Unions Look South
Spalding, Hobart A. Jr.
LAST JANUARY, JESSE FRIEDMAN OF THE AFL-CIO'S American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD) addressed the executive board of the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers' Union (ACTWU)....
...foreign policy team, dealing with labor and the working class...
...sphere of influence...
...government and U.S...
...5. The AFL first proposed a new Latin American regional body in 1943...
...Since then, business funding has virtually ceased...
...naval power to conquer foreign markets, and it subsequently backed other U.S...
...influence overseas could help smooth the ups and downs of the business cycle at home, through increased exports and the armaments industry, thus keeping people em- ployed...
...U.S.AID general grant, $9,237,000...
...The precise figures for FYt987 are: total revenues, $14,887,144...
...Gompers' reasoning was reinforced by his long struggle against more radical forms of labor organization, particularly Socialists within the AFL and the rival Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), who advocated "one big union" for all working people...
...In conjunction with ORIT, the AFL took many activist stands in Latin America, probably the most notorious of which was its material and moral support for the 1954 U.S.-sponsored overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala...
...The Institute's auditors, Touche Ross, certified that 1986 revenues amounted to nearly $17 million...
...Also see Romualdi, Presidents and Peons, pp...
...Jesse Friedman may view AIFLD as the independent voice of U.S...
...and private donations for a scholarship fund...
...6 Meany then generously offered the AFL's and ORIT's help in reorganizing Guatemala's labor movement, and even sent people to do it...
...U.S.AID contract costs...
...Shortly after the war the Federation moved with U.S...
...Romualdi, Presidents and Peons, p. 240...
...Communist Party who became virulently anticommunist after being purged from the party in the late 1920s...
...His own interest in the project stemmed from his desire to block communist-led unions that were organizing oil workers on his Venezuela holdings...
...and International Monetary Fund (IMF) economic stabilization policies, which burden the poorest segments of the poorest countries.'8 How effectively it acts on the second and third of these points is worth close examination...
...16 REPORT ON THE AMERICASment...
...4 More an executor than a maker of policy, Brown was the one who carried out much of the actual dirty work in Europe after 1945...
...But the facts show that the AFL-CIO, particularly through AIFLD, has had a long and at times sordid affair with Washington's Latin America policy...
...Small additional monies came from private or semi-private sources, the Free Trade Union Institute and the Inter-American Development Bank.'4 The fiscal 1987 budget was almost $15 million, with $13.3 million from U.S.AID, $1.3 million from NED and The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was set up under the Reagan Administration to funnel U.S...
...4 More an executor than a maker of policy, Brown was the one who carried out much of the actual dirty work in Europe after 1945...
...According to a staff report of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, ORIT "was originally founded for the specific purpose of combatting Communist infiltration of the Latin America labor movement...
...The second sought vastly expanded military aid and training programs to secure the stability of allied governments and to undertake the demise of hostile ones...
...26-47...
...Friedman had been invited to explain the Institute's activities in Latin America after some union members accused it of being a tool of the Reagan Administration...
...The second sought vastly expanded military aid and training pro- grams to secure the stability of allied governments and to undertake the demise of hostile ones...
...Grace and Co., a transna- tional corporation with multiple interests in Latin America...
...embassies, most of them drawn from the AFL...
...16 REPORT ON THE AMERICAS AFL-CIO prot6g6 of Lovestone's in the 1930s...
...labor policy abroad...
...2 Reality is at odds with AIFLD's rigid cold war philosophy...
...It was Lovestone, perhaps more than any other individual, who carried forth the anticommunist crusade from his position as head of the AFL's Department of International Affairs...
...David Langley, "The Colonization of the International Trade Union Movement," in Burton H. Hall, ed., Autocracy and Insurgency in Organized Labor (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1977), p. 299...
...Despite its close association with the U.S...
...The Institute's auditors, Touche Ross, certified that 1986 revenues amounted to nearly $17 million...
...The fiscal 1987 budget was almost $15 million, with $13.3 million from U.S.AID, $1.3 million from NED and *The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was set up under the Reagan Administration to funnel U.S...
...Union membership fell 75% within a year.' Not all U.S...
...In 1943, the first labor attaches were placed in U.S...
...There the democratically-elected government had encouraged urban and rural unionization, instituted the minimum wage and social security, and applied one of the first meaningful land reform laws on the continent by expropriating idle land belonging to the United Fruit Company...
...Three years later at a Mexico City conference the CIT became the InterAmerican Regional Organization of Workers (ORIT).5 ORIT adopted an ideological stance similar to that of the AFL, although not without some internal dissension...
...255-257...
...AIFLD Board member Frank Drozak made $246,615 in 1986 as head of the Seafarers Union, the airline pilot's Heniy A. Duffy took in $243,382 last year, and AIFLD Trustee William Wynn of the Food and Commercial Workers garnered a nice even $200,000 for 1987...
...Representatives of major transnational corporations with interests in Latin America-such as W.R...
