Worldwide 1949

Synopsis

After abandoning the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) to the communist states, the anticommunist unions, their allies, and clients (in the colonies or semicolonies), as well as the social-democratic, social-reformist, and business unions (with their allies and clients), created a new international confederation: the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU). Formed as the cold war peaked in 1949, the new organization shared with the West the epithet "free." Although the ICFTU was a product of the cold war, it was also a child of long-standing tensions between "pure and simple unionists," "reformists," and "revolutionaries" within the international labor movement. It was also, more directly, a child of the hot labor movement war that began after World War I and the creation of the Soviet-controlled Communist International and Profintern (or the Red International of Labor Unions...