AIFLD in Action
Spalding, Hobart A. Jr.
AIFLD CLAIMS TO HAVE TRAINED OVER half a million Latin American and Caribbean unionists since 1962. Of these more than 4,000 attended select study courses at the George Meany Labor Center...
...14, No...
...Spalding, "U.S...
...We're going to breed capitalists like rabbits...
...Most years AIFLD runs similar programs in 17 or 18 Latin American and Caribbean nations.' The Institute also funnels U.S.AID funds to international trade secretariats, which in turn supply qualified personnel to counterpart unions for education, organizing, conferences, or special projects such as teaching stevedores about containerization...
...Five graduates were later to receive U.S.-based instruction, and others attend advanced courses at home or ata U.S...
...2. AIFLD, Report, Vol...
...2, p. 2 (1981...
...We do know about the Bolivian educational program for 1974-75 under U.S.AID contract, and it appears to be typical of AIFLD's work...
...The labor movements of Latin America and the Caribbean are indeed concerned about who owns the land, factories and banks in their countries...
...2, p. 2 (1979...
...AUDS programs seek to improve the lot of small farmers primarily by encouraging the production of cash crops often for export...
...However, the Institute has another, expressly political, agenda...
...of Ottawa Press, and Univ...
...9. AIFLD, Annual Progress Report, 1987, (Washington: AIFLD, 1987), p. 3. 10...
...17, no...
...Courses in 1985-86 enrolled 73,624 participants in 17 countries...
...AIFLD, in essence, seeks to blunt the effects of workers' preoccupation with politics, and convince trade unionists thai sticking to bread-and-butter issues and fighting communism are more appropriate con- cerns for labor...
...269-70, and AIFLD, Twenty-Five Years, p. 9. For current programs listed by individual ITSs, see AIFLD, Board Meeting, Section-3 "Activities Report c) Union-to-Union...
...AJFLD's executive director William Doherty boasted in testimony to the Kissinger Commission that graduates fill at least 70% of the executive board positions of the "flee trade unions" in Central America)2 AIFLD historically concentrates on strategic areas such as communications or vital natural resources...
...Similar training is given Latin American and Caribbean military in U.S...
...6. Quoted in Phillip Wheaton, Agrarian Reform in El Salvador: A Program of Rural Pac(fication (Washington: EPICA, 1980), p. 16...
...dominance of the region...
...In 1986, AIFLD distributed nearly one million dollars under this program.' AIFLD graduates often receive stipends for up to a year after returning to their countries, from either the Institute or the appropriate international trade secretariat...
...5. For past activities, see Spalding, "U.S...
...Cited in Tom Barry and Deb Preusch, AJFLD in Central America (Albuquerque: The Resource Center, 1986), p. 13...
...8, 16-17...
...In addition, its training programs establish personal contacts and bestow favors which later prove quite useful to policymakers when labor threatens U.S...
...The Institute's training courses reflect its ideology...
...3. AIFLD, Twenty-Five Years of Solidarity, pp...
...at Meany Center, 4,595...
...AFL-CIO president Lane Kirldand once remarked that Latin America's main problem is "extremists [who] seek to debase trade unionism by linking it to the question of who owns the means of production...
...March 24, 1982, quoted in Tom Barry, Beth Wood and Deb Preusch, Dollars and Dictators (Albuquerque: The Resource Center, 1982), p. 110...
...at universities, 205...
...18, no...
...The budget came to $187,000...
...Quoted in Mario Pozas, "Tendencias ideoldgicas actuales en el movimiento obrero hondureno," Anuario de Estudios Centroamericanos, No...
...Of these more than 4,000 attended select study courses at the George Meany Labor Center in Silver Spring, Maryland and over 200 attended universities in the United States.' In the 1960s and 1970s the Institute trained some 20,000 persons a year and in the 1980s over 30,000...
...Much of the economic aid it provides does indeed benefit individual workers and unions, and it does organize people, many for the first time...
...7. AIFLD, Twenty-Five Years of Solidarity With Latin American Workers (Washington: AIFLD, 1987), pp...
...Approved unions may obtain donations of up to $5,000 from AIFLD for specific purposes such as building a community center or purchasing a printing press...
...It also sponsors community development projects in literacy, health and sanitation...
...Quotes from Michael 3. Sussman, The Trojan Horse: The History of The American Institute for Free Labor Development, (Washington: EPICA, 1983), p. 33...
...They may also assist in collective bargaining...
...Labour Intervention," p. 270...
...6, 12, 23...
...Labour Intervention in Latin America: The Case of the American Institute for Free Labor Development" in Roger Southall, ad., Trade Unions and the New Indiestrialisation of the Third World (London, Ottawa and Pittsburgh: Zed Press, Univ...