...maintained close contact with anti-imperialist labor organizations in Latin America including the Workers Confederation of Latin America (CTAL) led by the Mexican Vicente Lombardo Toledano...
...It continued: "Generally speaking in ORIT North Americans have emphasized anticommunism...
...Romualdi had worked for Rockefeller at the State Department, where he originally drew up a plan for such a regional organization...
...Demonstrably, the majority of unions in Latin America do not conform to the neat for-or-against pattern...
...With the advent of the Cold War, the CIO was purged of its progressive elements and in 1947 the Taft-Hartley Act pulled the teeth from labor militancy...
...In the late 1950s, Joseph A. Beirne, president of the Communications Workers of America (CWA), impressed with the poverty that he had seen on a trip to South America, put forth the idea of educating Latin American workers in the United States...
...Tellingly, even when the U.S...
...Friedman grew indignant...
...Friedman grew indignant...
...and AFL-CIO, $230,000...
...Latin Americans have emphasized democratic trade unionism...
...As Joseph A. Beirne, the Institute's founder and first secretary-treasurer, put it: "If we are going to export the concepts of our society, all of the elements of that society must be represented...
...Upon stepping down, business representatives pledged to maintain friendly collaboration and support for the Institute...
...AIFLD, Twenty-Five Years of Solidarity with Latin American Workers (Washington: AIFLD, 1987), p. 19...
...2, Issue I (Fall 1974...
...Does AIFLD ever receive requests from the White House to get involved with the labor movements of countries in crisis...
...And it argues that Latin America must accept the major role the United States will play in the region's affairs, because of its geographic proximity and advanced stage of economic development...
...267-9...
...1QR7 MAY/JUNE 1988 17o...
...It opposed direct annexation of conquered overseas possessions for the same reason that it sought to block immigration and to keep minorities out of the craft unions: to avoid driving down wages in the United States...
...Communist Party who became virulently anticommunist after being purged from the party in the late 1920s...
...labor extending a fraternal helping hand to the workers of the hemisphere...
...T HE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR (AFL), the major national workers' organization since the late 19th century, became involved in U.S...
...144-6...
...and Irving Brown, who had been a MAY/JUNE 198t 15 Grueling conditions at American fruit companies are not an AIFLD priority...
...foreign policy...
...Brazilian clergv in support of labor: "A worker without a union is like a needle In a haystack...
...The Institute, therefore, had to find its support not only in labor, but the Federal government, business management, and the professions as well...
...We are dedicated to the preservation of this system...
...State Department...
...In 1949, urged on by the AFL, Europe's anticommunist trade union federations and the CIO broke with the WFTU to found the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), thus establishing anticommunism as a pillar of the "free" trade union movement from the very beginning...
...6 Meany then generously offered the AFL's and ORIT's help in reorganizing Guatemala's labor movement, and even sent people to do it...
...sphere of influence...
...He invited 16 communications workers for training at the CWA center in Front Royal, Virginia-later the site of AIFLD headquarters...
...Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Foreign Assistance Act of 1967, 9th Cong., 1st sets., 1967, p. 1096...
...policy or AFL-style unionism...
...Gradually, the tacit alliance between the Federation and business at home translated into one abroad...
...ACTWU's board was not impressed with what Ed Clark called "the Boy Scout version" of the Institute...
...Agency for International Development (U.S.AID) contract costs made up $12.4 million, and reimbursement under an agreement with the National Endowment for Democracy and the Free Trade Union Institute* came to just over $4 million...
...Faced with powerful European communist parties after World War II, the United States sought to bolster centrist, pro-capitalist unions and to undermine leftist ones, a feat which was accomplished in Germany, Italy and France with significant help from the joint efforts of the AFL and the newly created CIA.3 A major AFL contribution was the splitting of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), founded with the support of almost all the world's major labor movements in 1945...
...AFL president George Meany not only denounced the supposedly "communist" leadership of the unions, but he defended the fruit company's claims that they had been unfairly treated...
...8 While others had voi- ced similar opposition to AFL foreign policy, and many after Mazey would repeat it, his viewpoint found no echo within the ranks of the small group of labor officials who made that policy...
...foreign policy team, dealing with labor and the working class...
...and "had transformed the country into a beachhead of Soviet Russia in the Western Hemisphere...
...No other labor official matched the Teamster's Jackie Presser's $571,960 compensation for 1985, but several did not fare badly...
...This brief and partial interlude of hemispheric labor solidarity would not last...
...P ARTICULARLY PRIOR TO THE 1970S THE AFL-CIO and AIFLD supported right-wing and military governments with little regard for their policy towards labor and with a lot of regard for their policy towards the United States...
...Representatives of major transnational corporations with interests in Latin America such as W.R...
...9. "CIA Target: Labor," p. 30...
...Under special dispensa- tion, the Institute has been granted status as a private voluntary organization receiving government contracts for specific work...
...In 1947, Romualdi embarked upon a continental tour to marshall support for the plan and in January 1948 the Inter-American Workers Confederation (CIT) was founded...
