| The AFL-CIO supported the Reciprocal Trade Agreements program, as a predominantly political issue, best left to the discretion of the Executive Council and officers. Affiliated unions' concern with import competition were addressed by legislative efforts for international fair labor standards and trade adjustment assistance which, unlike peril-point and escape clause provisions, would not disrupt trade liberalization.; Objections to trade liberalization, for its effects on employment, earnings, and collective bargaining strength, were discounted by the AFL-CIO as concerns of an underwhelming minority of American workers. The AFL-CIO's endorsement of the 1962 Trade Expansion Act was informed by this conviction, as were afterward its demands for effective implementation of the Act's adjustment assistance provision, when affiliated unions called it a total failure.; Disaffiliation of the United Autoworkers, in 1968, over AFL-CIO involvement in U.S. foreign policy removed the AFL-CIO's strongest proponent of further trade liberalization. Leadership of the Industrial Union Department fell to the United Steelworkers who, alarmed by import competition, joined with unions in textile, apparel, electrical machinery and other industries, to reject voluntary restraints on exports to the United States and to demand import quotas. Redefining trade liberalization from a predominantly political issue to an urgent social and economic concern, in 1971, the AFL-CIO proposed a Congressionally-appointed commission to fix import quotas, control foreign investment, and regulate technology transfer. The Burke-Hartke Foreign Trade and Investment Act set the AFL-CIO against further trade liberalization under the Trade Act of 1974.; Following Robert Hoxie, and John Commons to a lesser extent, this study emphasizes unions as social process, and explains the development of AFL-CIO views of trade liberalization as product and productive of a stratum of AFL-CIO officials' interpretations of its affiliated unions' members. Its results contradict simple reduction of ideas to self-evident interests, as the study shows that the movement by the AFL-CIO from supporting to opposing trade liberalization was accomplished by redefining it from a secondary political issue to a vital economic concern, i.e., of interests themselves. |
