From its inception the JLC had supported the demand for free immigration of Jews into Palestine and lent support to labor and Yiddish cultural institutions there. When the British White Paper of 1939 virtually cut off Jewish immigration, the JLC protested vigorously and enlisted the help of its AFL and Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) allies in demanding that the gates be reopened for the desperate victims of Nazism. By 1945 the JLC had adopted a stance of benign neutrality toward Jewish nationalism, but still would not officially endorse the notion of a Jewish state.

In the shadow of the European debacle, more and more JLC affiliates began to look favorably upon the development of some sort of Jewish "home" in Palestine; many expressed the hope that Arab and Jewish workers could build the country together, join in common labor struggles, and live in peace and mutual respect.

The postwar years brought profound changes for Jewish labor, as for all other sectors of American society. At home, the JLC faced the demise of the New Deal and the rise of Cold War anti-Communism, the changing ethnic composition of the once-Jewish unions, and the "suburbanization" of American Jewry. Internationally, it saw a new balance of power in Europe, the emergence of the State of Israel, and the inevitable decline of Yiddish culture, savagely uprooted from its East European seedbeds. Although the conditions of work had changed, the basic goals remained: to assist the surviving victims of fascist brutality, to oppose anti-Semitism and support labor and human rights everywhere, and to preserve and foster the liberal and humane traditions of Jewish life.