Quelle: Labor Studies Journal, Vol. 25, No.2, Summer 2000, S. 26-35
Response to Kim Scipes Article for Labor Studies
Journal
On Building an International Solidarity Movement
by Judy Ancel
February 1, 2000
Late last year in the streets of Seattle, thousands of grass roots
activists from many different movements and countries came together with tens
of thousands of union members, mobilized by their unions and the AFL-CIO.
Collectively they succeeded in derailing the meeting of the WTO and the U.S.
government's international trade agenda. The sheer size and scope of the
mobilizations in Seattle, the unity, and the high level of coordination
inspired a sense of the immense power of people organized. Many union members
I talked to felt like they were present at the rebirth of a movement. One
African participant verbalized something that I think was on many people's
minds. He said that this was mainly a U.S. protest, but to succeed in stopping
the corporate global agenda, we will have to make this a world-wide
movement.
Since 1993, I have been working at the grassroots level on such a movement
through a local fair trade coalition and a non-profit organization called the
Cross Border Network. In that work, I have met many committed activists and
workers from both the U.S. and Mexico who are rethinking and reworking
historical relationships and attitudes about one another. Many times we have
confronted and worked to change attitudes among union members which are
products of the Cold War and our history of economic nationalism, and many
times we have been reminded by Mexicans of the mistrust they have of American
workers and their unions.
Kim Scipes article, "It's Time to Come Clean" is, therefore, very welcome.
His well-told story of AIFLD involvement in the overthrow of the Salvador
Allende government of Chile is a helpful addition to the literature on this
subject, and his call for open debate and open archives are long overdue. I would,
however, add a few recommendations to these in the hope of stimulating the
kind of discussion necessary to build a new international solidarity movement.
I agree with Scipes that the foreign policy of the John Sweeney administration
is a "major advance" over what preceded it. I also agree that without an
evaluation of past international policy, under other leadership, the AFL-CIO
could revert back to the policy of the Meany/Kirkland era. Nevertheless, the
changes Sweeney has made are only a beginning on a long road toward
constructing international solidarity. Before we can progress, we will need to
leave behind much of the baggage we're still carrying.
Scipes article asserts that the Meany/Kirkland foreign policy developed
independently from the U.S. government. That's a questionable assertion. AIFLD
was created on the heels of the Cuban Revolution and increasing poverty in
Latin America which threatened to undermine political stability. It was
Kennedy's Labor Secretary Arthur Goldberg who led the move to form it Buhle
(p. 151). Furthermore, AIFLD was always a CIA operation and as Barry &
Preusch (p.11) said, "when it came to funding, it was little more than a
branch of the U.S. government."
The roots of Meany/Kirkland foreign policy and why they allowed the AFL-CIO
to be used as a tool to destabilize pro-worker governments in Chile and other
countries is a very important question. Scipes presents it as a mistake which
Sweeney has begun to rectify. In fact, labor's postwar foreign policy was
inextricably intertwined with the same business unionism which left American
workers disarmed on the shopfloor when the attacks of the Reagan era began and
left them voting for him as well. On the international plain, however, it was
even worse. Not only were international policies secretive and unaccountable
to all but the highest level decision-makers, but also they consistently
betrayed international solidarity and the interests of workers around the
world for a privileged position for the AFL-CIO and (at least some of) its
members. As Scipes' article and his example from Chile make clear, American
labor did the dirty work for U.S. imperialism in working class trenches around
the world. Certainly a discussion of how this was allowed to occur is
necessary if American labor is ever to construct relations of trust with
foreign trade unions.
This link between business unionism and the AFL-CIO's foreign policy is the
skeleton in the closet, the reality the AFL-CIO must confront before it can
ensure that the old policy doesn't resurface. Meany made a deal with the devil
because he believed that his organization and members would benefit by being
citizens of the dominant world power. The quid-pro-quo was to ignore
organizing vast sectors of the U.S. working class, especially women and
minorities and collaborate with the CIA to insure that workers in poor
countries were free enough to have weak unions. Ultimately this deal
meant that U.S. workers would lose their industrial base when it became
feasible to export jobs to countries where vigorous labor movements had been
undercut. Meany's and Kirkland's (and many union members') belief that it was
sufficient to promote a high standard of living in the U.S. while ignoring
development in poor countries has been shown to be a colossal
miscalculation.