...In Ecuador, for example, after the discovery of oil in the late l960s, its programs expanded, focusing on that sector and reaching over 10% of all employed workers by I975.' By 1981 AIFLD was graduating "political trainers" from 16 courses yearly, many of them held at local labor institutes such as the one in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, which according to one local critic aims "to corrupt and domesticate union leaders, inculcating them with a deadly hate for communists, championing the theory of 'class collaboration' and prejudicing them against all patriotic movements of popular origin.'"4 M UCH LIKE THE PENTAGON'S TRAINING OF Latin America's officer corps, the Institute's educational programs do instill Latin American unionists with a world-view and a philosophy of trade unionism compatible with continued U.S...
...Finally, the program planned to assist social development projects for 10 rural and urban unions...
...Another 220 leaders were to get instruction in technical aspects of union administration, cooperativism, or community service from local labor organizations under AIFLD supervision...
...London: War on Want, 1978), p. 43...
...Why the AFL-CIO undertakes such work was perhaps best explained by one U.S.AID official: "There is no one more conservative than a small farmer...
...THROUGH THE U.S.AID-FUNDED AGRARIAN Union Development Service (AUDS), founded in 1965, AIFLD organizes peasants into production and marketing co-ops...
...Twenty-Five Years of Solidarity with Latin American Workers (Washington: AIFLD, 1987), p. 23...
...In those countries where the labor movement is relatively young, massive training can be quite influential...
...6(1980), p. 31...
...sponsored programs, see Louis A. Perez, Jr., "Armies of the Caribbean," Latin American Perspectives, Vol...
...In 1986 it financed a union building for Colombian textile workers, purchased a diesel engine for Salvadoran textile workers, and in Brazil covered expanded medical and dental services for hospital employees and completed a day care and adult education center for oil and fuel workers.6 Up to 1978 AIFLD made low cost loans to unions for housing, building over 18,000 units in 13 countries.9 O N THE SURFACE, AIFLD APEARS TO HELP Latin American workers on many levels...
...17, No...
...4, 1987 (Washington: AIFLD, 1987), Section 3, Activities Report, a) General Activities, p. 6. 4. Bolivian Annex to AIFLD Regional Contract covering 1 April 1974 to 31 March 1975, pp...
...HAS AIFLD in Action I. Precise figure for total AIFLD trainees is 556,852...
...4 (Fall, 1987), p. 501...
...of Pittsburgh Press, 1988), p. 270...
...The larger Regional Revolving Loan Fund has lent out over $8.4 million...
...AIFLD, Annual Progress Report for 1987 (Washington: AIFLD, n!d), p. 1; AIFLD, "Overview of AIFLD's Program," 1987, p. 1; and AIFLD...
...By 1973 it had trained between 3% and 4% of unionized Chileans and in the 1970s about 5% of those unionized in Colombia and Peru, including most of the leadership of the CGTP, Peru's main confederation.' And through AeILD's extensive publishing operation, it touches many more-' Details on individual country programs are not often available to the public...
...The Guardian (N.Y...
...6 ' AIFLD has recently concentrated on two major Central American peasant federations-he Salvadoran Communal Union (UCS) and the National Association of Honduran Peasants (ANACH)--although in 1986 it also worked in five other countries including Guatemala, Panama and Costa Rica.' Its largest rural undertaking has been administering El Salvador's controversial land reform program under U.S.AID contract...
...See AIFLD, Annual Meeting of the Board of Trustees, Nov...
...In 1986 AIFLD published four manuals on the foreign debt, trade unions and political action, and political aspects of development with accompanying workbooks variously in English, Portuguese and Spanish...
...The program envisioned training 400 national, departmental, and local trade union leaders and 30 peasant leaders in "advanced trade union techniques," as well as some 400 activists in basic and intermediate evening courses...
...8. AIFLD, Annual Meeting, Section 3, Activities Report, a) General Activities, Social Projects Department, unpaginated...
...2, p. 2 (1980...
...interests...
...3 (June-Aug...
...It seeks to create and strengthen unions which share the AFL-CIO's conception that government and business are labor's allies in economic development, and to undermine those unions perceived to be radical or nationalist and therefore threats to the United States...
...Democracy-versus-totalitarianism" sessions became so dominant that a 1968 congressional investigating committee wondered "if for trade unionists to be brought to this country to be given training in political and social structures was not a little 10 But a decade later the AIFLD Board of Trustees, noting "an increase in groups against democratic trade unionism," recommended that "emphasis should be given to political orientation courses," an interesting move for an organization that claims to be apolitical...
...1979), p. 5; Don Thompson and Rodney Larson, Where Were You Brother...
...19, no...
...This, he explained, is the result of "esoteric theories about social organiza- tion...
...AIFLD, Report, Vol...
...for 1986 AUDS activities, AIFLD Annual Meeting, Section 3, Activities Report, a) General Activities, Agrarian Union Development, unpaginated...
...Unions with Institute approval are not criticized even when they are clearly linked to a political party, while those deemed unfriendly are roasted for subservience to a political cause, almost always cited as communist or communistic...
...And that may have more to do with widespread foreign control than any "esoteric theory...
...university...
...Labour Intervention," pp...
...Hobart A. Spalding, Jr., "U.S...
Vol. 22 • May 1988 • No. 3
