Халықаралық жұмысшылар ұйымы: Өзара көмек және сақтандыру қоғамы

Insurance, mutual benefit and fraternal organization

The International Workers Order (IWO) was an insurance, mutual benefit and fraternal organization founded in 1930 and disbanded in 1954 as the result of legal action undertaken by the state of New York in 1951 on the grounds that the organization was too closely linked to the Communist Party. At its height in the years immediately following World War II, the IWO reached nearly 200,000 members and provided low cost health and life insurance, medical and dental clinics, and supported foreign language newspapers, cultural and educational activities. The organization also operated a summer camp and cemeteries for its members.

At its height in the years immediately following World War II, the IWO had almost 200,000 members and provided low cost health and life insurance, medical and dental clinics, and supported foreign language newspapers, cultural and educational activities. The IWO offered insurance to all working people at the same rate regardless of race or occupation and was, at the time, the only service provider where African Americans could obtain insurance at the same rate as others and also the only place where workers in dangerous occupations such as coal mining could obtain insurance at a rate equivalent to other occupations. The IWO also ran a Jewish summer camp, Camp Kinderland and the racially integrated camp Wo Chi Ca. Additionally the IWO owned and operated cemeteries throughout the US and Canada, a common practice among left wing Jewish mutual aid organizations like the Farband and the Workmen's Circle. While the leadership of IWO sections were members of the Communist Party, most of the IWO's rank and file members were not party members. The IWO was made up of a total of 15 sections, the largest section of which was the Jewish section representing one third of the membership of the IWO and which in 1944 was renamed the Jewish People's Fraternal Order. There was also an English section and 13 other language sections including the Hungarian Workmen's Sick, Benevolent, and Educational Federation; the Ukrainian American Fraternal Union; the Carpatho Russian National Society; the (Spanish) Cervantes Society Mutualista Obrera Puertorriqueña; the (Italian) Garibaldi American Fraternal Society; the Hellenic American Brotherhood; the Serbian American Federation; the Russian American Mutual Aid Society; the Slovak Workers Society; the Polonia Society; the Rumanian American Fraternal Society; the Czech Workers Society and the Finnish American Mutual Aid Society (descended from the Finnish Socialist Federation).

As early as 1944, the Special Committee on Un American Activities of the US House of Representatives (best known as the Dies Committee) attacked the IWO as a "huge patronage machine furnishing positions for a host of Communist functionaries, who serve as the party's controlling commissars within the organization." The Dies Committee expressed its confidence that "a comparison made in each local area will bear out the charge that the personnel of the Communist Party and the International Workers Order interlock closely." (also considered for mutual aid societies more broadly), though others have questioned the IWO's contemporary relevance if based on intersectionality."