Solidarity and Self-Interest
Slaney, Dave
AN ENDURING IMAGE OF LABOR'S STANCE on U.S. foreign policy is that of union "hard hats" attacking Vietnam War protesters. That scene contrasts vividly with the sea of union banners at the April...
...And the same Administration that directs repression in Central America is also spearheading the rightwing attack on unions in the U.S...
...Still others represented unions whose predominantly third world members benefited least and suffered most from the anti-labor offensive of the 1980s...
...They also started a slick new DIA newsletter, the Bulletin, launched a program which sends "AFL-CIO labor volunteers" to live for a month with the families of "democratic trade unionists" in Nicaragua, and, most recently, held "regional conferences on international affairs" in Cleveland and San Francisco...
...The delegation also found that a significant degree of trade union freedom existed in Nicaragua, especially when compared with El Salvador, where "[u]nion leaders and members who participate in normal trade union activities routinely risk imprisonment or murder...
...policy in Central America undermines labor's strength at home and abroad...
...Like other citizens, union members are also parents worried about their children being drafted, taxpayers upset about bankrolling corrupt generals, and people of conscience angered by the injustice and immorality of U.S...
...Since then, labor activists have continued to ignore the "shunning" decree...
...Although the principle of "conditionality," or conditional support for military aid to El Salvador, has remained the cornerstone of the Federation's position, in practice the AFL-CIO has consistently proclaimed El Salvador a democracy, and has usually argued that the conditions for aid have been or are being met.9 In the Federation's eyes, Duarte has been God's gift to Salvadoran labor...
...4. Press release, Aug...
...Almost certainly in response to a similar East Coast tour in the fall of 1985, endorsed by eight international union presidents, Kirkland and the DIA persuaded the AFL-CIO Executive Council to issue a statement on August 14 calling upon "all American [sic] trade unionists to shun contacts with the WFTU and its afColombIan coalmlner...
...domestic violence under control and to institute democratic reforms that improve the conditions of workers...
...By mid-1984, at least 1500 Salvadoran union members had been killed or disappeared by the U.S...
...Nor was this the first time that the Federation's foreign policy Stance has produced a backlash from church organizations otherwise inclined to work with organized labor...
...Those resolutions are then interpreted and implemented by DIA functionaries without any meaning- ful oversight or control by the international unions...
...Some 45,000 union members travelled to Washington that day in an unprecedented break with traditional labor support for U.S...
...He certainly has ours...
...In the period 1965-85, approximately four million U.S...
...During its first years, the NLC sought to expand its influence, while refraining from publicly challenging the Federation hierarchy.' By July 1983, the presidents of 12 AFL-CIO international unions had joined the NLC, and eight more would eventually do so...
...8. NLC advertisement, New York Times, March 26, 1982...
...The Federation's 1983 convention resolved that the Sandinista government "has become dominated by totalitarian elements which have established a dictatorship," and in January 1985 AIFLD published a pamphlet entitled "Sandinista Repression of Nicaraguan Trade Unions...
...It has also shattered the long-standing foreign policy consensus within the Federation and called into question the policies and practices of its Department of International Affairs (DIA) and its Latin American arm, the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD...
...A principal objective underlying U.S...
...Between 1979 and 1984, nearly 11.5 million U.S...
...Between 1979 and 1984, nearly 11.5 million U.S...
...It was now out in the open, widely reported on by both the national and labor press...
...While pressure from below has helped stiffen the resolve of dissident union leaders, sanction from the top has legitimated the efforts of those working in the ranks...
...Sponsored by 24 national union leaders (17 of them AFLCIO union presidents) and 55 major religious leaders, the Mobilization attracted 75,000 to 100,000 marchers despite strong opposition from the AFL-CIO hierar- chy...
...7. The founding principles of the NLC were: 1. Support of self-determination for El Salvador with a negotiated settlement of the conflict...
...A principal objective underlying U.S...
...workers, it also means prison, and death for Central America's trade unionists...
...trade unionists, many representing their unions, attended a November 1986 conference of El Salvador's largest labor confederation, UNTS...
...Likewise, it is painfully hard to swallow the AFLCIO's rhetoric on democratic trade unionism, when faced with the shady, truly subversive activities of their American Institute for Free Labor Development, its meddling in the politics of Central America mirroring the role of the administration and, quite possibly, the CIA...
...this organi- zation . . . is in any way in league with Coors, Reagan, Hatch, etc...
...Quoted in Al Weinrub and William Bollinger, The AFL-CIO in Central America (Oakland: Labor Network on Central America, 1987) p. 35...
...AIFLD did send every congressperson a recently published delegation report blasting the Nicaraguan government, and four AFLClO Executive Council members signed on to a neo- conservative committee, "The Central American Peace and Democracy Watch," apparently designed to sabotage the Arias peace plan...
...Lane Kirkland's shunnlna decree went lanored...
...policy was even then reflected in the ranks of organized labor...
...government.' '4' Indeed, Ed Asner publicly criticized AIFLD at the 1985 convention and the April 25th Mobilization...
...Labor was highly visible in the opposition to contra aid, and almost invisible in the campaign for it...
...The step from opposition on the part of union members to union opposition, however, was not automatic or easy, since most workers believe that their unions should stick to bread-and-butter issues...
...Cantor and Schor give somewhat different but similar figures...
...AFL-CIO support for military aid resumed in late 1984, but was suspended agaln in Jan...
...Meanwhile, Bill Doherty was going around comparing Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega to Mussolini.28 The 1985 NLC report, however, stated that while "the Nicaraguan government has imposed restrictions on the democratic process, . . . it is not the oppressive totalitarian regime of President Reagan's pronounce- ments...
...See Ginny Cohen, "CLUW Supports Nuclear Freeze, Opposes Military Aid to Central America," Labor Notes (April 26, 1984...
...policy on Central America is a startling development...
...corporations...
...was the inevitable question at local meetings...
...6. Author's interview with David Dyson (staff director of the National Labor Committee in Support of Democracy and Human Rights in El Salvador, and Union Label director of the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union), Feb...
...3 And despite NLC and local labor committee efforts, AIFLD still exercises inordinate control over the information about Central America which reaches AFL-CIO officers and members...
...By mid-1984, at least 1500 Salvadoran union members had been killed or disappeared by the U.S.-armed security forces and death squads...
...In 1983 the local committees organized several labor delegations to the region, as well as speaking tours by Central American trade unionists...
...In a number of cases, these representatives are not speaking on behalf of any legitimate trade union organization recognized by the AFL-CIO...
...29 Armed with the NLC findings, rank-and-file activists and local labor committees took Nicaragua policy to state and local labor federation conventions...
...The NLC and its supporters also won an equally unprecedented and much more dramatic victory by initiating a debate on the convention floor...
...Meanwhile, rank-and-file activists, many of them elected or appointed union officials, consolidated bases of support in their union locals and began to work within their international unions and at the state and local federation level, achieving some surprising gains...
...Re32 REPORT ON THE AMERICAS AFL-CIO liam Doherty to issue a written "response to the distortions and disinformation of those who have consorted with the Sandinista government.'" When six members of a 1984 Philadelphia labor committee delegation, including the president of AFSCME's regional council, were arrested by the Honduran military, Doherty and then DIA director Irving Brown sent a telegram disavowing them...
...The open attack on DIA and AIFLD policies by international presidents meant that those policies were now fair game at all levels of the Federation, and that dissent would not mean automatic exclusion from the labor mainstream...
...foreign policy is partly responsible for their plight, undeterred by the hierarchy's attacks on those making that argument...
...The conference officially resolved to "recognize the nega- tive and divisive role of AIFLD in El Salvador, and support the right of Salvadorans to demand the expulsion of AD...
...policy in Central America as a labor issue, primarily because it threatens the economic interests of workers as union members and because it has a devastating impact on Central American trade unionists...
...There is no trade union freedom in El Salvador," it stated...
...workers by union delegations to and from the region, has also diminished the impact of accusations about communism...
...The April 25th Mobilization could not have happened without the sponsorship of the NLC members, the mobilizing efforts of the local labor committees and the long-term organizing done by rank-and-file activists...
...The delegation also found that a significant degree of trade union freedom existed in Nicaragua, especially when compared with El Salvador, where "[u]nion leaders and members who participate in normal trade union activities routinely risk imprisonment or murder...
...United States support for repressive regimes not only leads to concessions and job losses for U.S...
...policy in Central America as a labor issue, primarily because it threatens the economic interests of workers as union members and because it has a devastating impact on Central American trade unionists...
...NLC membership is theoretically restricted to interna- tional union presidents, who join as individuals...