...Shortly after the war the Federation moved with U.S...
...He invited 16 communications workers for training at the CWA center in Front Royal, Virginia later the site of AIFLD headquarters...
...Upon returning home, these workers were supported by the Postal Telephone and Telegraph International the international trade secretariat* for communications workers so that they could undertake full-time educational work...
...And it argues that Latin America must accept the major role the United States will play in the region's affairs, because of its geographic proximity and advanced stage of economic development...
...unionists agreed with the Federation's stance and some even protested...
...State Department, to help guarantee the delivery of vital raw materials during the war, recognized CTAL as the legitimate repre- sentative of Latin American workers, the AFL steadfastly refused to acknowledge it, maintaining instead its own contacts with the region's craft unions...
...For Federation leader Samuel Gompers, the expansion of U.S...
...Although in 1898 it opposed U.S...
...The Free Trade Union Institute (FTUI), an affiliate of the AFL-CIO's Department of International Affairs, is a major conduit for NED monies...
...There the democratically-elected government had encouraged urban and rural unionization, instituted the minimum wage and social security, and applied one of the first meaningful land reform laws on the continent by expropriating idle land belonging to the United Fruit Company...
...U.S.AID grant for El Salvador cooperatives, $2,500,000...
...annexation of Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Philippines (captured from Spain), it supported the expansion of U.S...
...Three men stand out as the architects of U.S...
...ACTWU vice-president Ed Clark inquired...
...In 1947, Romualdi embarked upon a continental tour to marshall support for the plan and in January 1948 the Inter-American Workers Confederation (CIT) was founded...
...But PAFL never got off the ground, primarily because, much like today, the AFL pushed its own agenda and refused to address the concerns of Latin American members...
...foreign policy soon after its formation...
...labor policy abroad...
...For more on NED/F'l'Ul and other neoconservative links to the AFL-CIO, see Tom Barry and Dab Preusch, AIFLD in Central America...
...Grace and Co., a transnational corporation with multiple interests in Latin America...
...government, AIFLD's origins are rooted in the labor move6The Office of Strategic Services (OSS), along with the Office of War Information (OWl), were the wartime precursors to the CIA...
...Ironically, it was the success of radical organizations like the IWW in organizing workers that often led to the acceptance of the Alt by business, particularly once it became clear that the Federation's brand of unionism would be conducive to a prosperous business climate...
...The ClO sent representatives to CTAL's congresses and supported its call in the late 1930s for an anti-fascist workers' front...
...This article and the one that follows were researched under a grant from the Research Foundation of the City University of New York...
...Today, AIFLD receives over 98% of its money from the U.S...
...Does AIFLD ever receive requests from the White House to get involved with the labor movements of countries in crisis...
...AIFLD in Central America, p. 11...
...Latin Americans have emphasized democratic trade unionism...
...W HEN THE 1960S OPENED, ORIT SEEMED to have become both less valuable as an asset and less tractable as an ally...
...14 REPORT ON THE AMERICAS Repor on z4e Aericas AFL-CIO UNIONS LOOK SOUTH By HOBART A. SPALDING, JR...
...Union membership fell 75% within a year.' Not all U.S...
...not to mention that it spends millions of dollars of the taxpayers' money.6 Disagreement in foreign policy matters between the labor hierarchy, corporate elites and the government stems from tactical questions, not from basic philosophical antagonisms...
...support to establish a new hemispheric labor body to challenge both CTAL and Argentina's Peronist CGT, which the AFL considered fascist...
...foreign policy initiatives designed in response to the Cuban Revolution...
...labor representatives with a sprinkling of non-U.S...
...FI'UI grant, $129,772...
...EVEN BEFORE THE END OF THE WAR, INterest in Latin America had grown in U.S...
...253-255...
...The organization's prime goals are to promote "democratic trade unionism" and to combat communism, preaching reform within the system...
...government circles, and soon the region became an arena for the AFL to preach its brand of unionism...
...A 1968 congressional inves- tigation found that U.S.AID-AIFLD contracts had been deliberately written in vague terms to allow for maximum flexibility with a minimum of accountability...
...Gradually, the tacit alliance between the Federation and business at home translated into one abroad...
...In the briefing, the Administration "re- quested the assistance of the American Institute for Free Labor Development" in Haiti, "because of the presence of radical labor unions and the high risk that other unions may become radicalized...
...ACTWU vice-president Ed Clark inquired...
...AFL-CIO contributions totalled only $200,000 plus three disaster relief donations which brought labor's share to $314,408 or 1.85% of the budget...
...it quietly expired in the following decade...
...This article and the one that follows were researched under a grant from the Research Foundation of the City University of New York...
...Jesse Friedman may view AIFLD as the independent voice of U.S...
...Thus after 1962 the AFL-CIO, through affiliates like *The Alliance for Progress was president Kennedy's ambitious aid program for Latin America and the Caribbean...
