This section of Discover The Networks examines the history, agendas, and activities of America's leading left-wing labor unions. Among the most influential of these is the American Federation of Labor - Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) -- the largest labor federation in the United States, consisting of 57 autonomous and international unions. It was formed in 1955 when the American Federation of Labor combined with the Congress of Industrial Organizations. At the time of the merger, membership totaled 15,913,077. By 2010, the AFL-CIO represented 11.5 million members, a decline of some 4.4 million since 1955.

The history of the AFL-CIO's ideological permutations parallels that of the labor movement generally. The quarter-century tenure of George Meany, who served as president of the federation from 1955 to 1979, underscores the centrist liberalism of the labor movement during that time. Meany was a strong voice for human and civil rights, a supporter of Israel, a supporter of freedom for Central Europe's states, an advocate for Soviet Jews, an opponent of South African apartheid, and a staunch anti-communist during the Vietnam War era. Lane Kirkland succeeded Meany as president of the AFL-CIO from 1979 to 1995, continuing to work for labor unity and also establishing himself as a staunch anti-totalitarian. He was instrumental in the AFL-CIO's refusal to endorse the anti-war candidacy of Democratic Senator George McGovern in 1972, and he used his power to provide crucial aid to the Solidarity movement's successful effort to end 50 years of Communist Party rule in Poland.

After Kirkland’s retirement in 1995, however, Democratic Socialists of America member John Sweeney became president of the AFL-CIO and successfully repealed a federation rule prohibiting Communists from serving as leaders of its member unions. Abandoning the blue-collar industrial unionism of the past, Sweeney was instrumental in remaking labor into a progressive movement. Under his leadership, the AFL-CIO and its affiliated unions donated large sums of money to Democratic candidates. In the 2008 campaign cycle alone, the federation gave $53 million to Democrats.

Another powerful entity in organized labor is the 1.6 million-member American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), which was founded in 1936 and has become one of the largest unions in the AFL-CIO. AFSCME mostly represents workers in local and state government and in the health-care industry. Under the leadership of Gerald McEntee, who has served as its president since 1981, AFSCME has been instrumental in transforming labor into a progressive outfit. Between 1990 and 2010, AFSCME alone donated $42 million to political campaigns -- 98 percent to Democrats -- and it remains the leading union contributor to the Democratic Party.

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) was founded in Chicago in 1916. Like the labor movement in general, the AFT was infiltrated by members of the Communist Party during the latter years of the Great Depression. Soon after World War II, however, the AFT began a process of purging its ranks of Communist influence, a process that was given particular urgency in 1947 by President Truman's Executive Order 9835 (which called for federal employees to be investigated for subversive activities) and the Taft-Hartley Labor Act (which required unions to affirm that none of their officers were Communists). The AFT revoked the charters of numerous locals for submitting to Communist control, most prominently the New York City and Philadelphia locals. Whereas during the 1920s teacher unions, including the AFT, had fought to protect radicals in the system, AFT members in 1952 voted not to defend any teacher proven to be a Communist.

The so-called father of the modern teachers’ union, Albert Shanker, became the most influential leader within the AFT in the 1960s, eventually serving as its president from 1974 to 1997. During the late Sixties, Shanker fought radical activists and black racists who sought to splinter the teachers’ union movement along racial lines. Like George Meany and Lane Kirkland of the AFL-CIO, Shanker maintained a centrist political vision for his union.  He was staunchly anti-communist, defended America’s war efforts in Vietnam, criticized liberals for their lack of support for democratic forces in Poland and in Nicaragua, and cautioned against the Democratic Party's transition from a working-class party to one that centered on identity politics. 

But after Shanker’s death in 1997, he was succeeded by Sandra Feldman, who slowly “re-branded” the union, allying it with some of the most powerful left-wing elements of the New Labor Movement.
 When Feldman died in 2004, Edward McElroy was elected President, followed by Randi Weingarten in 2008. All of them kept the union on the leftward course it had adopted in its post-Shanker period.


The 3.1 million-member National Education Association (NEA) is the largest labor union in the United States, representing public-school teachers and support personnel; faculty and staffers in colleges and universities; retired educators; and college students preparing to become teachers. In 1938 the NEA implemented the educational principles promoted by the Comintern-founded Institute for Social Research, which had taken over the Columbia University Teachers College, the country’s most influential school of education. Better known as the Frankfurt School, this Institute advanced a neo-Marxist program calling for the destruction of religion, the family, education and all moral values, along with the capture of the intellectuals and the instruments of mass communication such as the press, radio and films.

To this day, the NEA has remained an outspoken voice of the left, vis a vis such matters as abortion, sex education, school prayer, socialized medicine, affordable housing, prisoner rights, bilingual education, multiculturalism, the expansion of government, taxpayer funding of education, racial quotas, illegal-immigrant rights, global warming, economic justice, and global government. The union maintains a permanent, paid, full-time staff of at least 1,800 United Service (UniServ) employees who function as political operatives -- more than the Republican and Democratic Parties combined.

Another immensely powerful union is the 1.8 million-member Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which ranks among the largest and fastest-growing unions in North America. Led by the former New Leftist Andrew Stern from 1996-2010, SEIU is a major component of the so-called “Shadow Democratic Party,” a nationwide network -- conceived and funded by George Soros and his political allies -- of unions, nonprofit activist groups, and think tanks whose agendas are ideologically to the left, and which are engaged in campaigning for the Democrats.

SEIU’s membership growth is heavily dependent on the public (i.e., government) sector, where 37.2 percent of employees are currently unionized (as compared to only 8.2 percent of private sector workers). Since the middle of the twentieth century, union membership in the private sector has declined by more than 80 percent; only in the public sector have unions grown. Because this is precisely the niche in which SEIU dwells, the Union has a vested interest in helping to elect Democratic leftists who will press to make government ever-larger, so that it can produce an ever-increasing number of union-dues-paying jobs for welfare workers, socialized medicine healthcare workers, Medicare nursing home workers, and the like.

These are just a few of the unions that are profiled in this section of Discover The Networks.