U.S. Labors Conservative Role in Latin America
BODENHEIMER, SUSANNE
U.S. Labor's Conservative Role in Latin America by SUSANNE BODENHEIMER "Not one penny of CIA money has ever come in to the AFL or the AFL-CIO to my knowledge over the last twenty years, and I...
...Serafino Romualdi, formerly head of AFL-CIO Inter-American Affairs and director of AIFLD, was scheduled as a speaker for the Washington "school" of Fred Schwarz's Christian Anti-Communist Crusade in 1964...
...Would it suffice, then, to remove the hard-liners like Meany and Lovestone...
...As witness Doherty's words to the Council for Latin America, "We believe in the capitalist system and . . . are dedicated to its preservation...
...CLASC's existence and growing appeal for workers in many countries present a challenge and a threat to the AFL-CIO, merely by dramatizing the need for a more satisfactory alternative to Communism than American labor has been able to offer...
...American labor's access to U.S...
...The apparatus of the AFL-CIO's Latin American program since World War II has been geared to a continuation of the Cold War...
...In addition, AIFLD violated Dominican law by awarding contracts in a private rather than an open bidding and favored American firms...
...In countries other than pre-Castro Cuba the AFL-CIO has urged nonaction in the face of military takeovers...
...and patronage (for example, candidates for labor attaches in U.S...
...She now lives in Latin America...
...Through "role-playing" exercises, students gain practice in countering Communist infiltration...
...as a result, when the call went out in April, 1964, for a general strike to protest the coup, "the wires kept humming and the army was able to coordinate troop movements that ended the showdown bloodlessly...
...Like the "liberal" American students and philanthropists who compromised themselves with the CIA in the name of anti-Communism, the representatives of American labor have confirmed the bankruptcy of American "liberalism" for Latin Americans...
...Imbued with the Cold War mentality of an era when the overseas representatives of American unions fought their Communist counterparts in Europe, several of these individuals have remained active in the network of anti-Communist organizations, venturing even into the camp of the Far Right...
...Joe Beirne, head of the Communications Workers of America, for example, stated in a 1963 news conference: "[CLASC has] been infiltrated and I think captured by the Communists...
...Just as its rigid anti-Communism has undermined State Department initiatives for building bridges to the Eastern European bloc, the AFL-CIO's negative attitude has inhibited overtures to Latin American Christian Democrats...
...in Latin America such aid represents a form of intervention disguised in humanitarian rhetoric...
...Labor's "private" nature also enhances labor's usefulness to the "invisible government...
...Like official U.S...
...For two and one half years American labor continued to support the military regime, although its anti-inflation measures and strict regulation of wages, its severe strike laws, and its purge of union leadership greatly weakened Brazilian labor...
...Agency for International Development later bailed out AIFLD by financing the construction of 110 of the projected 700 to 900 units...
...In the Dominican Republic, those same "non-partisan" ORIT-dominated labor officials who refused to fight during the 1965 revolution, had no qualms earlier about participating in the political activities which helped bring down the Bosch regime in 1963...
...According to the AIFLD Report, students from several countries spend more hours in the "democracy and totalitarianism" course ("democracy" American-style, "totalitarianism" Communist-style) than on any other subject...
...In British Guiana the AFL-CIO participated directly in a three-year campaign to oust the constitutionally elected government of Cheddi Jagan, through assistance to the British Guiana Trades Union Council (TUC) — the anti-Jagan ORIT affiliate which worked closely with Forbes Burnham's People's National Congress (PNC), the principal opposition party to Jagan...
...Yet its primary rivals in Latin America today— and the main targets of its criticism— have not been the Communists but other non-Communist unions...
...When given a choice between a liberal direction or an interventionist, "negative anti-Communist" one, the AFL-CIO has reinforced the latter...
...Imagine a Chilean copper miner "open-minded" enough to embrace an organization whose board included—as AIFLD's does—Charles Brinckerhoff, president of Anaconda Copper...
...After completing the three-month "advanced course" and returning to their own countries, the most promising students remain on the AIFLD payroll as "interns" for nine months...