...By the time the two organizations merged to become the AFL-CIO in 1955, systematic government repression had already managed to rid the ClO of nearly all its open progressives...
...Three years later at a Mexico City conference the CIT became the InterAmerican Regional Organization of Workers (ORIT).' ORIT adopted an ideological stance similar to that of the AFL, although not without some internal dissension...
...NITIALLY LABOR, BUSINESS AND THE GOVernment were to have provided monies to AIFLD, but the latter soon became the major funder, supplying some 85% of the Institute's budget by the early 1970s...
...In Argentina, since the l940s, Peronist unions have held a majority position within what may have been Latin America's most powerful labor movement...
...In Januaxy 1962 President *The international organization of unions of a particular trade...
...government...
...The project, undertaken at the University of Chicago, enjoyed the participation of an advisory committee which included J. Peter Grace, head of W.R...
...Tellingly, even when the U.S...
...On the contrary, he explained, AIFLD is a non-partisan and apolitical expression of solidarity among the workers of the Americas...
...Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala (Garden City...
...Today, AIFLD receives over 98% of its money from the U.S...
...Significantly, the AFL had refused to join and the CIO represented U.S...
...The Institute's fundamental approach is that what is good for the U.S...
...Labor Movement and Latin America...
...State Department, to help guarantee the delivery of vital raw materials during the war, recognized CTAL as the legitimate representative of Latin American workers, the AFL steadfastly refused to acknowledge it, maintaining instead its own contacts with the region's craft unions...
...6. Statement issued by Meany on June 30, 1954 immediately following the overthrow...
...For Federation leader Samuel Gompers, the expansion of U.S...
...8. Daniel Cantor and Juliet Schor, Tunnel Vision: Labor, the World Economy, and Central America (Boston: South End Press, 1987), p. 40...
...As Joseph A. Beirne, the Institute's founder and first secretary-treasurer, put it: "If we are going to export the concepts of our society, all of the elements of that society must be represented...
...miliHobart A. Spalding, Jr., a long-time NACLA contributor and professor of Latin American and Caribbean history at Brooklyn College, has written extensively on Latin American labor and U.S...
...AFL ideology came to dominate the organization...
...labor's postwar foreign policy: AFL and later AFL-CIO president George Meany...
...Currently AIFLD's Board of Trustees is comprised of U.S...
...To many Latin Americans, this looks like ORIT is an instrument of the U.S...
...As an AIFLD spokesperson once said: "Our collaboration [with business] takes the form of trying to make the investment climate more attractive and more inviting...
...Information Agency funds to "democratic" projects overseas...
...Romualdi had worked for Rockefeller at the State Department, where he originally drew up a plan for such a regional organization...
...Meany loudly praised the coup arguing that the former "government had betrayed the democratic aspirations of the people...
...tary adventures in the Caribbean, including the I 920s war against Sandino in Nicaragua.1 In the case of Sandino, its avowed reasoning was to "keep Latin America free of Communist subversion," but AFL foreign policy can also be explained by the "bread-and-butter" unionism it espoused at home, which viewed business and government as potential allies, rather than adversaries, in the struggle to improve the lot of working people...
...In 1943, the first labor attaches were placed in U.S...
...It opposed direct annexation of conquered overseas possessions for the same reason that it sought to block immigration and to keep minorities out of the craft unions: to avoid driving down wages in the United States...
...Of this sum, reimbursement for U.S...
...NED/FFUI agreement, $4,084,861...
...For the American labor movement this is one of the paramount pivotal issues...
...government...
...foreign policy...
...Romualdi, Presidents and Peons, p. 419...
...In January 1962 President *The international organization of unions of a particular trade...
...Beirne was so pleased with the results that he obtained seed money from the AFL-CIO Executive Council for a feasibility study of a full-scale training program for Latin American workers...
...NY: Anchor Books, 1982), p. 142...
...Labor is viewed as an interest group, like large landowners, the military or business, which needs strengthening in order to compete...
...No, never," insisting that the Institute maintains total independence...
...According to a staff report of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, ORIT "was originally founded for the specific purpose of combatting Communist infiltration of the Latin America labor movement...
...XVII, no.2 (Nov...
...As a first step the AFL hired exOSS* operative Serafino Romualdi as roving labor ambassador in Latin America...
...Grace & Co., United Fruit, ITT, Anaconda, Kennecott Copper, Pan American Airways and the Rockefeller family-sat on AIFLD's Board of Trustees until they were replaced by an all-labor panel in 1980...
...The rightwing military government, however, refused to go along, vigorously persecuting all labor leaders, beginning with leftists but reaching eventually even friends of the AFL...
...Specifically, Gompers hoped to prevent the use of Mexican strikebreakers in the Southwest and to steer Mexican labor still in the midst of revolution away from a radical course...
...Consequently, outside of a few global figures, no public record exists of how AIFLD spends its money...
...Beirne was so pleased with the results that he obtained seed money from the AFL-CIO Executive Council for a feasibility study of a full-scale training program for Latin American workers...
