The principles of trade unionism are based on working people acting together in solidarity with each other, to improve wages, working conditions, and life for themselves and all others. In its most developed forms, this extends not only to the worker next to you, but to working people all around the world, wherever they might be. Some of the foremost proponents of these principles in the United States since the 1880s has been the American Federation of Labor (AFL), then later the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), and since their merger in 1955, the AFL-CIO.

"It belongs in every library in the country." - Online Journal

"A welcome, overdue, and highly informed expose of U.S. labor imperialism and its nefarious effects both in the "third" or 'developing' world…. Scipes' knowledge of the secondary academic and journalistic literature on American labor's foreign policy record is encyclopedic." - Z-Net, Global Research

"While much has been written on this issue over the past 30 years, this work is an important contribution in a number of ways…. It is a great resource that should be made accessible to trade union activists and rank-and-file members." - Labour/Le Travail: Journal Of Canadian Labour Studies, Vol. 67

"This work is an important contribution….provide a rich resource for future activists and scholars who want to explore these histories further or take them on politically in their union….it is a great resource that should be made accessible to trade union activists and rank-and-file members." - Entrepreneur Media

"Scipes's approach to this history and the issues arising from it is very clearly linked to and revealing of his many years as a union activist engaged in struggles to build grassroots international solidarity within the US labour movement. AFL-CIO's Secret War against Developing Country Workers: Solidarity or Sabotage? draws from decades of activist work and scholarship that emerged from a number of international solidarity movements within US labour that challenged the AFL-CIO's participation in American imperialist projects. ...The importance and urgency in challenging the AFL-CIO's past and present collaboration with US imperialism arises from the threat it poses to trade unionists globally and the obstacle it creates for those who are working to transform the labour movement locally....While much has been written on this issue over the past 30 years, this work is an important contribution in a number of ways. It offers to current and future labour activists a compendium of the vast array of writing on labour imperialism, as well as the debates on the AFL-CIO's historical record. The endnotes alone provide a rich resource for future activists and scholars who want to explore these histories further or take them on politically in their union. ....It is a great resource that should be made accessible to trade union activists and rank-and-file members." - Entrepreneur