This collection documents the work of the AFL and AFL-CIO with various international labor organizations. The major portion of the collection has to do with the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), but groups of records having to do with the international trade union federations and trade secretariats and with the work of individual staff members also appear. Types of materials include minutes, correspondence, near print, publications, and photographs.
This collection is open to the public and must be used in the Special Collections reading room. Researchers must register and agree to copyright and privacy laws before using this collection.
Photocopies or digital surrogates may be provided in accordance with Special Collections and University Archives duplication policy.
Copyright resides with the creators of the documents or their heirs unless otherwise specified. It is the researcher's responsibility to secure permission to publish materials from the appropriate copyright holder.
Archival materials may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal and/or state right to privacy laws or other regulations. While we make a good faith effort to identify and remove such materials, some may be missed during our processing. If a researcher finds sensitive personal information in a collection, please bring it to the attention of the reading room staff.
38.25 Linear Feet
This collection documents the work of the AFL and AFL-CIO with various international labor organizations. The major portion of the collection has to do with the ICFTU, but groups of records having to do with the international trade union federations and trade secretariats and with the work of individual staff also appear. The materials consist of correspondence, reports, minutes, photographs, and printed materials, with a date span of 1946 to 1985 but dating predominantly for the years 1950 to 1979.
Additional information about the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) is available in the external document below.
This collection is organized into ten series:
The George Meany Memorial Archives received these records in 1982 and 1986. 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.
M. Lee Sayrs at the George Meany Memorial Archives initially processed these records in 1984. 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 2018, at which point Rebecca Thayer updated the descriptive content for accuracy. Revisions include changes to biographical/historical notes, scope and content notes, and the creation of new collection numbers. Rebecca Thayer also enhanced custodial histories and re-wrote collection titles to better conform to archival standards.
Part of the Special Collections and University Archives