...The Federation's first major foreign venture was to organize in 1918 the Pan-American Federation of Labor (PAFL), which drew representatives from Mexico and several Caribbean nations...
...foreign policy initiatives designed in response to the Cuban Revolution...
...Specifically, Gompers hoped to prevent the use of Mexican strikebreakers in the Southwest and to steer Mexican labor--still in the midst of revolutionaway from a radical course...
...embassies, most of them drawn from the AFL...
...Prior to the meeting, a June 1986 White House briefing had found its way into the hands of some of the persons present...
...AIFLD: Order of Battle," Counterspy, Vol...
...Thus after 1962 the AFL-CIO, through affiliates like *The Alliance for Progress was president Kennedy's ambitious aid program for Latin America and the Caribbean...
...miliHobart A. Spalding, Jr., a long-time NACLA contributor and professor of Latin American and Caribbean history at Brooklyn College, has written extensively on Latin American labor and U.S...
...The project, undertaken at the University of Chicago, enjoyed the partici- pation of an advisory committee which included i. Peter Grace, head of W.R...
...To many Latin Americans, this looks like ORIT is an instrument of the U.S...
...W HEN THE 1960S OPENED, ORIT SEEMED to have become both less valuable as an asset and less tractable as an ally...
...AFL-CIO AIFLD, came to hold a key position on the U.S...
...State Department...
...With the advent of the Cold War, the ClO was purged of its progressive elements and in 1947 the Taft-Hartley Act pulled the teeth from labor militancy...
...ORIT points to the United States as an example of the rewards that participation in the system can offer organized labor...
...But the facts show that the AFL-CIO, particularly through AIFLD, has had a long and at times sordid affair with Washington's Latin America policy...
...support to establish a new hemispheric labor body to challenge both CTAL and Argentina's Peronist CGT, which the AFL considered fascist...
...Recollections of a Labor Ambassador in Latin America (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1967...
...The Institute, therefore, had to find its support not only in labor, but the Federal government, business management, and the professions as well...
...AIFLD's role would be to build "free and democratic" Latin American unions "in response to the threat of Castroite infiltration and eventual control of major labor movements within Latin America...
...3. "CIA Target: Labor," Counterspy, Vol...
...Prior to the meeting, a June 1986 White House briefing had found its way into the hands of some of the persons present...
...Despite its close association with the U.S...
...It UNIONS LOOK SOUTH By HOBART A SPALDING, JR...
...The language of these contracts has not changed since nor has there been any subsequent detailed investigation, despite the fact that the Institute has a full- time staff of 175 and operates in 22 Latin American and Caribbean countries...
...Meany, while taking back seat to no one on communism, saw labor's foreign policy more in the Gompers tradition: "We believe in the capitalist system and are members of the capitalist society...
...AIFLD, Annual Progress Report for 1987 (Washington: mimeo, n/d), p. 1; and AIFLD, "Overview of AIFLD's Program," mimeo, p. 1. 16...
...Absolutely not," he replied...
...workers to spread U.S.-style unionism abroad...
...4. Meany was speaking to a business group composed of Rockefeller interests on April 2, 1966...
...foreign policy soon after its formation...
...Agency for International Development (U.S.AID) contract costs made up $12.4 million, and reimbursement under an agreement with the National Endowment for Democracy and the Free Trade Union Institute* came to just over $4 million...
...As a semi-independent institution under the direction of the AFL-CIO's Department of International Affairs, AIFLD is in many ways a natural outgrowth of the collaboration between business, government and labor that has grown since the first decades of this century, and it carries forth the Federation leadership's consistent and frequently unchallenged assertion that it is in the interests of U.S...
...Meany loudly praised the coup argu- ing that the former "government had betrayed the democratic aspirations of the people and "had transformed the country into a beachhead of Soviet Russia in the Western Hemisphere...
...labor officials...
...In Latin America's dramatically changed political climate following the Cuban Revolution, a totally U.S.-funded and -run organization would prove to serve AFL-CIO interests better, particularly since it would be asked to undertake clandestine or semi-clandestine operations...
...Later rewards may include ambassadorships, such as that given to ex-UAW president Leonard Woodcock, in Beijing.'9 conclude that AIFLD is simply a government operation, it is perhaps better explained by the rabid anticommunism which dominates the AFL-CIO's Department of International Affairs...
...business abroad is almost always good for U.S...
...In Chile prior to the 1973 coup, for example, unions led by members of the Socialist Party severe critics of the Communists, indeed their rivals for leading the workers formed about a third of the strong labor movement...
...annexation of Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Philippines (captured from Spain), it supported the expansion of U.S...
...labor extending a fraternal helping hand to the workers of the hemisphere...
...Gompers' reasoning was reinforced by his long struggle against more radical forms of labor organiza- tion, particularly Socialists within the AFL and the rival Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), who advocated "one big union" for all working people...
...AFL president George Meany not only denounced the supposedly "communist" leadership of the unions, but he defended the fruit company's claims that they had been unfairly treated...