...Probably very few had ever been to a peace demonstration before...
...Anti-AIFLD resolutions were debated, but defeated, at recent ACTWU and Connecticut state federation conventions, and several pamphlets and articles attacking AIFLD's role in Central America have been published.47 This increased attention has forced AIFLD to divert some of its resources from supporting U.S...
...labor movement is to withstand the current offensive from the Right and corporate America, it must also build a broader movement for social justice...
...When that committee met during the Executive Council session in February 1988, Shanker and other AIFLD allies attempted to reshape the resolution...
...2. Opposition to U.S...
...And to them I say, as I say to the U.S...
...foreign policy and contract benefits or wage scales are not self-evident, and few union members are aware that the AFL-CIO has any foreign policy at all, let alone that it spends as much money on foreign affairs as it does on domestic matters.5 HAT'S CENTRAL AMERICA GOT TO do with union business...
...It was the NLC, the local committees and rank-and-file activists who spoke for the labor movement when Congress debated contra aid in 1988...
...unionists who wanted to come to the aid of their beleaguered brothers and sisters in Central America...
...4 In issuing the report 12 AFL-CIO union presidents took the unprecedented step of directly contradicting the official Federation line...
...They frequently found receptive audiences in their unions, since the general public's disapproval of U.S...
...AIFLD-sponsored delegations have since become commonplace, as have their reports, which invariably praise Duarte and castigate the Sandinistas...
...Others came from public sector unions hurt by the Reagan Administration's shift from social to military spending, such as AFGE (federal employees) and AFSCME (state and municipal employ- ees...
...However, neither Kirkland nor the Federation itself endorsed contra aid...
...Local labor committees have been the target of choice: They have been repeatedly accused of promoting the "Marxist-Leninist guerrilla movement in El Salvador" and "affiliates of the communist" WFTU...
...Despite warnings from William Doherty, a large de- legation of U.S...
...Three groups have spearheaded labor opposition on Central America: national union leaders, local crossunion committees, and rank-and-file activists within particular unions...
...And the same Administration that directs repression in Central America is also spearheading the rightwing attack on unions in the U.S...
...policy in Central America and Southern Africa...
...On approximately 20 occasions over the next two years, NLC presidents wrote to Congress "on behalf of working men and women" to urge an end to contra aid...
...govern our labor movement belongs also to me...
...I N 1984, THE LOCAL COMMITTEES SENT several delegations of trade unionists to Central America, including a visit by West Coast regional labor leaders to Nicaragua...
...NLC unions were then able to achieve a slight modification in AFL-CIO policy at the Federation's October 1983 convention...
...The National Labor Committee's largest single contribution to date has been its pivotal role in the 1987 April 25th Mobilization for Justice and Peace in Central America and Southern Africa...
...The open attack on DIA and AIFLD policies by international presidents meant that those policies were now fair game at all levels of the Federation, and that dissent would not mean automatic exclusion from the labor mainstream...
...Kirkland then circulated a letter to all state and local federation officers calling their attention to the "shunning" decree and asking that they "not endorse, sponsor, or in any way support the Central American trade union tour...
...These REPORT ON THE AMERICAS included hospital workers (NUHHCE) and farmworkers (UFWA...
...In 1985, in preparation for the upcoming AFL-CIO convention, an NLC fact-finding delegation, including AFGE president Ken Blaylock and Woodworkers president Keith Johnson, traveled to Nicaragua and El Salvador...
...and I resent the inferences that [AIFLD employees are] not doing the work of the trade union movement...
...12 days after the 1970 invasion of Cambodia, the AFL- ClO Executive Council was able to offer President Nixon "full support," and labor never became a significant part of the broader antiwar movement...
...federations warning them that "individuals or groups purporting to represent organizations abroad are asking to address trade union meetings in behalf of various causes such as El Salvador...
...Letter to Congress May 7, 1984...
...In spite of these imposing obstacles, the 1985 AFLCIO convention in Anaheim produced a dramatic confrontation in which NLC members pressured the DIA into a last-minute compromise on the Central America resolution...
...Although the AFL-CIO took no official position on contra aid, it has vigorously promoted a view of Nicaragua that reinforces the Reagan Administration's arguments for such aid...
...corporations...
...Despite warnings from William Doherty, a large delegation of U.S...
...9. AIFLD, U.S...
...That scene contrasts vividly with the sea of union banners at the April 25, 1987 demonstration against U.S...
...In addition to such reports, in 1985 AIFLD issued three lengthy pamphlets defending its policies...
...Not a single labor leader withdrew his/her endorsement...
...The results were impressive: 2,000 hospital workers from Local 1199, 50 busloads of public employees from AFSCME Council 37, 200 REPORT ON THE AMERICAS R_ 34[lit is hard to believe the AFL-CIO's rhetoric about free speech abroad, in the face of their abysmal disregard for free speech and expression at home...
...AFL-CIO members cannot even get a detailed breakdown of AIFLD's nearly $15 million budget.3' And despite NLC and local labor committee efforts, AIFLD still exercises inordinate control over the information about Central America which reaches AFL-CIO officers and members...
...policy like the AFT's Shanker insisted on the convention floor that the resolution was compatible with support for contra aid, the NLC and its allies used it to buttress their intensive lobbying efforts, which certainly helped defeat contra aid on February 3 of this year...
...it does not make me proud...
...Through speaking tours, conferences and petition campaigns, they set about making opposition to the war in El Salvador a labor issue...
...political and economic dominance, and thereby make their countries less attractive havens for runaway U.S...
...Statement issued by AFLClO president George Meany and the AFL-CIO executive council on May 9, 1970...
...It recommended that the "United States . . . end all military aid...
...And I don't want any of Orrin Hatch's National Endowment for Democracy money to do it either.' Lane Kirkland was so stung that he concluded the debate with an emotional attack: I'll pass over the suggestion that . .. this organization . . . is in any way in league with Coors, Reagan, Hatch, etc...
...In 1981-82, for example, the Oregon, New Mexico and Maine state AFL-CIO federations, along with several Bay Area and East Coast local federations, passed resolutions condemning military aid to El Salvador...
...AFL-CIO foreign policy resolutions are invariably written by the DIA and then rubber-stamped by convention delegates who, even if they have the inclination to question them, usually don't have the information, confidence or time to do so...
...The directors were asked to "note that the group directly attacks Lane Kirkland and the AFLClO, and openly identifies with the Marxist-Leninist gurrellia [sic] movements in Central America...
...The government of El Salvador is making no real progress toward human rights...
...CLUW's executive board members voted to shun cooperation with the AIFLD scheme as soon as they caught wind of it.4' In several respects, the AFL-CIO's future viability is linked to the fortunes of the movement to change its foreign policy...
...The 1983 tour of Alejandro Molina Lara, a representative of the Salvadoran opposition labor federation FENASTRAS, drew large audiences-and the wrath of AFL-CIO president Lane Kirkland...
...Anti-AIFLD resolutions were debated, but defeated, at recent ACTWU and Connecticut state federation conventions, and several pamphlets and articles attacking AIFLD's role in Central America have been published...
...When Kirkland learned of the impending tour, he fired off a letter to the heads of all state and local labor 3 REPORT ON ThE AMERICAS Repo on t4 America AFL-CIO U.S...
...5 6 HAT'S CENTRAL AMERICA GOT TO do with union business...
...Buffeted by such economic adversity, many union members have been willing to listen to the argument that U.S...
...and during Reagan's first term alone, another three million jobs were lost because of the foreign trade deficit...
...jobs and deterioration of wages holds forth the possibility that the labor movement might eventually adopt an alternative approach to the devastating problems of capital mobility and international wage compe- tition, one based on international labor solidarity.49 If the U.S...
...Yet the AFL-CIO leadership's support for U.S...
...These F ROM 1983 TO 1985 ThE NATIONAL LABOR committee nearly doubled in size, and active cross-union labor committees formed in a number of cities.'3 In June 1983, the NLC sent a seven-member delegation, including ACTWU's Jack Sheinkman and AFCSME secretary-treasurer William Lucy, on a factfinding trip to El Salvador...
...You cannot commit injustice in my name...
...For, as we shall see, AFL-CIO support for U.S...
...They argue that it is irrational for the AFL-CIO to spurn its natural allies in Central America, the militant unions that often represent the majority of their labor movements precisely because they challenge U.S...
...policy in Cen- tral America, as in the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean, is to create and maintain a climate in which U.S.-based corporations have access to the region's economic resources with a minimum of restriction on their pursuit of profit...
...As one activist put it, "Reagan is trying to 'PATCOize' Nicaragua," referring to the Administration's crushing of the air traffic controllers union in 1981...