Sweeney changed that policy not simply because he saw the need to base
foreign policy on an analysis of American workers' needs and interests (as
Scipes says) but because corporate America and the U.S. government had reneged
on the deal. American labor now needed the solidarity of workers in the
transnational economy to be able to stop the downward spiral.
What makes it difficult to free ourselves from this past is the baggage we
still are carrying. This is something that Scipes only addresses indirectly.
The legacy that AIFLD, AAFLI, et al have left us includes a habit of telling
foreign workers and unionists what's best for them, seeing our own interests
and priorities through a prism of economic nationalism, continued funding from
government sources, and a lack of open discussion and debate - a lack of
democracy - in shaping labor's international policies and agenda. The only way
to dump this baggage is to surrender it to public inspection. Only then can we
hope to construct relations of trust and equality.
Only the AFL-CIO can begin this process. The Sweeney administration has
already taken the initiative through efforts like its Common Sense Economics
program to stimulate discussion and debate over the domestic economic and
political agenda. It is calling on unions to make organizing the top priority
and is building coalitions with religious and community organizations to
support organizing and bargaining struggles. Likewise, the need to build an
international movement to support its domestic agenda could prompt a similar
education and mobilization strategy from top to bottom to overcome old ideas
and stimulate new initiatives. Its mobilization and coalition building in the
Seattle protests were a start, but if they continue, they must address the
following:
We know what's best for you. Scipes' and others' accounts of
the history are filled with tales of American labor reps inserting themselves
into foreign nations and selecting, undermining, coopting, and manipulating
local labor movements. AIFLD classified labor unions which supported
governments or parties not in good graces with the U.S. government as
unfree, while supporting client unions of AIFLD and the CIA as
free. In practice this meant U.S. unionists (mostly white male) were
telling poor people (often people of color) what their interests were, how to
achieve them, and who should lead them. While AIFLD may have simply been doing
the bidding of our government, abolishing AIFLD, doesn't automatically
eliminate the habit of trying to tell people what's best for them any more
than it erases the preference for only working with groups we can dominate or
control.
Such practices have filtered down to the local level, and where it shows up
in attitudes of some union members involved in international solidarity
building. How many of us have heard American union members say of some poor
country, "We ought to just go in there and organize them or teach them how to
organize." or "I can't understand why these people put up with this. We
wouldn't." The only real antidote to such attitudes is real people-to-people
contacts and discussions so that American unionists can listen and learn about
the obstacles workers in other countries face, what they're doing to
overcome them, and ultimately how we can help support them. Just as U.S.
unionists are the experts on how best to organize in our country because we
know the conditions, workers in other countries are the experts on their
situations. Building solidarity means discovering what we have in common and
finding the concrete ways we can give one another support. These types of
discussions are by no means one-way. In my own experience, talking to Mexican
maquiladora workers and coordinating worker tours from and to Mexico, there's
a lot each side can learn from the other.
America firstism. Labor's foreign policy grew out of economic
nationalism which allied U.S. workers with U.S. corporations against workers
in or from other countries. The legacy of racism and xenophobia, especially
against Asians and Mexicans, the whole attitude that workers of the rest of
the world could stay poor as long as we've got ours, and Buy America
campaigns, all have deep roots in the U.S. working class and its unions. All
of this made it easier to demonize insurgent unionists in poor countries as
communists when they resisted making their countries safe for U.S. investment.
While these attitudes have changed significantly in the last decade as the
composition of the working class and labor movement have changed, the movement
has yet to do an educational campaign repudiating economic nationalism and
making it clear how it helped fuel the race to the bottom. Why else is it
necessary to remind some union members not to take union t-shirts or caps
which say "Buy American" or Clinton-Gore in '96 to Mexico
as solidarity gifts? Without challenging economic nationalism, the same
racism, xenophobia, and America Firstism will reemerge in the labor movement
at the next economic downturn.
