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- In the May 2001 issue of Readon magazine there’s a report of a speech by Stephen Gleason of the National Right to Work Foundation, in which he notes that (the AFL CIO) “the group recently reversed its opposition to communism”.
I found this story stating that the AFL CIO began allowing Communist Party members into the labor organization, but that was a few years back:
http://www.cnsnews.com/InDepth/archive/199902/IND19990208a.html
-I looked around on the AFL CIO website and didn’t see anything pertinent, that I could understand as such, except some international meetings with union leaders from commie countries. Anybody know anything about this? Like, I’m looking for the pertinent statement from the AFL CIO, not the opinions of others. - MC
- In the May 2001 issue of Readon magazine there’s a report of a speech by Stephen Gleason of the National Right to Work Foundation, in which he notes that (the AFL CIO) “the group recently reversed its opposition to communism”.
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- DOH! That should be “Reason” magazine.
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Originally, when the big unions like the AFL-CIO were founded, there were numerous Communists and Socialists in the ranks - they were some of the most militant activists and fought hard to build the unions. During the McCarthy era, however, they got booted out if they were lucky, beaten out if not. At that time the AFL-CIO (and a couple other unions, IIRC) amended their constitutions to specifically state that Communists and Socialists would not be admitted as members. That changed in the last couple of years, although I don’t have the relevant information at hand right now, but I can dig it up when I get home tonight.
Essentially what Gleason apparently is decrying as a “reversal of position” is kinda short-sighted. It’s not like the AFL-CIO, the Teamsters, and other unions were anti-communist from the start.