AFL and AFL-CIO International Affairs Department, AFL Advisors to the United Nations Economic and Social Council records
Collection
0014-LBR-RG18-008
The American Federation of Labor (AFL) maintained an interest in international trade unionism for many years. During World War II, David Dubinsky and Matthew Woll headed the AFL's international efforts. These papers are the correspondence of the AFL advisors to the United Nations Economic and Social Council from 1945 to 1952. Primary correspondents are Matthew Woll, David Dubinsky, and Toni Sender.
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1.125 Linear Feet
These papers are the correspondence of the AFL advisors to the United Nations Economic and Social Council from 1945 to 1952. Technically, these advisors were Matthew Woll and David Dubinsky; however, they hired Toni Sender to represent them at the Council meetings. Therefore, most of these materials are Sender's. The AFL was first allowed representation on the Council in 1946; in 1950, its representation was transferred to the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), and some of the documents here cover this later representation.
The collection contains correspondence, memos, and near-print materials, with the majority of the documents covering the period 1947 to 1951. Correspondents include are listed in the agent links above. Most of these letters concern expenses, requests for information and office routines, although occasional accounts of Sender's activities appear. Correspondence between Sender and her staff contains information on the daily activities of the office for certain periods.
Arrangement is alphabetical by correspondent's name, then chronological under correspondent. It should be noted that the filing is inconsistent, with documents filed both under a person's name and under the name of the organization to which that person belonged. Also, correspondence with AFL officials are filed in three different locations: under the files titled AFL, under those with the correspondent's name, and under those titled Memos.
The AFL-CIO International Affairs Department transferred these records to the George Meany Memorial Archives in 1982. The George Meany Memorial Archives transferred these records as part of a major transfer of their archive and library holdings to the University of Maryland Libraries in 2013.
Todd J. Kosmerick at the George Meany Memorial Archives initially processed these records in May 1990. The University of Maryland Libraries received the records and the finding aid in 2013. In 2017, Bria Parker exported and cleaned the finding aid contents from the Eloquent Systems database using OpenRefine, and finally transformed the finding aids into Encoded Archival Description (EAD) using a series of programmatic scripts. The finding aid was ingested into ArchivesSpace in 2017, at which point Jennifer Eidson updated the descriptive content for accuracy. Revisions include changes to scope and content notes, and the creation of new collection numbers. Jennifer Eidson also enhanced custodial histories and re-wrote collection titles to better conform to archival standards.
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