Follow the money. Scipes correctly says both that
collaboration with the government, including the CIA, "was structured into the
program" and that as long as AFL-CIO international operations are government
funded, collaboration will continue. Both Sims and Barry & Pruesch track
finances of the labor-business-government funding of the Institutes and find
that well over 90% was paid by the U.S. tax-payers through a variety of covers
including USAID, USIA and the semi-private but government funded National
Endowment for Democracy among others. Just because the Institutes were
collapsed into the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS)
in 1996 doesn't mean the government funding went away. The AFL-CIO's new
offices in Mexico City and Honduras are funded by the government, and a brief
(far from exhaustive) search of current USAID programs reveals funding for
ACILS programs in over thirty countries and regions including Cuba, Indonesia,
Nigeria, Latin America and the Caribbean, Bangladesh, Egypt, South Africa, the
Philippines, Burma, Croatia, Eritrea, Sri Lanka, India, Mexico, Guatemala,
Honduras, Zimbabwe, Serbia, and Russia (USAID). One rather alarming
description of a USAID funded program for Latin America and the Caribbean
(LAC) says:
The Hemispheric Free Trade Expansion (HFTE) program supports
trade-induced economic expansion as a catalyst for sustaining economic
growth and reducing poverty in the LAC region. USAID collaborates closely
with the State Department, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative
(USTR), USG agencies, and other HFTE partners that participate on the
Interagency Trade Policy Staff Committee, while closely monitoring the
reports of the Hemispheric Working Groups that meet on the Free Trade Area
of the Americas (FTAA). HFTE initiatives in trade liberalization are
complemented by support for interventions which advance trade-related
labor/management relations, market participation, and environmental
management. The purpose of this S[trategic] O[bjective] is to resolve key
market issues impeding environmentally-sound and equitable-free trade.
Through this SO, USAID also supports the AFL-CIO's American Center for
International Labor Solidarity which promotes worker participation, improves
worker protection and empowerment, and fosters democratic practices in the
workplace (USAID).
Aside from the fact that this appears to put the AFL-CIO in support of a
government funded program designed to advance the Free Trade Area of the
Americas, one wonders about AIFLD's legacy of infiltration by CIA and State
Department operatives and the systematic intelligence provided the CIA on
Latin American unionists.
That ACILS and government institutions make strange bedfellows is
illustrated by the following claim of the Global Center for Democracy and
Governance, a USAID entity:
"The Center places particular significance on the role of free and
independent labor unions as an important sector of civil society. In many
developing countries, the ability of the labor sector to organize freely and
voice its support for political and economic liberalization is held in
check by restrictive laws and regulatory practices" (emphasis
added).
It's a safe guess that "political and economic liberalization" as promoted
by USAID means the neoliberal economic agenda. This is puzzling since the
AFL-CIO has taken a strong stand against neoliberalism, yet ACILS receives a
$45 million five-year grant from the Democracy & Governance Project
(USAID).
The NED, notorious for its funding of AIFLD projects in El Salvador and
Nicaragua in the 1980s, currently provides ACILS with about $4 million a year.
A government description of NED includes, "The NED's independence from
government enables it to pursue an innovative and risk-oriented grant strategy
in a manner consistent with broad U.S. national interests. While the endowment
consults on an ongoing basis with the State Department and with U.S. embassies
abroad on programmatic matters, it is not an instrument for the direct
implementation of U.S. foreign policy."
(http://www.info.-usaid.gov/democracy/techpubs/ppda/funding.html). Thus NED
can function as a rogue operation.
NED has been pouring money into Yugoslavia to strengthen opposition
political parties for years. Part of its funding goes to ACILS which assists
UGS Nezavisnost, a trade union confederation which opposes Milosevic (Talbot).
Whether any of these programs advance international worker solidarity is
irrelevant. By accepting US government money and oversight, ACILS cannot
possibly have and will not be perceived to have an independent labor
perspective. It is compromised, and complicit with U.S. foreign policy goals
which by no means can be seen as worker-friendly. Even when they oppose a
racist dictator like Milosevic, they are implicitly tied to the U.S. and NATO
agenda in the former Yugoslavia, an agenda which by destroying the Serbian
economy, will open it to neoliberalism and large-scale privatization.