...The third agency of the AFL-CIO in Latin America is the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), which brings together the resources of American labor, American business, and the U.S...
...At the end of an unpaved road in the pleasant, rolling Virginia countryside, more than seventy-five miles from Washington, D.C., is the AIFLD Institute...
...But in practice, AIFLD must deal with governmental agencies, thereby indirectly lending moral and material support to these regimes...
...Such official AFL-CIO ideology notwithstanding, the rhetoric of "apolitical unionism" is discarded and overtly partisan actions taken when expediency requires...
...Thus the AFL-CIO has offered an educational program and a philosophy divorced from the agenda for basic social change in Latin America, in the hope of persuading Latin American workers to settle for "bread and butter unionism"—a poor substitute, at best...
...A mere ten to fifteen per cent of the active labor force is organized...
...Clearly there will be no significant changes in AFL-CIO policy under the present leadership...
...Early expectations that Alliance labor funds would be available to the liberal Social Christian Trade Union Confederation of Latin AmeriJustus in The Minneapolis Star The All-inclusive Boot ca (CLASC) as well as to the reactionary ORIT were dashed, for the labor advisory committee to the Alliance included only AFL-CIO representatives, and since 1962 the AIFLD Social Projects Department has been the formal agency for channeling Alliance funds to Latin American labor...
...This has been disguised by the AFL-CIO's use of the Communist issue to smear its non-Communist, democratic-leftist rivals with the red brush...
...In Honduras, for example, after the right-wing military coup of October, 1963—even before the U.S...
...Jay Lovestone, foreign policy adviser to George Meany and one of America's most ardent converts from Communism, has had ties with the American Security Council, the Council against Communist Aggression, and the Citizens' Committee for a Free Cuba (to mention only a few...
...Indeed, the AFL-CIO's Latin American program has enjoyed consistent and strong support from certain sectors of the American business community...
...Latin American workers are still fighting battles which American labor won many years ago...
...One union official suggested candidly to me that big businessmen see an opportunity to mold one segment of Latin American labor in such a way as to minimize the threat from labor to private American investment...
...Government, one might expect the representatives of labor to exert a liberalizing influence...
...Those who do adopt the AFL-CIO philosophy have displayed a marked lack of militancy toward business...
...Following such coups in Guatemala in 1954, in the Dominican Republic and Honduras in 1963, and in Brazil in 1964, ORIT-affiliated unions, acting on AFL-CIO advice, refused to join other unions in general strikes or even verbal protests, on the grounds that repressive action would be taken against unions expressing opposition...
...The habits which the AFL-CIO has acquired in dealing with labor in developing nations are not quickly unlearned...
...Central to AIFLD5s program is the premise, as its director, William Doherty, put it to the Council for Latin America (an American businessmen's group) on February 11, 1966, that "The great bulk of the 15,000,000 organized workers in Latin America think, want, and desire almost identically with their counterparts in the United States...
...In fact they have done just the opposite...
...to Latin Americans it seems part of a plan to perpetuate their dependence on the United States...
...This is disguised through the convenient myth of "union-to-union" programs, by which AIFLD can continue direct aid to unions under undemocratic regimes, seeming to bypass these governments...
...Labor's Conservative Role in Latin America by SUSANNE BODENHEIMER "Not one penny of CIA money has ever come in to the AFL or the AFL-CIO to my knowledge over the last twenty years, and I say to you if it had come in, I would know about it...
...Where ideas fail to convince, material assistance often becomes persuasive...
...Asked by newsmen recently whether the AFL-CIO has made any mistakes abroad, Meany modestly replied, "We haven't found a single thing we would not say again...
...a measure of influence over policy...
...Particularly inappropriate as an example for Latin Americans is the AFL-CIO's outlook toward free enterprise and the big business community...
...Apparently they have not understood that such ameliorations, while necessary, are insufficient as objectives for Latin American workers, and cannot be attained solely through collective bargaining without structural reforms in the distribution of resources and income and the establishment of democratic process in their national governments...
