Association of Catholic Trade Unionists

rdf:langString Association of Catholic Trade Unionists

rdf:langString The Association of Catholic Trade Unionists was a labor organization associated with the Catholic Worker newspaper founded in February 1937. The organization encouraged Pope Pius XI's March 1937 anti-communist encyclical Divini Redemptoris and promoted mainstream Catholic teachings in the United States labor movement, serving as a hub for Catholics opposed to the growing influence of communists and other radical trade union organizers such as those affiliated with the Communist Party USA. Not a union itself, it sought to “educate, stimulate, and coordinate on a Christian basis the action of the Catholic workingmen and women in the American labor movement” and played an important role in opposing the left-wing of a number of unions, including the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) and Transport Workers Union of America (TWUA). It played a particularly important role in building the International Union of Electrical Workers, which split from UE. In late 1939, it described the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) as the “breeding nest of American Communism.” The group declined following World War II and eventually dissolved in the late 1960s.