The American Federation of Labor (AFL) was a national federation of labor unions in the United States. It was founded in 1886 by disaffected members of the Knights of Labor, a national labor union. The AFL was the largest union grouping in the United States for the first half of the 20th century, even after the creation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). The federation was founded and dominated by craft unions throughout its first half-century.
The AFL-CIO is a voluntary federation of 57 national and international labor unions created in 1955 by the merger of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).