...Friedman had been invited to explain the Institute's activities in Latin America after some union members accused it of being a tool of the Reagan Administration...
...Ironically, it was the success of radical organizations like the IWW in organizing workers that often led to the acceptance of the AFL by business, particularly once it became clear that the Federation's brand of unionism would be conducive to a prosperous business climate...
...UAW secretary-treasurer Emil Mazey spoke out, insisting that "We have got to stop measuring our foreign policy on what's good for American business that has money invested in South America and elsewhere in the world...
...In truth, the "communist" label becomes a catch-all for any Latin American union or leader who questions the wisdom of U.S...
...all other questions must remain secondary...
...influence overseas could help smooth the ups and downs of the business cycle at home, through increased exports and the armaments industry, thus keeping people employed...
...labor's postwar foreign policy: AFL and later AFL-CIO president George Meany...
...60,000...
...The government frowned on the plan, however, fearing that it might inhibit cooperation with CTAL's anti-fascist front and endanger the dclivcry of vital war materiel like oil, copper and tin that Latin America provided at way below market prices...
...In May 1961, this committee recommended the formation of an organization that would become AIFLD the following year, with Serafino Romualdi as its first executive director...
...No, never," insisting that the Institute maintains total independence...
...It was Lovestone, perhaps more than any other individual, who carried forth the anticommunist crusade from his position as head of the AFL's Department of International Affairs...
...AIFLD's role would be to build "free and democratic" Latin American unions "in response to the threat of Castroite infiltration and eventual control of major labor movements within Latin America...
...The Free Trade Union Institute (FTUI), an affiliate of the AFL-CIO's Department of International Affairs, is a major conduit for NED monies...
...The AFL clearly expected to dominate the organization, conceiving of it as fulfilling labor's part of the Monroe Doctrine, to ensure that the region would remain within the U.S...
...In 1949, urged on by the AFL, Europe's anticommunist trade union federations and the ClO broke with the WETU to found the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), thus establishing an- ticommunism as a pillar of the "free" trade union movement from the very beginning...
...labor, and therefore for labor everywhere...
...As a semi-independent institution under the direction of the AFL-CIO's Department of International Affairs, AIFLD is in many ways a natural outgrowth of the collaboration between business, government and labor that has grown since the first decades of this cenwry, and it carries forth the Federation leadership's consistent and frequently unchallenged assertion that it is in the interests of U.S...
...And in 1962, the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD) was founded...
...Labor Politics and Program, 90th Cong., 2nd sess., July 15, 1968, p. 9. 12...
...The organization's prime goals are to promote "democratic trade unionism" and to combat communism, preaching reform within the system...
...The AFL clearly expected to dominate the organization, conceiving of it as fulfilling labor's part of the Monroe Doctrine, to ensure that the region would remain within the U.S...
...AFL-CIO contributions totalled only $200,000 plus three disaster relief donations which brought labor's share to $314,408 or 1.85% of the budget...
...See Spalding, Organized Labor, pp...
...workers to spread U.S.-style unionism abroad...
...In the late 1950s, Joseph A. Beirne, president of the Communications Workers of America (CWA), impressed with the poverty that he had seen on a trip to South America, put forth the idea of educating Latin American workers in the United States...
...Faced with powerful European communist parties after World War II, the United States sought to bolster centrist, pro-capitalist unions and to undermine leftist ones, a feat which was accomplished in Germany, Italy and France with significant help from the joint efforts of the AFL and the newly created CIA.' A major AFL contribution was the splitting of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), founded with the support of almost all the world's major labor movements in 1945...
...AFL ideology came to dominate the organization...
...Unions Look South 1. Philip S. Foner, U.S...
...The larger strategy unfolded in a twopronged effort to blunt what the United States feared was a revolutionary thrust building across the continent...
...naval power to conquer foreign markets, and it subsequently backed other U.S...
...E VEN BEFORE THE END OF THE WAR, INterest in Latin America had grown in U.S...
...Of this sum, reimbursement for U.S...
...Eventually the AFL would change its policy on Guatemala's government, but in no official publication does any hint of responsibility appear...
...and Irving Brown, who had been a MAY/JUNE 1988 '5 MAY/JUNE 1988 15Uc AFL-CIO protege of Lovestone's in the l930s...
...These ideological blinders can lead the AFLClO to contradict its stated policies, working with farright union-busting governments and supporting docile company unions, promoting the overseas expansion of transnational corporations and counseling acceptance of IMF stabilization policies...
...While this has led some to 8The immediate payoff for labor leaders is considerable...
...The Cold War also significantly increased the Federation's participation in U.S...
...policy or AFL-style unionism...
...240-7 and pp...
...The Cold War also significantly increased the Federation's participation in U.S...
...In 1941 Nelson Rockefeller, then head of the State Department's Office of Inter-American Affairs, arranged to have the AFL and CIO sponsor and partially fund tours to the United States by Latin American labor leaders...
