Thursday June 19 — 7-8:30PM ET — Online via Zoom

Zoom link will be sent upon registration

Webinar discussion and Q&A with author Jeff Schuhrke on his 2024 book “Blue Collar Empire”, with a focus on how the CIA used American unions to undermine workers at home and subvert democracy abroad — organized by People’s Voice newspaper and New Labour Press.
Discussion will be moderated by Aminah Sheikh, Vice President of the Canadian Freelance Union and Mack Bartlett, PV Forum event organizer.

Contact: pvforumtoronto@gmail.com

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Blue-Collar Empire tells the shocking story of the AFL-CIO’s global anticommunist crusade—and its devastating consequences for workers around the world.

Unions have the power not only to secure pay raises and employee benefits but to bring economies to a screeching halt and overthrow governments. Recognizing this, in the late twentieth century, the US government sought to control labor movements abroad as part of the Cold War contest for worldwide supremacy. In this work, Washington found an enthusiastic partner in the AFL-CIO’s anticommunist officials, who, in a shocking betrayal, for decades expended their energies to block revolutionary ideologies and militant class consciousness from taking hold in the workers’ movements of Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

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Jeff Schuhrke is a labor historian and assistant professor at the Harry Van Arsdale Jr. School of Labor Studies, SUNY Empire State University in New York City. He is the author of Blue-Collar Empire: The Untold Story of US Labor's Global Anticommunist Crusade and of the forthcoming book No Neutrals There: US Labor, Zionism, and the Struggle for Palestine.