E266: Amerikkkan FEDeration of Labore w/ Jeff Schuhrke

The Antifada

Sean KB and AP Andy

Music, Arts

4.2 • 970 Ratings

🗓️ 30 October 2024

⏱️ 103 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sean is joined by labor activist and historian Jeff Schuhrke to discuss his new book Blue Collar Empire: The Untold Story of US Labor's Global Anticommunist Crusade out now from Verso Books.

Why did American unions become a junior partner in US Empire during the Cold War ? How did anti-communists come to control US labor organizations in the 20th Century? What sort of high jinx were the AFL-CIO up to in Europe and the developing world? What did union activists do to expose this class collaboration and fight back against it? What might a reinvigorated working class internationalism look like in the 21st century? Join us for this great conversation about a great book that's absolutely essential reading for unionists and their allies.

To access the bonus portion of this episode and years worth of other premium content, support the show at www.patreon.com/theantifada

Buy Jeff's book: https://www.versobooks.com/products/2979-blue-collar-empire

Get involved:

https://ilclabor.com/

https://rankandfileproject.com/

https://workerorganizing.org/training/

https://rankandfilecrew.org/

https://labornotes.org/

Song: Neil Young - Union Man

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everybody and welcome to the Antifada this is Sean K B with a solo episode but of course I'm not going alone today I am with Bef Shirky the author of a
0:15.6	brand new book that I just had the pleasure to read out from Verso
0:19.4	a blue collar empire the untold story of. Labor's global anti-communist
0:25.2	crusade. Jeff, thank you so much for coming on the show.
0:28.3	Yeah, thanks for having me.
0:29.7	Great to be here. As always, thanks to Tim Adverso, who always sends us like a list of the new books and we are
0:36.1	nice, you know, we're lucky enough to be able to get our hands on them, our hot little hands
0:40.9	on them.
0:41.9	This one's really good. So right off the
0:43.3	bad folks who are listening to this episode, there will be a link in the show
0:47.2	description if you want to go ahead and buy it and I highly recommend you do.
0:51.0	If for you know no other reason than that imperialism,
0:57.7	US imperialism and imperialism in general,
1:00.8	obviously remains a very hot topic a topical issue especially with the wars going on in Eastern Europe and in the Middle East right now and
1:08.8	Jeff's book does a really good job of situating the working class and its institutions in their
1:16.6	subordinated capacity as members of the Empire into the broader history of US
1:22.3	labor which is in many cases a very dire and
1:26.5	frustrating and sad and maddening story but one that truly needs to be told
1:30.4	so Jeff what was how did this book come together? Where did you get the idea to do it and where did your research lead you? Tell us a little bit about it.
1:40.0	So it's sort of the culmination of my life, in a way, you know, I, when I was like in my 20s, I didn't really know what the hell, who I was, or what I was in my 20s I didn't really know what the hell I was or what I was doing with my life and
1:57.0	I was interested in like it international relations and international development.
2:04.6	I was in the Peace Corps in Turkmenistan for about a year.
	...

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