...the overseas expansion of transnational corporations, which exports jobs...
...Grace & Co., United Fruit, IT!', Anaconda, Kennecott Cop- per, Pan American Airways and the Rockefeller family sat on AIFLD's Board of Trustees until they were replaced by an all-labor panel in l980.' Since then, business funding has virtually ceased...
...Small additional monies came from private or semi-private sources, the Free Trade Union Institute and the Inter-American Development Bank...
...2 (Winter 1975), p. 39...
...The precise figures for FY1986 are: total revenues, $16,944,390...
...As a first step the AFL hired ex-OSS* operative Serafino Romualdi as roving labor ambassador in Latin America...
...Al Weinrub and William Bollinger, The AFL-CIO in Latin America (Oakland: Labor Network on Central America, 1987), p. 5. 2. Hobart A. Spalding Jr., Organized Labor in Latin America (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), pp...
...Many Peronist unions, while pro-capitalist, are committed to national development rather than domination by transnational capital thus earning AIFLD's opprobrium...
...While others had voiced similar opposition to AFL foreign policy, and many after Mazey would repeat it, his viewpoint found no echo within the ranks of the small group of labor officials who made that policy...
...tary adventures in the Caribbean, including the 1920s war against Sandino in Nicaragua.' In the case of Sandino, its avowed reasoning was to "keep Latin America free of Communist subversion," but AFL foreign policy can also be explained by the "bread-and-butter" unionism it espoused at home, which viewed business and government as potential allies, rather than adversaries, in the struggle to improve the lot of working people...
...unionists agreed with the Federation's stance and some even protested...
...The larger strategy unfolded in a twopronged effort to blunt what the United States feared was a revolutionary thrust building across the continent...
...In the briefing, the Administration "requested the assistance of the American Institute for Free Labor Development" in Haiti, "because of the presence of radical labor unions and the high risk that other unions may become radicalized...
...NED, $1,326,811...
...workers...
...I 1846-1919 (South Hadley, MA: Bergin and Garvey, 1988), Ch...
...Upon returning home, these workers were supported by the Postal Telephone and Telegraph International-the international trade secretariat* for communications workers-so that they could undertake full-time educational work...
...12,435,238...
...One prong, encompassed within the Alliance for Progress,* envisioned a set of reforms to induce capitalist growth and raise living standards...
...It REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 14urusung conditions at American fruit companies are n maintained close contact with anti-imperialist labor organizations in Latin America including the Workers Confederation of Latin America (CTAL) led by the Mexican Vicente Lombardo Toledano...
...Backing rival AFL-style unions, he hoped, would prove a long-term solution...
...As a result, AIFLD is not subject to congressional oversight nor does it fall under the Freedom of Information Act...
...AIFLD, Annual Meeting of the Board of Trustees, November 4, 1987, letter from Touche Ross dated April 23, 1987 and unpaginated accompanying six documents on company stationary that comprise Section 4, Financial Report a) Audit Report and b) Contributions...
...Added to perks and expense accounts, top labor manages to scrape by...
...It continued: "Generally speaking in ORIT North Americans have emphasized anticommunism...
...One prong, encompassed within the Alliance for Progress,* envisioned a set of reforms to induce capitalist growth and raise living standards...
...Although in 1898 it opposed U.S...
...9 In Latin America's dramatically changed political climate following the Cuban Revolution, a totally U.S .-funded and -run organization would prove to serve AFL-CIO interests better, particularly since it would be asked to undertake clandestine or semi-clandestine operations...
...2 The other side of this coin, of course, is anticommunism which the AFL-CIO pursues both at home and abroad...
...Information Agency funds to "democratic" projects overseas...
...The Federation's first major foreign venture was to organize in 1918 the Pan-American Federation of Labor (PAFL), which drew representatives from Mexico and several Caribbean nations...
...I NITIALLY LABOR, BUSINESS AND THE GOVernment were to have provided monies to AIFLD, but the latter soon became the major funder, supplying some 85% of the Institute's budget by the early 1970s...
...The rightwing militaly government, however, refused to go along, vigor- ously persecuting all labor leaders, beginning with left- ists but reaching eventually even friends of the AFL...
...Jay Lovestone, a founding mem- ber of the U.S...
...it quietly expired in the following decade.2 In the 1930s the progressive Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) rose to challenge the Alt, by forming unions in previously unorganized industries such as steel and autos, advocating industry-wide unions and specifically including minority groups...
...7. Schlesinger and Kinzer write that the CIA and the State Department persuaded Meany to send a public letter to Arbenz asking hun to purge the unions of communists, and they present evidence of close collaboration between Meany and the CIA on this issue...
...and hardly pro-Soviet are artificially squeezed into AIFLD's dualistic schema...
...II, no...
...Labor is viewed as an interest group, like large landowners, the military or business, which needs strengthening in order to compete...
...UAW secretary-treasurer Emil Mazey spoke out, insisting that "We have got to stop measuring our foreign policy on what's good for American business that has money invested in South America and elsewhere in the world...