...foreign policy hurts workers in this country...
...2 Still, the DIA wrote nearly all of the resolution, which praised Duarte, condemned the Sandinistas and applauded the "restoration of democracy in Grenada...
...2 2 At the same time, the Federation's cold warriors have sought to intimidate and discredit their critics by redbaiting...
...AFL-CIO Executive Council reaolution, Feb...
...Through speaking tours, conferences and petition campaigns, they set about making opposition to the war in El Salvador a labor issue...
...The floor debate this time was brief...
...In the period 1965-85, approximately four million U.S...
...On approximately 20 occasions over the next two years, NLC presidents wrote to Congress "on behalf of working men and women" to urge an end to contra aid...
...In that respect, it illustrates the symbiotic and synergistic relationship between all three levels of the movement...
...Encouraged by the New York Committee's success in attracting hIgh-level support, in September Jack Sheinkman (then ACTWU secretary-treasurer, now president), Douglas Fraser (then United Auto Workers president), and William Winpisinger (International As- sociation of Machinists president) launched the National Labor Committee in Support of Democracy and Human Rights in El Salvador (NLC), with a letter urging Congress to "delete all military aid to El Salvador . . and to terminate our military presence there...
...Since then, AIFLD and DIA have worked overtime to win the hearts and minds of Federation members, through expense-paid delegations to Central America, broad circulation of reports and pamphlets, numerous articles in the AFL-CIO News, and speaking tours by representatives of AIFLD-sponsored Central American unions ("dog and pony shows," as one critic called them...
...plants and move south of the border, as Munsingwear did when it closed its unionized $7/hour factory in Minnesota and opened a non-union $3/day factory in El Salvador, displacing 500 U.S...
...policy like the AFT's Shanker insisted on the convention floor that the resolution was compatible with support for contra aid, the NLC and its allies used it to buttress their intensive lobbying efforts, which certainly helped defeat contra aid on February 3 of this year.* Labor was highly visible in the opposition to contra aid, and almost invisible in the campaign for it...
...1981...
...CLUW's executive board members voted to shun cooperation with the AIFLD scheme as soon as they caught wind of it...
...The horror and magnitude of violence against Central American unionists, brought home to many U.S...
...In spite of these imposing obstacles, the 1985 AFLCIO convention in Anaheim produced a dramatic confrontation in which NLC members pressured the DIA into a last-minute compromise on the Central America resolution...
...Yet the AFL-CIO leadership's support for U.S...
...Although the AFL-CIO took no official position on contra aid, it has vigorously promoted a view of Nicaragua that reinforces the Reagan Administration's arguments for such aid...
...companies to move to low-wage havens abroad...
...AIFLD-sponsored delegations have since become commonplace, as have their reports, which invariably praise Duarte and castigate the Sandinistas...
...AFL-CIO members cannot even get a detailed breakdown of AIFLD's nearly $15 million budget...
...Like other citizens, union members are also parents worried about their children being drafted, taxpayers upset about bankrolling corrupt generals, and people of conscience angered by the injustice and immorality of U.S...
...Its report called into question the AFL-CIO's condemnation of the Nicaraguan government...
...policy in Central America, as in the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean, is to create and maintain a climate in which U.S.-based corporations have access to the region's economic resources with a minimum of restriction on their pursuit of profit...
...This increased attention has forced AIFLD to divert some of its resources from supporting U.S...
...While the compromise language fell short of an explicit call for an end to contra aid, it did allow activists to argue that contra aid was incompatible with its call for a "negotiated settlement, rather than a military victory" in Nicaragua and El Salvador...
...4 In issuing the report 12 AFL-CIO union presidents took the unprecedented step of directly contradicting the official Federation line...
...yet not a single union president withdrew his/her endorsement, and the rank-and-file turned out in force...
...As in 1985, an eleventh-hour compromise followed tense behind-thescenes negotiations...
...The demonstration was also sponsored by 3 non-AFL-CIO unions UE, ILWU and NEA which have consistently opposed U.S...
...Now that open debate has taken place, it will be difficult for the leadership to go back to formulating foreign policy exclusively in the DIA office...
...After heated debate, NLC members blocked the move and the resolution stands as originally adopted.'5 America] is to start looking at AIFLD the major instrument of the Right within the AFL-CIO, a major instrument of the U.S...
...2 3 As we will see, in some cases the redbaiting of labor opponents of U.S...
...they have redbaited this march and hounded its supporters within the house of labor, and the resistors deserve our gratitude i and have my utmost respect...
...It was left to Ed Asner, president of the Screen Actors Guild, to make the most explicit attack on AIFLD policy...
...policy were adopted in Minnesota and Connecticut, and were debated vigorously in several other states...
...This challenge to the AFL-CIO leadership will have a major impact not only on the future of U.S...
...I don't want the labor movement used to do the dirty work of President Reagan or our large multinational corporations...
...Others came from public sector unions hurt by the Reagan Administration's shift from social to military spending, such as AFGE (federal employees) and AFSCME (state and municipal employees...
...ACTWU's Ed Clark believes that the "next logical step [for labor opponents of U.S...
...25, 1983...
...workers...
...policy has been more explicit and direct...
...Now that open debate has taken place, it will be difficult for the leadership to go back to formulating foreign policy exclusively in the DIA office...
...It began in 1981, when a small number of union members in Boston, New York, San Francisco, San Jose and Seattle, many of them veterans of the movement against the Vietnam War, set out to deny Reagan labor support for his war in Central America...
...Since then, AIFLD and DIA have worked overtime to win the hearts and minds of Federation members, through expense-paid delegations to Central America, broad circulation of reports and pamphlets, numerous articles in the AFL-CIO News, and speaking tours by representa- tives of AIFLD-sponsored Central American unions ("dog and pony shows," as one critic called them...
...4 " Joyce's cover letter provided a cogent summary: "Any one who knows or remembers the people's fronts put together by the communists in the 1930s will know precisely how the April Mobilization works and what it is all about...
...Since then, labor activists have continued to ignore the "shunning" decree...
...and Albert Shanker, American Federation of Teachers-signed advertisements in favor of contra aid...
...Although proponents of U.S...
...The AFL-CIO leadership's attacks have also run up against growing rank-and-file awareness that U.S...
...foreign policy, only during the Vietnam War did such opposition reach into the mainstream of the labor movement.2 Even so...
...policies in Central America and Southern Africa, but because they also believed it was in their interest as union members to stand in solidarity with their brothers and sisters in those regions...
...solutions critical of U.S...
...3 8 Solidarity and peace groups usually organize such demonstrations and then ask labor leaders to endorse it, invariably with few agreeing to do so...
...And by framing every issue in East-versus-West terms, DIA officials force opponents to challenge the sacrosanct tenets of the Cold War whenever they dispute DIA policy...
...The DIA and its regional institutes operate in considerable secrecy...
...Lane Kirkland can praise Duarte and echo Reagan's charges against the Sandinistas, but he cannot deliver labor support for unconditional military aid to El Salvador or the contras, nor can he stifle labor opposition to such policies...
...The self-destructive implications of the Federation's official stance on Central America were graphically illustrated by the spectacle of Kirkland defending Reagan's policy as a member of the Kissinger Commission at the same time that the AFL-CIO was trying to elect Mondale...
...Although proponents of U.S...
...and I resent the inferences that (AIFLD employees are] not doing the work of the trade union movement...
...For example, Kirkland's attack on the April 25th Mobiliza- tion antagonized many of the mainstream religious leaders co-sponsoring that event.50 The self-destructive implications of the Federation's official stance on Central America were graphically illustrated by the spectacle of Kirkland defending Reagan's policy as a member of the Kissinger Commission at the same time that the AFL-CIO was trying to elect Mondale...
...The recent publication of Tunnel Vision, by NLC staff member Daniel Cantor and Harvard professor Juliet Schor, should significantly alter the terms of debate within the Federation, as it demonstrates convincingly that current policies are counter-productive for U.S...
...The step from opposition on the part of union members to union opposition, however, was not automatic or easy, since most workers believe that their unions should stick to bread-and-butter issues...
...Labor solidarity resonates with self-interest, because the Central American unions under attack are potentially important allies in U.S...
...to see us bolstering the foreign policies of those whose stated goals include the destruction of our own labor movement like Orrin Hatch and Ronald Reagan...
...When we send our people out around the world, expose them to conditions of great danger, I think they deserve your support and not a knife in the back...
...By 1985, the AFL-CIO foreign affairs apparatus was waging its own version of "low-intensity conflict" against labor opponents of U.S...
