CIO-AFL Stand on World Policy
CIO-AFL Stand on World Policy At their unity meeting in Miami last month, America's two great labor federations adopted a joint resolution on international labor problems. Here is its text: THERE...
...Communist aggressors, tragically abetted by isolationists here and abroad, are, by bluster, threats and actual shooting, pursuing their ambitions for world domination...
...Here is its text: THERE IS no AFL point of view or CIO point of view as far as free trade-unionism and the struggle for freedom and peace are concerned...
...We are working together with free trade-union movements throughout the world to weld a front of resistance against the most dangerous enemy of free labor, the worldwide Communist conspiracy, as well as the nationalist-fascist groups in other parts of the world...
...American labor pledges its influence, strength and resources to work toward a militant trade-union movement in our own hemisphere and against those military dictatorships which have imposed authoritarian regimes on their peoples...
...We pledge our help to workers who have been subjugated by Communist totalitarianism, and we say to them that their day of liberation will come...
...It is worth noting that Vienna is the headquarters of the Communist World Federation of Trade Unions over the protests of the Austrian people, who are powerless, in the face of Soviet military force, to expel this international espionage network from Austria...
...American labor has consistently supported the concept of technical and economic aid for the less developed countries in Asia and Africa, and we call for further effective aid in these areas...
...We pledge our help to workers suffering from colonialist exploitation...
...We say now that for free labor there can be no compromise at home or abroad with a conspiracy which openly seeks the enslavement of workers in the free world just as it has for the moment enslaved workers in countries behind the Iron Curtain...
...Free labor must not sit silent while the lives and hopes of workers are bargained and appeased away in the name of a peace which is no peace...
...On the home front, we oppose reduction in our national armaments and weakening of our national strength just as we oppose the Administration's failure to provide for an adequate economic-aid program to the friendly peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America...
...We are working together with free trade-union organizations to achieve higher living standards in the economically less developed countries as well as in those countries where irresponsible and profit-hungry employers seek to prevent the establishment and growth of free trade unions...
...We oppose with equal vigor those who, consciously or unconsciously, give aid and comfort to the Communists by advocating preventive war...
...Communism is the mortal foe of working people whether in East or West Germany or in Communist China...
...American labor is proud of its support of free trade unions in such colonial countries as Tunisia and Morocco, whose aspirations and allegiance to the cause of freedom stand in shining contrast to the shabby colonialist policies of French imperialism...
...The Fourth World Congress of the ICFTU, opening May 20 in Vienna, comes at a crucial moment for the future of world peace...
...We express our faith in the United Nations and favor strengthening this world agency as an instrument for achieving world peace...
...There is an American labor point of view, which seeks a constructive approach to build the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions into a more effective and dynamic international instrumentality in free labor's continuing struggle for higher living standards, greater freedom and respect for basic human rights, and world peace...
Vol. 38 • March 1955 • No. 10