...government, AIFLD's origins are rooted in the labor movei6REPORT ON THE AMERICAS *The Office of Strategic Services (OSS), along with the Office of War Information (OWI), were the wartime precursors to the CIA...
...workers...
...Backing rival AFL-style unions, he hoped, would prove a long-term solution...
...3; Ameri- can Labor and the Indochina War (New York: International Publishers, 1971...
...This brief and partial interlude of hemispheric labor solidarity would not last...
...ORIT points to the United States as an example of the rewards that participation in the system can offer organized labor...
...The CIO sent representatives to CTAL's congresses and supported its call in the late 1930s for an anti-fascist workers' front...
...As AIFLD director William Doherty once said: "The key question of our time is the future road of their [Latin America's] revolution: toward communist totalitarianism or towards democracy...
...Barry and Preusch...
...Agents as Organizers (Albuquerque: The Resource Center, 1986) 15...
...His own interest in the project stemmed from his desire to block communist-led unions that were organizing oil workers on his Venezuela holdings...
...On the contrary, he explained, AIFLD is a non-partisan and apolitical expression of solidarity among the workers of the Americas...
...REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 18$230,000 (1.54%) from the AFL-CIO.'5 Despite such massive government funding, AIFLD is not a government agency...
...government circles, and soon the region became an arena for the AFL to preach its brand of unionism...
...Business Week, May 4, 1987, p. 96...
...Hobart A. Spalding, Jr., "U.S...
...In conjunction with ORIT, the AFL took many ac- tivist stands in Latin America, probably the most notorious of which was its material and moral support for the 1954 U.S.-sponsored overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala...
...In May 1961, this committee recommended the formation of an organization that would become AIFLD the following year, with Serafino Romualdi as its first executive director...
...ACTWU's board was not impressed with what Ed Clark called "the Boy Scout version" of the Institute...
...T HE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR (AFL), the major national workers' organization since the late 19th century, became involved in U.S...
...We are dedicated to the preservation of this system...
...Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on American Republics Affairs, Survey of the Alliance for Progress...
...Three men stand out as the architects of U.S...
...The other side of this coin, of course, is anticommunism which the AFL-CIO pursues both at home and abroad...
...In 1941 Nelson Rockefeller, then head of the State Department's Office of Inter-American Affairs, arranged to have the AFL and CIO sponsor and partially fund tours to the United States by Latin American labor leaders...
...Similarly, Christian and social democratic unions not always pro-U.S...
...U.S.AID Operational Program Grants, $1,209,835...
...John F. Kennedy endorsed the organization, as did then New York governor Nelson Rockefeller, demonstrating the immediate interest of both business and government in the fledgling institute.'" Within a short time, AIFLD was a multimillion-dollar operation and an integral part of new U.S...
...And in 1962, the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD) was founded...
...See Romualdi, Presidents and Peons, Ch...
...Jay Lovestone, a founding member of the U.S...
...1984), pp...
...BrazIlian clergy In support of labor: "A worker without a union Is like a needle In a haystack...
...Ut A0c4t.44 AFL-CIO AIFLD, came to hold a key position on the U.S...
...By the time the two organizations merged to become the AFL-CIO in 1955, systematic government repression had already managed to rid the CIO of nearly all its open progressives...
...But PAFL never got off the ground, primarily because, much like today, the Alt pushed its own agenda and refused to address the concerns of Latin American members...
...And, surreptitiously, to undermine labor support for regimes deemed unfriendly to the United States...
...Seven Latin Americans serve on the 22member Board along with one from the anglophone Caribbean...
...Wnqhinntnn Anril 9...
...Meany, while taking back seat to no one on communism, saw labor's foreign policy more in the Gompers tradition: "We believe in the capitalist system and are members of the capitalist society...
...Significantly, the AFL had refused to join and the ClO represented U.S...
...In truth, the "communist" label becomes a catch-all for any Latin American union or leader who questions the wisdom of U.S...
...and Serafino Romualdi, Presidents and Peons...
...Labour Intervention in Latin America: The Case of the American Institute for Free Labour Development (AIFLD)," Labour, Capital and Society...
...And, surreptitiously, to undermine labor support for regimes deemed unfriendly to the United States...
...AIFLD does claim to disagree with the government in three areas: detente with the USSR, viewed as a sellout of national security interests in favor of short-term business advantages...
...Absolutely not," he replied...
...AFL-CIO, $314,408...
...2 In the 1930s the progressive Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) rose to challenge the AFL, by forming unions in previously unorganized industries such as steel and autos, advocating industry-wide unions and specifically including minority groups...
...John F. Kennedy endorsed the organization, as did then New York governor Nelson Rockefeller, demonstrating the immediate interest of both business and government in the fledgling institute.'0 Within a short time, AIFLD was a multimillion-dollar operation and an integral part of new U.S...
Vol. 22 • May 1988 • No. 3