...It recommended that the "United States . . . end all military aid Land] foster a dialogue . . . among all representative . factions in El Salvador, including the FDR- FMLN...
...workers...
...s Not a single labor leader withdrew his/her endorsement...
...While it is true that there have always been labor opponents of U.S...
...To that end, the United States backs regimes that repress militant unions and other threats to the investment climate...
...Also enclosed was an acceptable resolution and a copy of a publication by the dissident Labor Network on Central America...
...PhilipS Foner, American Labor and the Indochina War (New York: International Publishers, 1971...
...While the convention resolution reaffirmed the principle of "conditionality," it also endorsed the NLC's call for negotiations between the FDR-FMLN and the government of El Salvador...
...In 1983 the local committees organized several labor delegations to the region, as well as speaking tours by Central American trade unionists...
...5 Kirkland's letter generated some more explicit attacks...
...and the average contractural wage increase negotiated, 2.3%, was the lowest ever recorded by the Department of Labor.26 Buffeted by such economic adversity, many union members have been willing to listen to the argument that U.S...
...And Congress knows that AIFLD no longer speaks for all of labor...
...2. For example, when 123 union leaders signed a Feb...
...2 5 By 1985, union membership had fallen to 19% of the workforce, down from a high of 35% in 1953...
...Kirkland ended it abruptly after only four speakers, three of them procontra aid, and with at least three NLC supporters left at the mikes...
...Rising rank-and-file awareness of the connection between the Federation's support for intervention in Central America and the loss of U.S...
...it will come at the cost of a further decline in the fortunes of organized labor in the United States...
...Their widely-circulated report defended the Sandinistas, explicitly criticized the AFL-CIO's stand and provoked AIFLD director Wil*WFTU, the World Federation of Trade Unions, is the largest labor federation in the world, representing some 206 million workers...
...policies in Central *A month after the 1987 convention, Kirkland appointed Shanker, who is a member of SD/USA's national advisory council, to head the AFL-CIO's International Affairs Committee...
...In 1985, in preparation for the upcoming AFL-CIO convention, an NLC fact-finding delegation, including AFGE president Ken Blaylock and Woodworkers president Keith Johnson, traveled to Nicaragua and El Salvador...
...3. "In this crucial hour, President Nixon should have the full support of the American people...
...workers were "displaced" from their jobs by plant closings, plant relocations or permanent layoffs...
...In that respect, it illustrates the symbiotic and synergistic relationship between all three levels of the movement...
...Solidarity and peace groups usually organize such demonstrations and then ask labor leaders to endorse it, invariably with few agreeing to do so...
...This challenge to the AFL-CIO leadership will have a major impact not only on the future of U.S...
...B UOYED BY THE SUCCESS OF ThE DEMONstration, NLC forces went to the 1987 AFL-CIO convention determined to pass a resolution unconditionally opposing contra aid...
...The AFL-CIO refers to it as "Communist-led...
...To the extent that U.S...
...in practice, however, they represent their unions.'2 Meanwhile, rank-and-file activists, many of them elected or appointed union officials, consolidated bases of support in their union locals and began to work within their international unions and at the state and local federation level, achieving some surprising gains...
...It is headquartered in Prague, and is generally considered to be dominated by Soviet-bloc unions, although a number of progressive Latin American unions are affiliated, including Nicaragua's CST, Colombia's CSTC, the Dominican Republic's CUT and Venezuela's CUTV...
...I The AFL-CIO News warned its readers that the "rallies run counter to convention positions," and teachers president Shanker used his weekly New York Times advertisement to advise union members to stay away from the demonstration in order to "avoid the 'wrong crowd.' "' But the most vicious attack came from Bricklayers president Joyce, who circulated a 14-page "analysis" of the Mobilization written by union staffer Joel Freedman, a member of the obsessively anticommunist Social Democrats/USA (SD/USA), which exercises considerable influence over AFL-CIO foreign policy...
...policy in Central America undermines labor's strength at home and abroad...
...Central America policies has driven a wedge between organized labor and the allies it desperately needs...
...NLC unions were then able to achieve a slight modification in AFL-CIO policy at the Federation's October 1983 convention...
...Endorsement by labor leaders gave activists a broad mandate to mobilize the ranks and they did so, building on years of persistent organizing...
...In addition to such reports, in 1985 AIFLD issued three lengthy pamphlets defending its policies 21 By 1985, the AFL-CIO foreign affairs apparatus was waging its own version of "low-intensity conflict" against labor opponents of U.S...
...In June 1983, the NLC sent a seven-member delegation, including ACTWU's Jack Sheinkman and AFCSME secretary-treasurer William Lucy, on a factfinding trip to El Salvador...
...corporations are able to operate in Central America or elsewhere without such constraints as labor laws, union contracts and health and safety regulations, they are enticed to shut down their U.S...
...25, 1970 Washington Post advertisement against the war...
...You cannot deny my voice...
...Daniel Cantor and Juliet Schor, Tunnel Vision (Boston: South End Press, 1987), pp.44-45...
...In that same month, activists on the national staff of the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU) initiated the New York City Labor Committee in Support of De- mocracy and Human Rights in El Salvador, with 24 prominent labor leaders as founding members...
...The amended resolution read: The ICFTU-affiliated* CUS in Nicaragua has called for a withdrawal of U.S...
...The results were impressive: 2,000 hospital workers from Local 1199, 50 busloads of public employees from AFSCME Council 37, 200 REPORT ON THE AMERICAS Lane Kirkland's shunning dcrse went ignored...
...union members and was endorsed by many high-ranking regional and national leaders, including Winpisinger and Sheinkrnan...
...The amended resolution read: The ICFTU-affiliated5 CUS in Nicaragua has called for a withdrawal of U.S...
...Labor's Single Standard on Dictatorships, (Washington: November, 1988), pp.23-27...
...workers by union delegations to and from the region, has also diminished the impact of accusations about communism...
...Some represented unions, like UAW and ACTWU, with histories of opposition to the more extreme manifestations of cold-war ideology...
...In 1987, for example, when AIFLD tried to establish a "hemispheric organization for trade union women" using the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW) whose current president Joyce Miller also sits on the AFL-CIO Executive Council the infamous "shunning decree" was turned on its head...
...6 And the corporations that don't run away can still use the threat of doing so to extract concessions from their unionized employees...
...MAY/JUNE 1988 Salvadoran unionists are targeted by death squads...
...and Albert Shanker, American Federation of Teachers signed advertisements in favor of contra aid...
...4, 1985...
...And DIA director Tom Kahn recirculated Kirkland's "shunning decree," to keep member unions from meeting with visiting Central Americans...
...To that end, the United States backs regimes that repress militant unions and other threats to the investment climate...
...Finally, some joined at least in part as a result of membership agitation, as in the cases of the communications workers (CWA) and the service employees (SEIU...
...workers vote: Central America Is union business...
...They frequently found receptive audiences in their unions, since the general public's disapproval of U.S...
...2 In the past, such intense redbaiting would have scared off any mainstream labor participation...
...They came to this one not only because they shared the general public's opposition to U.S...
...jobs were lost due to capital flight...
...companies to move to low-wage havens abroad...
...3 7 No wonder Doherty wanted to keep AFL-CIO members away...
...The outcome of the current struggle within the AFLCIO over Central America is still in doubt...
...NLC advertisement, "And Now We Too Must Speak Out," New York Times, March 26, 1982...
...For example, Kirkland's attack on the April 25th Mobilization antagonized many of the mainstream religious leaders co-sponsoring that event...
...Along the way, the movement also established AFLCIO foreign policy as a legitimate topic of debate within the Federation, an accomplishment which in the long run may prove more significant than any immediate policy changes...
...Three groups have spearheaded labor opposition on Central America: national union leaders, local crossunion committees, and rank-and-file activists within particular unions...
...He thanks Ed Clark, Leslie Cohen, Dave Dyson, Steve Early...
...24, 1988...
...The DIA, however, wanted to link any call for a cutoff of contra funds to the "simultaneous withdrawal of Soviet/Cuban military assistance to the Sandinistas...
...We lend our voices to this call...
...assistance to El Salvador should be conditioned on reciprocal actions to bring MAY/JUNE 1988 29cfr Of% Uc AFL-CIO inciuaeo nospnai workers (1NUHHCt) and tarmworkers (UFWA...
...Mark Erlich, Tess Ewing and the Massachusetts Labor Committee, Paul Garver, Ken Geiser, Jim Green, Jim Kaplan, and Fred Soloway for their valuable assistance, but emphasizes that he is solely responsible for the contents of this arti- dc...