Lack of transparency and democracy. Scipes tells us that for years
AFL-CIO foreign policy was a secret from the members. It still is. While many
members have heard and been encouraged by the statements on the new
internationalism by John Sweeney and Barbara Shailor, and we've heard
of the house-cleaning in the IAD and dismantling of the free labor institutes,
how many members know about continued funding by USAID and NED? How many have
seen the document signed by the AFL-CIO and Mexico's Confederation of Mexican
Workers which acknowledges among other things that they "mutually recognize
that they are the most representative labor organizations, respectively, of
the United States and of Mexico" and recognizes a "common purpose with
absolute respect for union autonomy and the sovereignty of the respective
countries. . .in having constant communication." (CTM & AFL-CIO)
While respect for the sovereignty of another country is a welcome change,
one wonders why the AFL-CIO chose to express it in the context of an agreement
with a government-dominated and thoroughly corrupt union which routinely
violates the rights of Mexican workers. As in the old days, government
domination is a criteria which seems to depend on political circumstance.
Currently, the AFL-CIO pledges mutual respect for the CTM but refuses to talk
to government-dominated unions in China, Cuba and the old communist unions in
Russia. Such policies are still being made at the top, with no discussion at
the grass roots or anywhere in between.
That this lack of democracy also exists in formulating AFL-CIO trade policy
is clear from the recent flap over whether or not John Sweeney had endorsed
President Clinton's agenda at the WTO in exchange for getting his support for
a commission to discuss labor rights. And despite the fact that the AFL-CIO
had mobilized tens of thousands to march in Seattle, contributing
significantly to the massive success of the effort, there was no dialogue or
participation in the decision not to engage in the direct action civil
disobedience outside the WTO meeting. Nor has there been (as of this writing)
any democratic discussion about whether or not to participate in the
anti-IMF/World Bank actions in Washington, D.C. in April, 2000. These
decisions were made without extended debate in the labor movement - certainly
without the participation of many local union leaders and activists who have
been most active in educating and organizing around trade and globalization
issues.
There are at least hundreds if not thousands of activists at the local
level who are veterans of the fights against NAFTA, fast track, the WTO and
international solidarity and sweatshop activism. They have a depth of
experience in educating and organizing and building bridges with workers in
other countries that could be a real resource to the AFL-CIO as well as their
international unions in shaping policy and strategy. Currently, they are not
consulted. In Seattle there was an ideal opportunity to debate the issue of
whether getting a seat at the table in a WTO worker rights commission was a
good idea. The debate occurred informally, but without the participation of
decision-makers from the AFL-CIO.
The AFL-CIO and an increasing number of its members recognize that they
need the solidarity of workers and unions in other countries just as they need
the solidarity of progressive groups in the United States, but building an
international solidarity movement against global corporate rule is very hard
work. It will be impossible for American labor to do so without both coming
clean and shedding the baggage. Even with that, it will take a lot of
discussion to develop trust and habits of mutual respect. That dialogue,
however, is not advanced when, for instance, John Sweeney makes a speech like
his eulogy to Lane Kirkland last October, in which he said,
"Lane Kirkland was a man of courage who stood for the rights of working
people around the globe, supporting workers seeking to build free trade
unions in China, South Africa, Cuba and Chile. He was a man of clear
principles and broad vision who was articulate in his defense of working
families and his belief in the critical role that unions play in every
society." (Sweeney)
While it is important to emphasize the dedication and accomplishments of
former leaders, and Kirkland has been unfairly blamed for the limitations of
an entire era, statements like this make it seem that nothing has changed.
Certainly Kirkland wasn't the only one responsible for the failings of the
AFL-CIO's foreign policy. Many who are in leadership today participated. John
Sweeney sat of the board of all four of the free labor institutes (Moody) as
did others who serve on the AFL-CIO Executive Council, and many at all levels
endorsed what they knew of the policy and supported the Cold War agenda of
selecting good unions and bad unions on the basis of their friendliness to the
U.S. and its corporations. But it's time to acknowledge that those policies
did untold harm to workers in other countries and seriously damaged the
reputation of American labor.
