France 1945

Synopsis

A wave of popular internationalism and union self-confidence following the defeat of fascism in World War II led to the founding of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) in Paris in 1945. Other influencing factors arose from the interests of the allied nations. Although the All Union Central Council of Trade Unions (AUCCTU) was self-admittedly a "transmission belt" for the Soviet state, in the West there had been increasingly intense collaboration between the unions, industry, and the governments during the war. There was a definite assumption in the labor movement that the unions would play a role in economic reconstruction and in the establishment of liberal or social democracies in the liberated countries. There was a similarly widespread assumption that such national corporatism (the functional cooperation of labor, capital, and state in economic and political modernization) would be...