Dwight D. Eisenhower photo

Message to the President, AFL, and the President, CIO, at the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions Meeting in Stockholm.

July 09, 1953

[Released July 9, 1953. Dated July 8, 1953]

YOUR MESSAGE on behalf of the American Trade Union movement sent from the Third World Congress of the International Confederation of Trade Unions is a splendid example of the contributions that free trade unionism is making to the cause of freedom and justice all over the world. The Government of the U.S. shares wholeheartedly with you and your associates your feelings about the workers of East Berlin who by their heroism have demonstrated that totalitarianism has not extinguished the desire for freedom in the enslaved countries of Eastern Europe. I can assure you that this government will study carefully the proposals you have outlined in your message with a view to employing every peaceful means to lift the burdens of occupation from the German people.

DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER

Note: The message from George Meany, President of the American Federation of Labor, and Walter Reuther, President of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, dated July 6, was released with the President's reply. The message proposed that the United States press for immediate negotiations for free elections in a united Germany, for the establishment of free political parties and trade unions, and for the liberation of German workers imprisoned by the Soviet authorities. It also called for submission of a complaint to the United Nations against violations of human rights and freedom of association in Soviet occupied Germany.

The President's message was transmitted through the American Ambassador in Stockholm.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, Message to the President, AFL, and the President, CIO, at the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions Meeting in Stockholm. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/231733

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