...And DIA director Tom Kahn recirculated Kirkland's "shunning decree," to keep member unions from meeting with visiting Central Americans...
...foreign policy hurts workers in this country...
...The 1983 tour of Alejandro Molina Lara, a representative of the Salvadoran opposition labor federation FENASTRAS, drew large audiences and the wrath of AFL-CIO president Lane Kirkland...
...While pressure from below has helped stiffen the resolve of dissident union leaders, sanction from the top has legitimated the efforts of those working in the ranks...
...8 Although the principle of "conditionality," or conditional support for military aid to El Salvador, has remained the cornerstone of the Federation's position, in practice the AFL-CIO has consistently proclaimed El Salvador a democracy, and has usually argued that the conditions for aid have been or are being met...
...Aaron Bernstein, "Is Big Labor Playing Global Vigilante...
...AIFLD/DIA "low intensity warfare" has not been very successful, however...
...Central America policies has driven a wedge between organized labor and the allies it desperately needs...
...The April 25th coalition was built by reversing this formula, providmg, in the opinion of NLC staff director David Dyson, "the key to [its] historic success...
...Three non-AFL-CIO union presidents have also joined the NLC: those of the National Education Association, the United Electrical Workers and the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union...
...Still others represented unions whose predominantly third world members benefited least and suffered most from the anti-labor offensive of the 1 980s...
...Solidarity and Self-Interest 1. Estimate of union marchers by Ken Blaylock, American Federation of Government Employees president...
...intervention...
...trade unionists, many representing their unions, attended a November 1986 conference of El Salvador's largest labor confederation, UNTS...
...foreign policy is partly responsible for their plight, undeterred by the hierarchy's attacks on those making that argument...
...9 The AFL-CiO News warned its readers that the "rallies run counter to convention positions," and teachers president Shanker used his weekly New York Times advertisement to advise union members to stay away from the demonstration in order to "avoid the 'wrong crowd.' "4 But the most vicious attack came from Bricklayers president Joyce, who circulated a 14-page "analysis" of the Mobilization written by union staffer Joel Freedman, a member of the obsessively anticommunist Social Democrats/USA (SD/USA), which exercises considerable influence over AFL-CIO foreign policy.4' Joyce's cover letter provided a cogent summary: "Any one who knows or remembers the people's fronts put together by the communists in the I 930s will know precisely how the April Mobilization works and what it is all about.' '42 In the past, such intense redbaiting would have scared off any mainstream labor participation...
...New York Times, April 26, 1987...
...To the extent that U.S...
...There is no trade union freedom in El Salvador," it stated...
...I regard any such suggestion Salvadoran unionists are targ.t.d by death squads...
...Kirkland ended it abruptly after only four speakers, three of them procontra aid, and with at least three NLC supporters left at the mikes...
...Finally, some joined at least in part as a result of membership agitation, as in the cases of the communications workers (CWA) and the service employees (SEIU...
...John Joyce, Bricklayers...
...Likewise, it is painfully hard to swallow the APt ClO's rhetoric on democratic trade unionism, when faced with the shady, truly subversive activities of their American Institute for Free Labor Development, its meddling in the politics of Central America mirroring the role of the administration and, quite possibly, the CIA...
...assistance to El Salvador should be conditioned on reciprocal actions to bring MAY/JUNE 1988 29 role in thwarting Reagan's efforts to win public and congressional support for his policy...
...5. In 1985, the AFL-CIO's domestic budget was $45 million and its foreign budget was $43 million...
...labor's battle with transnational corporations...
...and Free Trade Union Institute, AFL-CIO" (New York: National Committee on Religion and Labor, n/d...
...Their report shattered the AFL-CIO's blockade of accurate information from Central America and forced the El Salvador debate into the mainstream of the Federation...
...FROM 1983 TO 1985 THE NATIONAL LABOR committee nearly doubled in size, and active cross-union labor committees formed in a number of cities...
...One group of marchers was heard chanting, "Lane Kirkland, you said No...
...labor's involvement in Central America, but also on the viability of the Federation itself...
...The Federation's 1983 convention resolved that the Sandinista government "has become dominated by totalitarian elements which have estab- lished a dictatorship," and in January 1985 AIFLD published a pamphlet entitled "Sandinista Repression of Nicaraguan Trade Unions...
...foreign policy and contract benefits or wage scales are not self-evident, and few union members are aware that the AFL-CIO has any foreign policy at all, let alone that it spends as much money on foreign affairs as it does on domestic matters...
...On the other side, AIFLD's Doherty and three international union presidents Frank Drozak, Seafarers...
...ALTHOUGH THE FLOOR DEBATE LASTED only 90 minutes, it changed forever the character of the ongoing struggle within the AFL-CIO over Central America...
...And Congress knows that AIFLD no longer speaks for all of labor...
...When we send our people out around the world, expose them to conditions of great danger, I think they deserve your support and not a knife in the back...
...policies in Central America and Southern Africa, but because they also believed it was in their interest as union members to stand in solMAY/JUNE 1988 idarity with their brothers and sisters in those regions...
...9, 1983, quoted in Stuart Howard, "In Our Name," International Labour Reports (November/December 1985...
...Kirkland further decreed that before "any such group or individual is granted permission to address any AFL-CIO body to discuss matters of international importance, their authenticity should be verified through the AFL-CIO Department of International Affairs...
...7 From the outset, the NLC's unconditional opposition to military aid to El Salvador and its insistence that there "is no democracy" in that country placed it in opposition to official AFL-CIO policy, which maintained that "[a]ny future U.S...
...The conference officially resolved to "recognize the negative and divisive role of AIFLD in El Salvador, and support the right of Salvadorans to demand the expulsion of AIFLD...
...domestic violence under control and to institute democratic reforms that improve the conditions of work- ers...
...2 8 The 1985 NLC report, however, stated that while "the Nicaraguan government has imposed restrictions on the democratic process, . . . it is not the oppressive totalitarian regime of President Reagan's pronouncements...
...The AFL-CIO leadership tried its hardest to keep union members away from the march...
...The status of the NLC members has provided an umbrella of legitimacy, as have the solid labor credentials of most rank-and-file activists...
...Seven months later, labor played a prominent and vital role in the coalition that successfully pressured Congress to suspend aid to the Nicaraguan contras...
...and the average contractural wage increase negotiated, 2.3%, was the lowest ever recorded by the Department of Labor...
...AIFLD did send every congressperson a recently published delegation report blasting the Nicaraguan government, and four AFLCIO Executive Council members signed on to a neoconservative committee, "The Central American Peace and Democracy Watch," apparently designed to sabotage the Arias peace plan...
...policy abroad to justifying such support to AFL-CIO members, decreasing somewhat AIFLD's freedom to act as though it were a semi-autonomous arm of the State Department...
...Re32 REPORT ON THE AMERICAS REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 32solutions critical of U.S...
...The government of El Salvador is making no real progress toward human rights...
...The AFL-CIO refers to it as "Communist-led...
...The connections between U.S...
...jobs and deterioration of wages holds forth the possibility that the labor movement might eventually adopt an alternative approach to the devastating problems of capital mobility and international wage competition, one based on international labor solidarity...
...Kirkland accused the Mobilization of being orchestrated by organizations "which openly support the Marxist-Leninist guerrillas in El Salvador and . . . the Sandinista government of Nicaragua...
...Some represented unions, like UAW and ACTWU, with histories of opposition to the more extreme manifestations of cold-war ideology...
...In that same month, activists on the national staff of the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU) initiated the New York City Labor Committee in Support of Democracy and Human Rights in El Salvador, with 24 prominent labor leaders as founding members...
...Its report called into question the AFL-CIO's condemnation of the Nicaraguan government...
...The National Labor Committee's largest single contribution to date has been its pivotal role in the 1987 April 25th Mobilization for Justice and Peace in Central America and Southern Africa...
...Y JULY 1981, OVER 100 UNION LOCALS had responded to appeals to enlightened self-interest and solidarity by passing resolutions opposing military aid to El Salvador...
...Sponsored by 24 national union leaders (17 of them AFLCIO union presidents) and 55 major religious leaders, the Mobilization attracted 75,000 to 100,000 marchers despite strong opposition from the AFL-CIO hierarchy...
...The DIA, however, wanted to link any call for a cutoff of contra funds to the "simultaneous withdrawal of Soviet/Cuban mili- tary assistance to the Sandinistas...
...role in thwarting Reagan's efforts to win public and congressional support for his policy...
...John Joyce, Bricklayers...
...Rank-and-file activists and local labor committees also stepped up efforts, organizing several tours by Central American unionists...
