Putting foreign policy to work: The role of organized labor in American foreign relations, 1932-1941

International relations deteriorated between 1932 and 1941, as totalitarian governments in Europe and East Asia extinguished democracy in their own countries and became increasingly threatening to their neighbors. In the United States, the struggle to end the Great Depression gave way to the problem of converting from a peacetime to a wartime economy. Meanwhile, the American labor faced internal as well as external threats to its stability. Unity was shattered as the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) arose to challenge the American Federation of Labor (AFL) for supremacy in the labor movement. Further, organized labor had to fend off attacks from company unions, strike breakers, and restrictive legislation. The foreign policy preferences of organized labor reflected its concerns with all of those issues.; In the early 1930s, the AFL followed a largely isolationist course. It had withdrawn from the international labor movement years before and it resisted efforts to expand international trade through reciprocal agreements that would conflict with its own plans for economic recovery. Like the rest of the country, the American labor movement reacted to the rise of totalitarianism with trepidation, but also with a determination to prevent United States involvement in overseas hostilities.; In the months leading up to American entry into World War II, however, organized labor came to support intervention. While motivated by patriotism and a desire to strengthen American security, organized labor also crafted its foreign policy positions in such a way as to complement its domestic programs and help achieve specific economic and social goals at home. International affairs even became a factor in the contest between the AFL and the CIO. And by contributing to the national defense effort and publicizing the repression of labor by fascist governments abroad, American labor hoped to weaken anti-labor forces in the United States. As the AFL and the CIO developed positions on international affairs, rank-and-file views on American diplomacy sometimes divided along regional or occupational lines.