...None of the students I met there spoke English and few seemed engrossed in their studies...
...The cooperation between ourselves and the business community is getting warmer day by day...
...Closer to the heart of the AFL-CIO's grudge against CLASC is Inter-American director Andrew McLellan's complaint that "[The Social Christians] are not interested in bread and butter issues such as we are...
...An October, 1966, Reader's Digest article related that one AIFLD-trained communications union leader ran seminars in Brazil in which "he warned key workers of coming trouble and urged them to keep communications going, no matter what happened...
...The AFL-CIO international program bears the stamp of those few individuals who have been its chief architects...
...AIFLD is symbolic of American labor's comfortable relationship with business...
...A secret report of September, 1963, from the British police superintendent in British Guiana to the British Commissioner, named Gerard O'Keefe of the Retail Clerks International Association as having financed the activities of the "security force" (organized gangs) of Burnham's PNC—including assassinations and destruction of public buildings "with explosives and arson...
...embassies are frequently recommended, and must always be approved, by Meany and Lovestone...
...In Uruguay a $5 million AIFLD-sponsored housing project for the ORIT-affiliated Uruguayan Labor Federation fell through when the Uruguay representatives refused to sign AIFLD's "letter of intention," naming AIFLD "as their sole agent before any . . . organization...
...It is doubtful that management's enthusiasm is motivated purely by altruism...
...All AIFLD students major in anti-Communism, a subject which their instructors, some of whom are Cuban exiles, are well qualified to teach...
...In the United States, AFL-CIO lobbying for increased foreign aid allotments to AIFLD establishes its "liberal" credentials...
...Senator J. W. Fulbright told labor columnist Victor Riesel in August, 1966, "I have had suggestions that they [the CIA] had taken a very strong part in labor union organization in the Dominican Republic...
...Lacking funds and political influence, even those represented by unions are not regarded as an autonomous pressure group whose interests and needs demand serious consideration...
...In his memoirs, former President Bosch singled out leaders of the Dominican ORIT affiliate as openly favoring the coup against him...
...policy-makers, the AFL-CIO is ambivalent toward social change in Latin America and vacillates between a desire to win over Latin Americans with promises of gradual social reform and a tendency to rely on "safe"—military and oligarchic—forces which stifle even peaceful social progress...
...Both treat unions in the developing nations as pawns in the Cold War, "tools to be employed for gaining political power," says CLASC, and both are alien and irrelevant ideologies for Latin Americans...
...To the small clique which runs AFL-CIO international affairs, the close relationship with Federal policymakers has brought certain concrete returns: access to U.S...
...In return, particularly because it passes as a private organization, the AFL-CIO has proved a valuable partner for official policy-makers...
...Originally located in Washington, it was moved to Virginia, according to AIFLD officials, to provide a "more peaceful" environment for study...
...The answers involve both personalities and the position of organized labor in American society today...
...This is supplemented by the International Trade Secretariats (ITS), which coordinate activities among unions in the same trade or industry throughout the world...
...Whereas the latter are formally accountable to Congress and the interested public, the AFL-CIO is largely immune from public oversight—even though AID has poured $15.5 million of taxpayers' money into AIFLD...
...The U.S...
...Students are without cars or bus service to "the monastery," as they have nick-named it, and are seldom exposed to the distractions of the big city...
...If their exclusion of non-ORIT unions appears narrow-minded, AIFLD officials are more flexible about cooperating with dictatorial and military regimes...
...In addition, it suggests that George Meany has not been straightforward about labor's dealings with the CIA...
...Government...
...ORIT affiliates in several countries have fostered company unions...
...In one country after another, union leaders have eagerly accepted AIFLD offers of loans for housing projects, only to find that the strings attached restricted their freedom and in some cases violated national laws...
...Why has the AFL-CIO—potentially a progressive force—failed to provide an impetus toward vitally-needed structural reforms in Latin America...
...For the AFL-CIO's frequently stated justification of its dubious political activities has been that they help to provide a democratic alternative to Communist influence in Latin American unions...
...Chief target of its red-baiting attacks has been the Social Christian Confederation, CLASC...