In her book on economic nationalism, Dana Frank calls for a new
conceptualization of the line between Them and Us and a new understanding of
the meaning of the economic nation (Frank). Kim Moody proposes that
only social movement unionism can overcome "global business unionism" and
engage in the difficult fight for equality within the U.S. working class and
internationally (Moody). What they are both suggesting is that even the
advance over Cold War policy of basing labor's international policy "on an
analysis of American workers needs and interests" (Scipes) is insufficient. If
"Us," really means the workers of the world in a global economy, and if we all
as workers have rights including the right to a sustainable wage and dignity
at work, then labor's international policy must be based on the interests of
us all: American, Mexican, Chinese, Serbian, or South African. Then the
question is not just how can GE workers or Firestone workers around the world
pressure their corporations to help us, but it is also how can we support the
struggles of our brothers and sisters in countries where the right to organize
barely exists? It is not how can we keep China out of the WTO, for that does
nothing for Chinese workers, but what can we do about the conditions under
which global corporations enter China? More importantly what can we do to
promote just and sustainable economic development throughout the world even if
that means rethinking the whole formula of a U.S. economy based on debt-driven
consumerism?
To make such a change, we need education, information and a thorough and
free discussion. International solidarity must become a grass-roots,
people-to-people effort so that the isolation of American workers is replaced
by real understanding of common interests. A model for this type of
solidarity-building education can be found in the relationship being built by
the United Electrical Workers (UE) and Mexico's Authentic Workers Front (FAT).
From top to bottom there is great consciousness of building a relationship of
equals based on common interests and mutual respect. Members are involved and
educated through frequent rank and file delegations and internal education and
news of the common activities, and there is extensive dialogue to develop new
ways of working together.
It would be a good start if the AFL-CIO came clean, opened its records to
the public, and acknowledged the role they played during the Cold War. It
would help too for them to acknowledge that current U.S. foreign policy is
imperialist - in its foreign ventures as well as well as its trade deals - so
that it can begin to construct an independent international policy based on
the interests of workers wherever they may be. And, of course, it would help
to discard the government funding, assuming Congress hadn't already cut it
off.
Sources
Barry, Tom & Preusch, Deb (1986) AIFLD in Central America: Agents as
Organizers. Albuquerque NM: The Resource Center.
Buhle, Paul (1999). Taking Care of Business; Samuel Gompers, George
Meany, Lane Kirkland, and the Tragedy of American Labor. NY: Monthly
Review Press.
CTM and AFL-CIO Joint Declaration (November 10, 1998).
Frank, Dana (1999). Buy American; The Untold Story of Economic
Nationalism. Boston, MA: Beacon Press
Moody, Kim (1997). Workers in a Lean World; Unions in the International
Economy. NY: Verso.
Sayrs, Lee. Telephone interview. December 28, 1999.
Scipes, Kim. "It's Time to Come Clean; Open the AFL-CIO Archives on
International Labor Operations." Labor Studies Journal.
Sims, Beth (1992). Workers of the World Undermined; American Labor's
Role in U.S. Foreign Policy. Boston, MA: South End Press.
Sweeney, John J. "On the Passing of AFL-CIO President Emeritus Lane
Kirkland." Online posting. August 14, 1999
<http://www.aflcio.org/publ/press1999/pr0814.htm>.
Talbot, Karen. "Backing up Globalization with Military Might." Covert
Action Quarterly Fall-Winter, 1999 <http://www.caq.com>.
U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) January 27, 2000
Home page: <http://www.info.usaid.gov>. Specific information drawn from
search for ACILS: <http://search.info.usaid.gov/> and
<http://www.info.usaid.gov/pubs/cp2000/cprog/-dgads.html> and
<http://www.info.usaid.gov/pubs/cp2000/lac/lac_reg.html>. Center for
Democracy & Governance is at
<http://www.info.usaid.gov/democracy/techpubs/cframe/-cframe.doc and
www.infor.usaid.gov/democracy/centere/civpm.html>.
