American Federation of Labor

The American Federation of Labor (AFL) connects the Ethical Culture movement’s concern for workers’ dignity with the organized faculty activity that brought J. Robert Oppenheimer and Haakon Chevalier into contact in Berkeley. The book presents it less as a centrally described institution than as a labor organization whose affiliates linked reform-minded educators and university staff to the wider labor movement.

Labor and Ethical Culture

The AFL’s relationship to Ethical Culture is illustrated through its leader, who belonged to the Ethical Culture Society. That connection accompanied a broader sympathy for labor: Ethical Culture’s founder, Felix Adler, regarded workers as deserving fair pay, steady employment, and social dignity, and understood the labor movement as an ethical cause. The affiliation therefore places the AFL within a reform network where labor organizing was understood not only as workplace activity but also as a matter of social responsibility.

The Berkeley Teachers’ Union

At Berkeley, the AFL connection took organizational form through Local 349 of the Teachers’ Union. In the autumn of 1935, the local expanded to admit university professors. Faculty members met and organized the move; Oppenheimer was elected recording secretary, while Chevalier later served as the local’s president. Within months, the local had about a hundred members, including forty professors or teaching assistants at the university.

The local also provides the setting for the men’s first introduction, although their later recollections leave the date uncertain. Chevalier placed their encounter in autumn 1937, while the union’s expansion to professors would place it in autumn 1935 if, as both later said, they met at an early union meeting. Their initial connection thus emerged within a faculty organizing effort associated with the AFL, before developing into a close friendship and a regular political discussion circle.