...The convincing evidence that the AFL-CIO served as a front for the CIA in British Guiana, as described in The Progressive (April, 1967), makes more credible the revelations that many American union international programs have been operating in Latin America largely on CIA funds, channeled through "dummy" foundations...
...With one hand American labor holds out offers of education and financial aid, and simultaneously, with the other hand, wields the "big stick" of intervention...
...Through its principal instrument, the Inter-American Regional Organization of Workers (ORIT), founded in 1951 to compete with leftist and Peronist labor organizers, the AFL-CIO has constructed a network of "free and democratic" unions throughout Latin America...
...foreign policy establishment...
...On the dubious assumption that American unionism is exportable, AFL-CIO educators have focused on "bread and butter" issues —higher wages, better working conditions, more fringe benefits—to be obtained through the collective bargaining process...
...Equally striking but less well known has been the integration of the AFL-CIO international department into the U.S...
...Exactly because American labor's objectives have become generally indistinguishable from those of the State Department, the alleged rationale for the AFL-CIO's international program —to create "union-to-union" bonds between popularly-based institutions in the "free world" and in developing nations—has been undermined...
...foreign aid funds...
...But of greater import has been American labor's acquired position vis-a-vis the American business community...
...for the procuring and realization of the loan," and granting AIFLD the "permanent right" to veto applicants for the project "for trade union and political reasons"—terms which violated Uruguayan law...
...As Doherty boasted, "Some of [the unionists trained at AIFLD] . . . became involved in some of the clandestine operations of the revolution before it took place on April 1. . . ." Doherty's claim has been proudly confirmed by other AFL-CIO officials I interviewed and other popularizers of the so-called "revolution" by which the military overthrew President Goulart's government...
...But CLASC's record speaks for itself...
...Although ninety per cent of the land in Latin America is controlled by ten per cent of the landholders, land reform receives scant attention in the AIFLD curriculum...
...Since the inception of the Alliance for Progress, the AFL-CIO has had a virtual monopoly over its union programs...
...But while AIFLD graduates have acquired expertise in ousting Communists (or anyone who looks Communist to AFL-CIO advisers), they are ill-equipped by their AIFLD education to meet equally potent challenges from rightwing dictatorial governments or entrenched land-owning and business interests...
...As the labor committee report to the 1965 White House Conference on International Cooperation stated, "[AIFLD] seeks to provide an atmosphere conducive to free enterprise [in Latin America...
...foreign aid funds is tempting bait to impoverished Latin American unions...
...Soon after the 1964 coup in Brazil, AIFLD Director Doherty told radio interviewers, "I am certainly not against Brazilian labor getting involved in politics...
...In addition, AFL-CIO officials explain, "Unions should not become involved in partisan causes or use strikes as political weapons...
...as Doherty said in radio interviews in December, 1963, "We welcome [the] cooperation [of management] not only financially but in terms of establishing our policies...
...In many countries employers are required to bargain only with unions officially recognized by the government...
...I think not...
...Scholarships to the AIFLD Institute in the United States are awarded to the "star" pupils in local and regional AIFLD seminars, recruited and screened by AFL-CIO and ORIT representatives...
...Just as they had lauded the CIA-instigated takeover in Guatemala ten years previously, AFL-CIO officials endorsed the Brazilian coup...
...A widely-advertised attraction of the AFL-CIO operation south of the Rio Grande is the AIFLD educational program, which has reached more than 60,000 Latin American unionists since 1962...
...He addressed the 1962 "Ail-American Conference to Combat Communism" (as Lovestone had done in 1961) and he has been on the Cuban Freedom Committee, the Committee of One Million, and similar groups...
...Meany has been in various "China lobby" organizations and on the advisory council of the Foundation for Religious Action in the Social and Civil Order (FRASCO), which claims to wage a "spiritual offensive against Communism...
...Why has it wielded its influence in defense of the status quo, often on behalf of those who stifle workers' rights...
