Today in Labor History January 27, 1850: Class traitor Samuel Gompers was born. He became president of the Cigar Makers’ Union in 1875. He helped found the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions in 1881. This later became the American Federation of Labor, which quickly surpassed the Knights of Labor in size and power. Gompers supported the U.S. imperialist intervention in Cuba and its war against Spain. He later sided with the anti-imperialists in their opposition to the U.S. annexation of the Philippines. However, his motivation had nothing to do with compassion for the Philippine people, nor for the lives of working-class Americans sent there to kill. Rather, he feared competition from low-paid Filipino workers. For this same reason, he opposed immigration to the U.S. and supported xenophobic legislation, like the Chinese Exclusion Act. Gompers, and the AFL, supported “class harmony” and the right of bosses to exploit workers. Gompers supposedly said that the “greatest crime an employer can perpetrate against his employees is to fail to operate at a profit.” He led the anti-socialist faction within the AFL and only lost to them once. And he collaborated with the federal government in their harassment and arrests of members of the IWW.

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