This series contains the Labor Attachés and Labor Counselors records which were maintained by the Foreign Service Division of Office of International Labor Affairs, Department of Labor, from about 1950 to September 1958. This series was previously maintained by the Office of International Labor Affairs of the Department of Labor, from about 1947 to about 1950, and the Division of Labor Standards, also of the Department of Labor, during 1946.
The records in this series concern the Labor Attaché program which was developed by the Department of Labor, and which hired and trained the personnel to be used mostly through the Department of State. By 1950, the program was expanded and folded into President Harry S. Truman's Point Four Program offering technical assistance in the realm of labor organizing, management, and activities. The program served as a counter to perceived growing influence of Communism in International Labor organizations.
This series consists of correspondence to and from and about the attaché, biographical sketches, Foreign Service dispatches, memorandums, security clearance requests and applications for employment, American and international periodicals and newspaper clippings, inactive personnel files, and detailed economic reports by attachés abroad on the nations where they were stationed.
The records also include files of non-Foreign Service Division personnel interacting with the Division while conducting their duties, including officials from the Department of Labor, Department of State, John Foster Dulles, and then Vice President, Richard M. Nixon.
Those economic reports on individual countries were evaluated by the U.S. Foreign Service or the Department of State. The evaluations in turn were forwarded back to the Foreign Service Division to help gauge the adequacy of their performance and reporting.
International publications come in several languages, including Spanish, German, Italian, Swedish, Indonesian, Turkish, Icelandic, and Portuguese.