...policies in Central 5A month after the 1987 convention, Kirkland appointed Shanker, who is a member of SD/USA's national advisory council, to head the AFL-CIO's International Affairs Committee...
...The AFL-CIO leadership tried its hardest to keep union members away from the march...
...As in 1985, an eleventh-hour compromise followed tense behind-thescenes negotiations...
...workers, it also means prison and death for Central America's trade unionists...
...Also enclosed was an acceptable resolution and a copy of a publication by the dissident Labor Network on Central America...
...17 Kirkland then circulated a letter to all state and local federation officers calling their attention to the "shunning" decree and asking that they "not endorse, sponsor, or in any way support the Central American trade union tour...
...In 1981-82, for example, the Oregon, New Mexico and Maine state AFL-CIO federations, along with several Bay Area and East Coast local federations, passed resolutions condemning military aid to El Salvador...
...During its first years, the NLC sought to expand its influence, while refraining from publicly challenging the Federation hierarchy.'o By July 1983, the presidents of 12 AFL-CIO international unions had joined the NLC, and eight more would eventually do so...
...workers were "displaced" from their jobs by plant closings, plant relocations or permanent layoffs.25 By 1985, union membership had fallen to 19% of the workforce, down from a high of 35% in 1953...
...In addition to tours and delegations, local labor committees have also organized national campaigns to protest the repression of Salvadoran unions, helped establish official "sister-union" relationships with Salvadoran and Nicaraguan unions, collected material aid, and organized conferences, the most recent of which explicitly attacked AIFLD for operating "In Our Name-Against Our Interests...
...The AFL-CIO leadership was sufficiently concerned that it sent its regional directors a copy of "a resolution on Central America that has been introduced in several state federation conventions . . [and that] does not conform to AFL-CIO policy in several respects," instructing them to inform the national office if they learned of similar resolutions...
...Along the way, the movement also established AFLCIO foreign policy as a legitimate topic of debate within the Federation, an accomplishment which in the long run may prove more significant than any immediate policy changes...
...and] foster a dialogue . . . among all representative...
...in practice, however, they represent their unions...
...and not a single one of hundreds of union members canvassed had any idea at all of the existence of AIFLD...
...50...
...Meanwhile, Bill Doherty was going around comparing Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega to Mussolini...
...AFL-CIO foreign policy resolutions are invariably written by the DIA and then rubber-stamped by convention delegates who, even if they have the inclination to question them, usually don't have the information, confidence or time to do so...
...Business Week, Nov...
...In 1987 the Committee's staff targeted key Congressional Democrats with large labor constituencies for rank-and-file pressure and helped organize the legislative directors-those who hand out the political contributions-of 13 international unions to lobby against contra aid...
...UOYED BY THE SUCCESS OF THE DEMONstration, NLC forces went to the 1987 AFL-CIO convention determined to pass a resolution unconditionally opposing contra aid...
...29 Armed with the NLC findings, rank-and-file activists and local labor committees took Nicaragua policy to state and local labor federation conventions...
...While this high-visibility campaign has undoubtedly persuaded some AFL-CIO members, it has also had the unintended effect of calling attention to the Federation's entanglement in the Administration's war, thereby fueling an already heated debate.24 Efforts to isolate and intimidate opponents through redbaiting have also been relatively ineffective...
...labor's battle with trans- national corporations...
...and Rev...
...We came anyway, Ho, Ho, Ho...
...United States support for repressive regimes not only leads to concessions and job losses for U.S...
...RepFo 0. 4 Ameri AFL-CIO as beneath contempt...
...The plight of Salvadoran, Honduran and Guatemalan union members and the still vital labor principle that "an injury to one is an injury to all" have moved many AFL-CIO members to oppose U.S...
...unionists who wanted to come to the aid of their beleaguered brothers and sisters in Central America...
...policy abroad to justifying such support to AFL-CIO members, decreasing somewhat AIFLD's freedom to act as though it were a semi-autonomous arm of the State Department...
...The April 25th Mobilization could not have happened without the sponsorship of the NLC members, the mobilizing efforts of the local labor committees and the long-term organizing done by rank-and-file activists...
...A N IMPORTANT PART OF THE FIGHT OVER the federation's Central America policy has focused on the wording of convention resolutions, the official statements of policy which guide the activities of the DIA and, through it, AIFLD...
...T HE MOVEMENT TO CHANGE LABOR'S foreign policy has succeeded in placing some limited but important restraints on the AFL-CIO'S cold warriors...
...Times, April 29, 1987...
...4' The floor debate this time was brief...
...workers.6 And the corporations that don't run away can still use the threat of doing so to extract concessions from their unionized employees...
...When critics do break through the DIA's veil of secrecy, near-monopoly on information and aura of expertise, the DIA can fall back on the power of the AFLCIO presidency and on the hegemony of cold-war ideology within the Federation...
...The director of the West Coast AFL-CIO region labeled Lara an "interloper-terrorist" and FENASTRAS "worse than the PLO," causing the cancellation of a few speaking invitations.'6 Undeterred, the West Coast labor committees organized a fall 1983 tour of labor leaders from El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala which reached about 6,000 U.S...
...They came to this one not only because they shared the general public's opposition to U.S...
...The AFL-CIO leadership was sufficiently concerned that it sent its regional directors a copy of "a resolution on Central America that has been introduced in several state federation conventions [and that] does not conform to AFL-CIO policy in several respects," instructing them to inform the national office if they learned of similar resolutions...
...Local labor committees have been the target of choice: They have been repeatedly accused of promoting the "Marxist-Leninist guerrilla movement in El Salvador" and "affiliates of the communist" WFFU.23 As we will see, in some cases the redbaiting of labor opponents of U.S...
...I]t is hard to believe the AFL-CIO's rhetoric about free speech abroad, in the face of their abysmal disregard for free speech and expression at home...
...And I don't want any of Oriin Hatch's National Endowment for Democracy money to do it either...
...Not surprisingly, most of the labor marchers represented unions whose members have borne the brunt of Reagan's economic and social policies: predominantly minority workers at the bottom of the wage scale, public sector workers squeezed by budget cuts, and workers in labor-intensive industries who are most vulnerable to foreign competition...
...Kirkland's letter generated some more explicit attacks...
...SINCE 1987 THE TIDE WITHIN THE LABOR movement has begun to turn, with anti-interventionists scoring victories in the streets of Washington, the backrooms of the AFL-CIO convention and the halls of Congress...
...The plight of Salvadoran, Honduran and Guatemalan union members and the still vital labor principle that "an injury to one is an injury to all" have moved many AFL-CIO members to oppose U.S...
...The DIA and its regional institutes operate in considerable secrecy...
...While this high-visibility campaign has undoubtedly persuaded some AFL-CIO members, it has also had the unintended effect of calling attention to the Federation's entanglement in the Administration's war, thereby fueling an already heated debate...
...In a number of cases, these representatives are not speaking on behalf of any legitimate trade union organization recognized by the AFL-CIO...
...Jack Scott, Yankee Unions, Go Home...
...intervention abroad.' The protest was co-sponsored by the presidents of 17 AFL-CIO international unions, representing nearly half the Federation's total Dave Slaney is the president of United Steelworkers of America Local 2431...
...I don't want the labor movement used to do the dirty work of President Reagan or our large multinational corporations...
...Union activists, together with the churches, have been primarily responsible for broadening the Central America movement beyond student and peace groups, seriously undermining Reagan's efforts to build a national consensus for his war...
...The revival, if not the very survival, of organized labor in the United States requires some restriction on the ability of U.S...
...You cannot deny my voice...
...AFL-CIO redbaiting often seemed irrelevant to U.S...
...Initiatives by local committees have created the political space for the NLC to challenge the AFL-CIO leadership, while NLC reports have provided invaluable ammunition for activists at all levels...
...Fred Hirsch, An Analysis of Our AFL-CIO Role in Latin America (San Jose, CA, 1974), p.51...
...Lane Kirkland, like his predecessors, has at his disposal considerable perks and penalties that, subtly employed, give him influence over potentially dissident union officials...
...AIFLD/DIA "low intensity warfare" has not been very successful, however...
...labor's involvement in Central America, but also on the viability of the Federation itself...
...1988 meeting, and again in the April 1988 issue of the DIA's monthly the Bulletin, where it was characterized as favoring a policy that "paves the way for dictatorships of the left...
...The revival, if not the very survival, of organized labor in the United States requires some restriction on the ability of U.S...
...The emergence of broad-based and effective labor opposition to U.S...
...MAY/JUNE 1988 fihiates...
