Workers' Education Bureau of America

Workers' Education Bureau of America (1921–1951) was an organization established to assist labor colleges and other worker training centers involved in the American labor movement. The Workers Education Bureau of America was an important development in labor education in the 1920s. Founded in 1921, it served as an informational clearinghouse for labor education organizing forums around the country and assisting local programs.

The Workers' Education Bureau of America (WEB) was founded in 1921 by a group of United States-based unionists and educators. Its first officers were James H. Maurer (Socialist leader of the Pennsylvania State Federation of Labor) as President and Spencer Miller as Secretary-Treasurer. The executive board in 1921 included a number of trade union progressives including John Brophy of the United Mine Workers, Fannia Cohn of the ILGWU, and J. B. Salutsky. The WEB's first convention was held at the New School for Social Research in New York City.

WEB received financial, political, and consultative support from American Federation of Labor (AFL) leaders, including Samuel Gompers, William Green, and Matthew Woll. The AFL slowly built a majority on the WEB board of directors. The AFL then asserted a conservative influence on the organization's activities, which included withdrawing support from left-wing and progressive labor colleges and other training organizations as well as supporting only those curricula which supported the AFL's apolitical agenda and craft unionism.

In the Report of Proceedings First National Conference on Workers Education in the United States the convention adopted the following resolutions:

1. Including the school curriculum the teaching of an unemasculated industrial history embracing an accurate account of the organization of the workers and of the results thereof, the teaching of the principles underlying industrial activities and relations, and a summary of legislation, state and federal, affecting industry.
2. The making of a careful and comprehensive survey and the preparation and distribution of a bibliography of all books, pamphlets and addresses dealing with industrial and economic problems, which are founded on accurate information, sound principles and which will prove helpful in removing the false conception of existing theories of industrial, political and social economy.
3. Encouraging all schools, colleges, universities, libraries, trade union centers, and all institutes of learning to secure copies of the books, pamphlets and addresses recommended for use by those interested in securing accurate and reliable information regarding industrial problems.
4. Encouraging textbook writers and publishers to avail themselves of the library and the records of the A. F. of L. upon all subjects dealing with the industrial development and progress, as well as the movement of the wage-earners, in the preparation of textbooks on industrial problems and movements.
5. The preparation of a textbook by the A. F. of L. to supplement the existing works of President Gompers and other recognized authorities of the American trade union movement, to be prepared by a competent trade unionist under the direction of the executive officers of the A. F. of L. in cooperation with a special committee for this purpose.
6. Encouraging and assisting affiliated international trade unions in the preparing of textbooks for their membership, dealing with economic laws, the development of their trade and the solving of trade problems, as well as the influence of their trade union activities upon the development of industrial relations.

In the same report, the Constitution of the organization is stated. Under its Constitution, the Workers Educational Bureau of the United States affirms that its purpose is to, “collect and to disseminate information relative to efforts at education on any part of organized labor; to co-ordinate and assist in every possible manner the educational work now carried on by the organized workers; and to stimulate the creation of additional enterprises in labor education throughout the United States.”

In 1951, WEB was formally integrated into the AFL (and later, after the merger with the Congress of Industrial Organizations, the AFL-CIO) as its Education Department.

In 2003, the AFL-CIO transferred the duties and programs of the Education Department to the George Meany Center-National Labor College.