Jeff Schuhrke Well, I’m a historian, so what’s relevant to right now isn’t necessarily my number one priority — I’m interested in history for its own sake. But part of it has to do with my own life and career trajectory of being for a long time interested and involved in the world of international development and international affairs, then becoming more and more involved in the labor movement and working with unions, then studying labor history. In several books about the history of the US labor movement, you come across these brief references to how, during the Cold War, the AFL-CIO was working with the CIA and was complicit in some of these notorious coups in Latin America, in places like Guatemala, Brazil, Chile, and elsewhere. Those books mention that, then move on to the next thing. And when I would read those, my mind was blown. I’d be like, wait, what? Because the labor movement is supposed to be the good guys, the progressive forces. They’re supposed to be fighting against imperialism and militarism and all these awful things that the US government does overseas and at home. So I just really wanted to learn more about that. And as I did my PhD in history, this is what I focused on.
As I was doing that research, I found that there’s been a lot of other scholarship on this subject in bits and pieces — some books and articles that focus on specific countries or areas, such as the Vietnam War or US labor in Africa in the 1950s and ’60s. I thought it would be worthwhile for there to be a book that brings it all together.
It is relevant right now because in the last several years, there’s been growing enthusiasm and energy in the labor movement, especially from younger generations. Unions are so popular. Workers are going out and organizing themselves, often without established unions leading the way. At the same time, we have this host of global crises from climate change to the globalization of the economy to increasing militarism. All of these global international crises overlap with each other and directly impact the working class here at home. Where is our tax money going or not going? Who suffers from all these injustices that happen around the world? What does it mean for immigrants and refugees who come to this country?
So I thought, yes, this is a good time for a book that kind of combines these two histories of the labor movement in the United States and US foreign policy, and how they interacted with each other, and how that interaction was often pretty ugly. The hope is that, if we are going to rebuild the labor movement, it’s important to talk about what kind of labor movement it is going to be and what its positions on foreign policy questions will be.