The AFL-CIO's 'New Internationalism'
Sweeney, Sean
Last December, when then President-elect Lula da Silva met with the Executive Council of the AFL-CiO in a celebratory gathering in Washington D.C., Federation President John Sweeney said, "It's a...
...foreign policy and, pre-1990, for fighting the Cold War in the theater of trade unionism...
...Last December, when then President-elect Lula da Silva met with the Executive Council of the AFL-CiO in a celebratory gathering in Washington D.C., Federation President John Sweeney said, "It's a pleasure to have a president we can all call brother here today" and pledged that the U.S...
...However, Singer also knows that business often sets up cooperatives as a way of evading unions and labor rights obligations, and is demanding that the laws be tightened in order to avoid employer subterfuge...
...The focus is now on organizing, anti-sweatshop work and defense of workers' rights, The AFL-CIO's support for the Confederation of Venezuelan Workers (CTV), which is playing a key role in the opposi- tion against President Hugo Chavez, has prompted some to won- t w,'h AFLCo Pres;denr der if the US...
...govern- t)Con December . 2,10...
...With alies like Lula, and with its still considerable resources and pohtical influence, the AFL-CIO and U.S...
...labor as a whole are in a position to grow into an even stronger force for global jus- tice, with all the risks and responsibilities that would entail...
...This more than anything would put the past to rest, and allow a new page-one more consistent with the very best traditions of American trade unionism-to be written in the language of genuine international solidarity...
...The victory of John Sweeney's New Voice slate in the AFL-CIO's 1995 leadership elections saw the consolidation of a new kind of international- ism for U.S...
...labor on the wrong side of socal justice movements in the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guyana, and elsewhere...
...The coup that ousted Brazil's pro-labor Gouiart government resulted in almost 500 unions being shut down by the regime and thousands being thrown in jail...
...At the same time, the AFL-CIO has also stated that the "other pri- orities of the Chavez administration, including agrarian reform and assistance to Cuba, for example, are and should be the sole and sover- eign concern of the Venezuelan people and their government...
...This overall policy put U.S...
...In Latin America, the AFL-CIO set up the notorious American Institute for Free Labor Development (AiFLD) which sup- ported unions and federations with the sole intent of pushing back the influence of those unions with a more socialist, social democratic or Social Christian orientation, Sean Sweeney :s Director of Labor Sttdies for Cornei University 's SchToo of Industrial & Labor Relations in New York ity 1e was a co-author of Working Aganst Us ATL) andj ~e iterational Polo of the AFL-Cio, NACIA, 1988...
...ment is still setting labor's overseas agenda, but Chavez has been criticized by a large portion of the world's labor movement for his attacks on the CTV and free- dom of association generally...
...labor, one driven by the need to respond to corporate globalization and neolib- eral policies AIFLD was closed down and in 1997 the AFL-CIO launched The Solidarity Center, which oversees operations in 27 different countries...
...credit cooperatives as a means of putting hundreds of thousands of Brazilians back to work...
...This new international- ism will face some important challenges and opportunities in Latin America in the not-too-distant future...
...It's worth remembering that Lula himself, the AFL-CIO's guest of honor in 2002, cut his polti- cal teeth fighting a dictatorship that was brought into being in 1964 with the blessing and active support of AIFLD...
...He is asking not only the Bank of Social and Economic Development (BNDES) to underwrite the effort, but is urging other major state banks, such as the Caixa Economica Federal and the Banco do Brasil, to finance this new source of job creation...
...AIFLD and AiFLD-trained personnel also helped destabilize left-wing governments such as Salvador Allende's Popular Unity in Chile in the early 1970s and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua during the 1980s Significantly, the Pinochet coup against Allende also constituted the bloody birth of the kind of neoliberal restruc- turing that would eventually spread across the continent, with devastating consequences for labor...
...It's hard to imagine the AFL-CIO Jc of the Cold War years making a statement like this...
...Across the continent, the struggle against neoliberalism is becom- ing more widespread, more organized and, it mhn Sweeney ptz wVhingron seems, more militant...
...labor movement's reinvention of itself in the international arena, for over the years the Federation has been criti- cized for being subservient to US...
...union movement and workers "will stand side by side" with Lula in his struggle to solve Brazil's serious economic and social prob- lems, The AFL-CIO's embrace of Lula marks an important moment in the U.S...
Vol. 36 • March 2003 • No. 5
