Jewish Labor Committee

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The Jewish Labor Committee is an American secular Jewish organization dedicated to promoting labour union interests in Jewish communities, and Jewish interests within unions.

The organization is headquartered in New York City, with local/regional offices in Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, and Los Angeles, and volunteer-led affiliated groups in a number of other American cities. It was founded in 1934 in response to the rise of Nazism in Europe. Today, it works to maintain and strengthen the historically strong relationship between the American Jewish community and the trade union movement, and to promote what they see as the shared social justice agenda of both communities.

The JLC was formed in February 1934, by Yiddish-speaking immigrant trade union leaders, and leaders of such groups as the Workmen's Circle/Arbeter Ring, the Jewish Labor Bund, and the United Hebrew Trades, in response to the rise of Nazism in Germany. Representatives assembled at a conference on New York's Lower East Side, charging it with the following tasks:

  • support of Jewish labor institutions in European countries;
  • assistance to the anti-Hitler underground movement;
  • aid to the victims of Nazism;
  • cooperation with American organized labor in fighting anti-democratic forces; and
  • combating anti-Semitism and other evil effects of Fascism and Nazism upon American life.

During the first five years of its existence, the Jewish Labor Committee concentrated mainly on supporting anti-Nazi labor forces in Europe and sending relief to Jewish labor institutions there, especially those maintained by the Jewish Labor and the "left" Labor Zionist movement (the "right" Labor Zionists organized their own relief and rehabilitation committee), and encouraging and strengthening U.S. and Canadian opposition to the Nazis, in the labor and democratic left, as well as in the community-at-large. At the same time it organized mass anti-Nazi demonstrations; in 1936, with the American Jewish Congress, through the Joint Boycott Council, it conducted a boycott on German goods and services.

After the outbreak of World War II, the emphasis focused on efforts to save Jewish cultural and political figures, as well as Jewish and non-Jewish labor and socialist leaders facing certain death at the hands of the Nazis. With powerful help from the American Federation of Labor, the Committee succeeded in bringing over a thousand of such individuals to the United States, or to temporary shelter elsewhere.

Beginning in the late 1930s, the Committee became increasingly concerned with Jewish defense work and community relations in the United States. It was one of the four founders of the short-lived General Jewish Council and helped organize the National Community Relations Advisory Council [re-named the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA) in the 1990s], of which it is still an active member.

Unlike other community relations agencies, the JLC has its sphere of action clearly delineated: it strives to represent Jewish interests in the American labor movement, and labor interests in the Jewish community. Working with the American Federation of Labor—Congress of Industrial Organizations since the AFL-CIO's formation in 1956, and the Change to Win federation since the CtW's formation in 2005, the JLC works with and has the support of a wide range of unions and their associated organizations, locally as well as nationally. Comprising diverse organizations and a variety of ideological groups, the Committee has been guided in its work by pragmatic policies rather than by a clear Jewish philosophy. While Bundist influence was significant in the organization, particularly in the early period, and the Jewish Labor Bund is still an affiliated organization, JLC been supportive of the State of Israel since 1948. [Both Ameinu (formerly the Labor Zionist Alliance) and Meretz USA (merged from Americans for Progressive Israel and the Education Fund for Israeli Civil Rights and Peace, API being a member of the JLC pre-merger) are affiliated with the JLC.]

In addition to the JCPA, the JLC is a founding member of a number of Jewish communal agencies, including the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, and the National Conference on Soviet Jewry.

Its funding comes from independent campaigns, contributions from trade unions, allocations from welfare funds, and grants from foundations. Originally a body of organizations and unions, the Committee has also had individual members since the mid-1960s.

[edit] References

  • anon, Jewish Labor Committee in Action (1948); idem, The Time is Now... (1951);
  • idem, Finf un Tsvantsik Yor... (1960);
  • idem, The Jewish Labor Committee Story (2004);
  • Herberg, Will, “The Jewish Labor Movement in the United States,” in American Jewish Year Book, vol. 53 (1952);
  • Knox, Israel, “Jewish Labor - The Reality and the Ideal,” in THE JEWISH LABOR MOVEMENT IN AMERICA: TWO VIEWS (New York: Jewish Labor Committee 1958)
  • Malmgreen, Gail, “Labor and the Holocaust: The Jewish Labor Committee and the Anti-Nazi Struggle,” in: Labor’s Heritage (October 1991).

[edit] External links

Portal:Organized Labour
 Organized Labour Portal

[edit] Authors

  • Charles Bezalel Sherman [Field Director of the JLC from 1938-1944],
  • Arieh Lebowitz [Program Associate, and also, later, Communications Director of the JLC, from 1987-]
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