...19en six members of a 1984 Philadelphia labor committee delegation, including the president of AFSCME's regional council, were arrested by the Honduran military, Doherty and then DIA director Irving Brown sent a telegram disavowing them.2 AIFLD tried to regain the offensive in November 1984 by sending seven New England regional labor leaders to Central America...
...Also, Resolution 90 adopted at November 1981 convention...
...AFL-CIO as beneath contempt...
...2 7 At the same time, the contras were targeting teachers, healthcare workers and farm laborers...
...labor movement is to withstand the current offensive from the Right and corporate America, it must also build a broader movement for social justice...
...Such a policy hurts workers in this country...
...Ed Asner, president-emeritus of the Screen Actors Guild, speaking at the April 25 Mobilization in 1987 ACTWU garment workers from New Bedford, Massachusetts, and so on...
...Ed Clark, an ACTWU vice-president, pointed out that the "contra war is supported by Ronald Reagan and Joe Coors and every right wing nut case in the United States," and argued that the AFL-CIO should oppose all aid to "the fascist contras...
...The April 25th coalition was built by reversing this formula, providing, in the opinion of NLC staff director David Dyson, "the key to [its] historic success...
...Labor solidarity resonates with self-interest, because the Central American unions under attack are potentially important allies in U.S...
...It was the NLC, the local committees and rank-and-file activists who spoke for the labor movement when Congress debated contra aid in 1988...
...4 5 America] is to start looking at AIFLD-the major instrument of the Right within the AFL-CIO, a major instrument of the U.S...
...9 In the Federation's eyes, Duarte has been God's gift to Salvadoran labor...
...The connections between U.S...
...Lane Kirkland was so stung that he concluded the debate with an emotional attack: I'll pass over the suggestion that...
...U 36 REPORT ON THE AMERICAS SoAFL-CI AOeca AFL-CIO ance to the contras as well as the withdrawal of Soviet/Cuban military assistance to the Sandinistas...
...Rising rank-and-file awareness of the connection between the Federation's support for intervention in Central America and the loss of U.S...
...The book was subjected to a bitter attack by AIFLD at the AFL-CIO International Affairs Committee Feb...
...it will come at the cost of a further decline in the fortunes of organized labor in the United States...
...government, our labor movement belongs also to me...
...It is certain, however, that should the movement for a new Federation policy toward that region be defeated, it will not only give the Administration a freer hand in Central America...
...Vancouver: New Star Books, 1978), chapter 19...
...We came anyway, Ho, Ho, Ho...
...It has also shattered the long-standing foreign policy consensus within the Federation and called into question the policies and practices of its Department of International Affairs (DIA) and its Latin American arm, the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD...
...Federal employees union president Ken Blaylock led off by telling delegates: when I look at han, I look at Vietnam, I look at Nicaragua, I look at El Salvador, Guatemala, I would like for one time for my government to be on the side of the people, not on the side of rich dictators living behind high walls...
...It was left to Ed Asner, president of the Screen Actors Guild, to make the most explicit attack on AIFLD policy: it does not make me proud . . . to see us bolstering the foreign policies of those whose stated goals include the destruction of our own labor movement like Orrin Hatch and Ronald Reagan...
...And to them I say, as I say to the U.S...
...Three non-AFL-CIO union presidents have also joined the NLC: those of the National Education Association, the United Electrical Workers and the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union...
...Kirkland accused the Mobilization of being orchestrated by organizations "which openly support the Marxist-Leninist guerrillas in El Salvador and . . . the Sandinista government of Nicaragua...
...Initiatives by local committees have created the political space for the NLC to challenge the AFL-CIO leadership, while NLC reports have provided invaluable ammunition for activists at all levels...
...government.'"" Indeed, Ed Asner publicly criticized AIFLD at the 1985 convention and the April 25th Mobilization...
...A LThOUGH THE FLOOR DEBATE LASTED only 90 minutes, it changed forever the character of the ongoing struggle within the AFL-CIO over Central America...
...Rank-and-file activists and local labor committees also stepped up efforts, organizing several tours by Central American unionists...
...4 8 In several respects, the AFL-CIO's future viability is linked to the fortunes of the movement to change its foreign policy...
...After heated debate, NLC members blocked the move and the resolution stands as originally adopted...
...We lend our voices to this call...
...When critics do break through the DIA's veil of secrecy, near-monopoly on information and aura of expertise, the DIA can fall back on the power of the AFLCIO presidency and on the hegemony of cold-war ideology within the Federation...
...The AFL-CIO leadership's attacks have also run up against growing rank-and-file awareness that U.S...
...Yet by 1983, seven presidents of union locals in Massachusetts were already declaring that "this time organized labor will not line up behind the President in support of an unjust war...
...Endorsement by labor leaders gave activists a broad mandate to mobilize the ranks and they did so, building on years of persistent organizing...
...4 The refusal of a significant portion of the AFL-CIO to fall in line on Central America has played a major REPORT ON ThE AMERiCAS Shattering the AFL-CIO consensus: Workers march on Washington, April 25, 1987...
...In addition to tours and delegations, local labor committees have also organized national campaigns to protest the repression of Salvadoran unions, helped establish official "sister-union" relationships with Salvadoran and Nicaraguan unions, collected material aid, and organized conferences, the most recent of which explicitly attacked AIFLD for operating "In Our Name Against Our Interests.' S INCE 1987 ThE TIDE WITHIN THE LABOR movement has begun to turn, with anti-interventionists scoring victories in the streets of Washington, the backrooms of the AFL-CIO convention and the halls of Congress...
...When Kirkland learned of the impending tour, he fired off a letter to the heads of all state and local labor 30Colombian coalmlner...
...filiates...
...jobs were lost due to capital flight...
...You cannot commit injustice in my name...
...3. Affirmation of basic democratic rights for the people of El Salvador...
...Union activists, together with the churches, have been primarily responsible for broadening the Central America movement beyond student and peace groups, seriously undermining Reagan's efforts to build a national consensus for his war...
...And by framing every issue in East-versus-West terms, DIA officials force opponents to challenge the sacrosanct tenets of the Cold War whenever they dispute DLA policy...
...T HE MOVEMENT TO CHANGE LABOR'S foreign policy has succeeded in placing some limited but important restraints on the AFL-CIO'S cold warriors...
...they have redbaited this march and hounded its supporters within the house of labor, and the resistors deserve our gratitudeand have my utmost respect...
...It began in 1981, when a small number of union members in Boston, New York, San Francisco, San Jose and Seattle, many of them veterans of the movement against the Vietnam War, set out to deny Reagan labor support for his war in Central America...
...factions in El Salvador, including the FDRFMLN...
...An informal survey conducted in 1974 found that "no more than two out of 50 labor officials tqueriedj knew even the barest details about [AIIFLDJ...
...plants and move south of the border, as Munsingwear did when it closed its unionized $7/hour factory in Minnesota and opened a non-union $3/day factory in El Salvador, displacing 500 U.S...
...4 9 If the U.S...
...The status of the NLC members has provided an umbrella of legitimacy, as have the solid labor credentials of most rank-and-file activists...
...In 1987 the Committee's staff targeted key Congres- sional Democrats with large labor constituencies for rank-and-file pressure and helped organize the legisla- tive directors those who hand out the political contributions of 13 international unions to lobby against contra aid...
...The horror and magnitude of violence against Central American unionists, brought home to many U.S...
...AFL-CIO redbaiting often seemed irrelevant to U.S...
...Such a policy hurts workers in this country...
...corporations are able to operate in Central America or elsewhere without such constraints as labor laws, union contracts and health and safety regulations, they are enticed to shut down their U.S...
...While the convention resolution reaffirmed the principle of "conditionality," it also endorsed the NLC's call for negotiations between the FDR-FMLN and the government of El Salvador...
...ACTWU's Ed Clark believes that the "next logical step [for labor opponents of U.S...
...In addition, Vietnam taught many union members to be wary of knee-jerk anticommunism...
...Carol Somplatsky-Jarman, "Report on the N.E.D...
...I regard any such suggestion MAY/JUNE 1988 I I I 33Ut A0'e...
...See, for example, Robert S. Greenberger, "Labor Unity is Periled as Debate Heightens Over Foreign Policy," Wall Street Journal, Oct...
...federations warning them that "individuals or groups purporting to represent organizations abroad are asking to address trade union meetings in behalf of various causes such as El Salvador...
...The NLC and its supporters also won an equally unprecedented and much more dramatic victory by initiating a debate on the convention floor...
...IS...
...Their report shattered the AFL-CIO's blockade of accurate information from Central America and forced the El Salvador debate into the mainstream of the Federation...
...Federal employees union president Ken Blaylock led off by telling delegates...
