadows of their former selves—structurally weakened, ideologically confused, and strategically adrift in the face of neoliberal globalization.
Schuhrke does not romanticize the labour movement of the past, nor does he argue that internationalism was ever simple or unproblematic. Instead, he invites us to reckon honestly with a history of missed opportunities and moral compromises. He reminds us that the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), before the AFL split from it in 1949, offered a vision of labour unity that transcended national boundaries and Cold War divisions. That vision was betrayed, not by external enemies, but by the labour bureaucracy’s own choices—choices that aligned the movement with empire instead of emancipation.
Blue Collar Empire is a landmark contribution to labour history and essential reading for anyone committed to rebuilding internationalist solidarity today. By marrying rigorous scholarship with ethical clarity, Schuhrke has illuminated a dark chapter of our shared history. The book should be required reading not only for trade unionists and historians but for all who believe in the possibility of a labour movement that serves workers rather than states, and that builds bridges instead of borders. In a time of renewed labour militancy and global instability, this work offers both a warning and a call to action.
Tom Kenny is a Liberation member.
Blue-Collar Empire: The Untold Story of US Labor’s Global Anticommunist Crusade by Jeff Schuhrke is published by Verso books.
The views expressed in the articles published on this website do not necessarily represent those of Liberation.
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