...Emilio Maspero, CLASC Secretary-General, stated at a 1963 conference at the University of Notre Dame that, "The Communist influence has been more inimical still [than the American] to autonomous Latin American labor organizations...
...But for Latin American workers, who confront vested and generally unprogressive industrial and land-owning interests, such benevolence toward big business would be suicidal if widely accepted...
...Latin American unionists also oppose nationalization of industry, he continued, and, "like ourselves, they would want government to step in and interfere in the affairs of business and labor only in case of national emergency...
...AFL-CIO leaders and their Guian-ese proteges were deeply implicated in the terrorism and racial violence which accompanied the strike...
...SUSANNE BODENHEIMER specialized in Latin American political development at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology...
...Moreover, the Meanys and Lovestones could not have been so successful at their own game, but for the willing cooperation of many of American labor's "liberals...
...As one labor expert has commented, "Today Big Labor and Big Management [in the U.S.] often deal with each other as affluent fellow corporate groups...
...During the planning stages of a $3 million housing project for sugar workers in the Dominican Republic, the Inter-American Development Bank, which was to have provided two-thirds of the money, withdrew its loan in objection to AIFLD's insistence that both the construction and the occupancy of the project be restricted to unions affiliated with ORIT...
...Certainly, American business has a sympathetic partner in the AFL-CIO...
...To CLASC, Communism and capitalism alike are forms of materialism, repugnant to the basic precepts of Social Christian doctrine...
...Thus, perhaps unwittingly, American labor has fallen into some of the very habits which it recognizes and denounces in Communist-dominated unions...
...Ironically, AFL-CIO control over Alliance funds has caused fewer problems for those excluded than for the intended beneficiaries...
...She gathered the material for this article while engaged in research at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington—research based largely on interviews with American and Latin American labor officials...
...And at a time when the State Department was, to all appearances, supporting the democratic leftist Bosch regime in the Dominican Republic, the Dominican ORIT affiliate, with strong AFL-CIO backing, was actively plotting its overthrow...
...Moreover, the rights of labor, particularly in state-run enterprises and public services, are generally limited by government labor codes regulating wage increases, strikes, and collective bargaining...
...Unlikely as it is that AFL-CIO foreign policy would be totally divorced from that of the U.S...
...In many countries the AFL-CIO has encouraged its proteges to pull out of coalitions with more militant elements, even at the risk of forming parallel unions...
...ORIT affiliates have engaged in practices which violate even the principles of American-style unionism and which are regarded by more active Latin-American unionists as anti-obrero—anti-worker...
...To American liberals the AFL-CIO's conservatism is bad judgment on the part of well-intentioned men...
...The British Guiana operation indicates clearly that the AFL-CIO is not squeamish in devising means for the pursuit of Cold War political objectives disguised in the cloak of "free and democratic unionism...
...Apparently not, for at the time of the coup AIFLD graduates were active in mobilizing labor support for it and in ensuring its success...
...If this is the best that American liberalism has to offer, it merely proves that American liberalism ends at the borders of the United States...
...I take a great deal of pride in the work we've done overseas and I resent the fact that the CIA is trying to horn in on it and say that they have done some of it.33 —George Meany, President of AFL-CIO, denying charges of Central Intelligence Agency subsidies to AFL-CIO, May 8, 1967 Imagine, for the moment, that George Meany is incapable of telling a lie...
...Suppose that the AFL-CIO's expensive campaign to promote "democratic unionism" abroad—particularly in Latin America—is not being charged to the ever-expanding account of the "invisible government," are its motivations and methods so different from those of the CIA, and has Meany any reason to take pride in that campaign...
...Government had re-established diplomatic relations—AIFLD was pressing for resumption of work on its housing project for a railroad workers' union...
...It is not pro-Communism or advocacy of violence, but the unequivocal commitment to peaceful but thoroughgoing social revolution, and the firm refusal to confine itself to "bread and butter" issues, for which AFL-CIO officials cannot forgive CLASC...
...If Communism did not exist, someone in the AFL-CIO would have had to invent it...
...heightened individual prestige in official circles...
Vol. 31 • November 1967 • No. 11