...They argue that it is irrational for the AFL-CIO to spurn its natural allies in Central America, the militant unions that often represent the majority of their labor movements precisely because they challenge U.S...
...On the other side, AIFLD's Doherty and three international union presidents-Frank Drozak, Seafarers...
...workers vote: Central America Is union business...
...It was now out in the open, widely reported on by both the national and labor press...
...The outcome of the current struggle within the AFLCIO over Central America is still in doubt...
...The directors were asked to "note that the group directly attacks Lane Kirkland and the AFLCIO, and openly identifies with the Marxist-Leninist gurrellia [sic] movements in Central America...
...For most of 1983 and 1984, the AFL-CIO officially opposed military aid to El Salvador on the grounds that insufficient progress was being made in prosecuting the killers of AIFLD employees Michael Hammer and Mark Pearlman and their Salvadoran colleague, Jos8 Rodolfo Viera...
...Ed Clark, an ACTWU vice-president, pointed out that the "contra war is supported by Ronald Reagan and Joe Coors and every right wing nut case in the United States," and argued that the AFL-CIO should oppose all aid to "the fascist contras...
...However, neither Kirk- land nor the Federation itself endorsed contra aid...
...military assist*ICFTU, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, is comprised mainly of social democratic federations, and includes the AFL-CIO and most AIFLD-supported Latin American union organizations...
...37 No wonder Doherty wanted to keep AFL-CIO members away...
...When that committee met during the Executive Council session in February 1988, Shanker and other AIFLD allies attempted to reshape the resolution...
...policy has been more explicit and direct...
...It is headquartered in Prague, and is generally considered to be dominated by Soviet-bloc unions, although a number of progressive Latin American unions are affiliated, including Nicaragua's CST, Colombia's CSTC, the Dominican Republic's CUT and Venezuela's CUTV...
...In 1984, in response to CIA mining of Nicaragua's harbors, its concerns were broadened to include opposition to contra aid...
...and during Reagan's first term alone, another three million jobs were lost because of the foreign trade deficit...
...union members and was endorsed by many high-ranking regional and national leaders, including Winpisinger and Sheinkman...
...Those resolutions are then interpreted and implemented by DIA functionaries without any meaningful oversight or control by the international unions...
...For, as we shall see, AFL-CIO support for U.S...
...Probably very few had ever been to a peace demonstration before...
...Not surprisingly, most of the labor marchers represented unions whose members have borne the brunt of Reagan's economic and social policies: predominantly minority workers at the bottom of the wage scale, public sector workers squeezed by budget cuts, and workers in labor-intensive industries who are most vulnerable to foreign competition...
...military assist9ICFTU, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, is comprised mainly of social democratic federations, and includes the AFL-CIO and most AIFLD-supported Latin American union organizations...
...MAY/JUNE 1988 I, 4 Ae'z AFL-CIO ance to the contras as well as the withdrawal of SovietiCuban military assistance to the Sandinistas...
...In 1987, for example, when AIFLD tried to establish a "hemispheric organization for trade union women" using the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW)-whose current president Joyce Miller also sits on the AFL-CIO Executive Council---the infamous "shunning decree" was turned on its head...
...While the compromise language fell short of an explicit call for an end to contra aid, it did allow activists to argue that contra aid was incompatible with its call for a "negotiated settlement, rather than a military victory" in Nicaragua and El Salvador.32 Still, the DIA wrote nearly all of the resolution, which praised Duarte, condemned the Sandinistas and applauded the "restoration of democracy in Grenada...
...AFL-CIO Free Trade Union News, March 1981, p.4...
...In addition, Vietnam taught many union members to be wary of knee-jerk anticommunism...
...Ed Asner, president-emeritus of the Screen Actors Guild, speaking at the April 25 Mobilization in 1987 ACTWU garment workers from New Bedford, Massachusetts, and so on...
...As one activist put it, "Reagan is trying to 'PATCOize' Nicaragua," referring to the Administration's crushing of the air traffic controllers union in 1981...
...policy was even then reflected in the ranks of organized labor...
...They also started a slick new DIA newsletter, the Bulletin, launched a program which sends "AFL-CIO labor volunteers" to live for a month with the families of "democratic trade unionists" in Nicaragua, and, most recently, held "regional conferences on international affairs" in Cleveland and San Francisco.22 At the same time, the Federation's cold warriors have sought to intimidate and discredit their critics by redbaiting...
...MAY/JUNE 1988 'ot 31efr , Ue AFL-CIO ham Doherty to issue a written "response to the distortions and disinformation of those who have consorted with the Sandinista govement...
...was the inevitable question at local meetings...
...7 From the outset, the NLC's unconditional opposition to military aid to El Salvador and its insistence that there "is no democracy" in that country placed it in opposition to official AFL-CIO policy, which maintained that "[a]ny future U.S...
...1988 in response to Central America...
...Kirkland further decreed that before "any such group or individual is granted permission to address any AFL-CIO body to discuss matters of international importance, their authenticity should be verified through the AFL-CIO Department of International Af- fairs...
...political and economic dominance, and thereby make their countries less attractive havens for runaway U.S...
...yet not a single union president withdrew his/her endorsement, and the rank-and-file turned out in force...
...Efforts to isolate and intimidate opponents through redbaiting have also been relatively ineffective...
...NLC membership is theoretically restricted to international union presidents, who join as individuals...
...when I look at Iran, I look at Vietnam, I look at Nicaragua, I look at El Salvador, Guatemala, I would like for one time for my government to be on the side of the people, not on the side of rich dictators living behind high walls...
...policy were adopted in Minnesota and Connecticut, and were debated vigorously in several other states...
...It is certain, however, that should the movement for a new Federation policy toward that region be defeated, it will not only give the Administration a freer hand in Central America...
...30 A N IMPORTANT PART OF ThE FIGHT OVER the federation's Central America policy has focused on the wording of convention resolutions, the official statements of policy which guide the activities of the DIA and, through it, AIFLD...
...But over the past seven years, more and more AFL-CIO members have come to view U.S...
...2 0 AIFLD tried to regain the offensive in November 1984 by sending seven New England regional labor leaders to Central America...
...Several religious leaders, including Arie Brouwer, secretary-gen- eral of the National Council of Churches, wrote to Kirkland expressing their displeasure over his attack...
...B Y JULY 1981, OVER 100 UNION LOCALS had responded to appeals to enlightened self-interest and solidarity by passing resolutions opposing military aid to El Salvador...
...Lane Kiridand, like his predecessors, has at his disposal considerable perks and penalties that, subtly employed, give him influence over potentially dissident union officials...
...armed security forces and death squads.27 At the same time, the contras were targeting teachers, healthcare workers and farm laborers...
...membership, but was condemned by AFL-CIO president Lane Kirkland...
...Almost certainly in response to a similar East Coast tour in the fall of 1985, endorsed by eight international union presidents, Kirkland and the DIA persuaded the AFL-CIO Executive Council to issue a statement on August 14 calling upon "all American [sic] trade un- ionists to shun contacts with the WFTU and its afI N 1984, THE LOCAL COMMI1TEES SENT several delegations of trade unionists to Central America, including a visit by West Coast regional labor leaders to Nicaragua...
...or any other military intervention in El Salvador...
...Lane Kirkland can praise Duarte and echo Reagan's charges against the Sandinistas, but he cannot deliver labor support for unconditional military aid to El Salvador or the contras, nor can he stifle labor opposition to such policies...
...See Harry Bernstein, "Dupe Should Not be a Union Label," L.A...
...Their widely-circulated report defended the Sandinistas, explicitly criticized the AFL-CIO's stand and provoked ALFLD director WilWFU, the World Federation of Trade Unions, is the largest labor federation in the world, representing some 206 million workers...
...Encouraged by the New York Committee's success in attracting high-level support, in September Jack Sheinkman (then ACTWU secretary-treasurer, now president), Douglas Fraser (then United Auto Workers president), and William Winpisinger (International Association of Machinists president) launched the National Labor Committee in Support of Democracy and Human Rights in El Salvador (NLC), with a letter urging Congress to "delete all military aid to El Salvador . . . and to terminate our military presence there...
...6 Undeterred, the West Coast labor committees organized a fall 1983 tour of labor leaders from El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala which reached about 6,000 U.S...
...The director of the West Coast AFL-CIO region labeled Lara an "interloper-terrorist" and FENASTRAS "worse than the PLO," causing the cancellation of a few speaking invitations...
...But over the past seven years, more and more AFL-CIO members have come to view U.S...
...One group of marchers was heard chanting, "Lane Kirkland, you said No...
Vol. 22 • May 1988 • No. 3
