Trade Union Imperialism in the Dominican Republic
Jonas, Sussane
This article is based in part on an article I wrote in 1967. It is being revised and updated this year for a conference on the 10th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of the Dominican Republic....
...written by imprisoned CGT members and leaders...
...AIFLD's immediate reaction, upon recognizing that CONATRAL had been rendered ineffective by being "identified as a Yankee-sponsored organization" was to formulate an "Emergency Plan" in November 1965, to appeal for additional funding...
...Militant strikes by sugar workers against the U.S.-owned South Puerto Rico Sugar Co...
...average size of industrial enterprises (concentration): $131,800 in 1961, $419,700 in 1971 LABOR: - size of labor force: 1.2 to 1.3 million - structure of labor force: 60% in agriculture, 8-10% in industry (including sugar industry) - proportion in agriculture increased during the 1960s, and some estimates put that proportion much higher - proportion of women in labor force: 11% in 1960 (lowest rate in Latin America), 26% in 1970 - average number of workers per industrial enterprise (concentration of work force): 34 in 1961, 106 in 1971...
...in the spring of 1967 Rosell cut the harvest time from 7 to 5 months...
...After the end of World War II, he worked with the CIA's Radio Free Europe for a number of years...
...and that the labor legislation (including the 1951 Code) only further restricted labor's independence...
...Immediately after the assassination of Trujillo, the United States sent two labor representatives to the country: Andrew McLellan, Inter-American representative of the AFL-CIO, and Fred Somerford, labor attach of the U.S...
...Susanne Jonas29 References - Trade Union Imperialism 1. See, for example: NACLA, Argentina in the Hour of the Furnaces (NY: NACLA, 1975), Part II...
...labor became less an instrument of political intervention by the U.S...
...In 1969, G&W signed an agreement with the Dominican government granting the company the right to operate its industrial free zone for 30 years...
...5 Volman's other accomplishment during the Bosch era was to set up the Inter-American Center for Social and Economic Training (CIDES), which functioned as Bosch's main planning agency and as a kind of shadow government...
...cit., pp...
...More explicitly, CONATRAL had lost "much of its original support" after supporting the U.S...
...4 7 In the years that followed, however, it gradually became clear, even to AIFLD, that this type of short-range approach was insufficient...
...After returning from exile in 1961, he served as Secretary of Labor during the first interim government of Balaguer in January 1962...
...20-21 (based on a much longer manuscript...
...although all Communist groups were made illegal in 1947, Trujillo moved again in 1960 to legalize the Communist Party, and reached an informal non-aggression pact with the revolutionary government in Cuba.s (2) Trujillo used his Labor Code and his control over labor to further his own economic interests, at the expense of foreign (U.S) interests...
...labor bureaucrats to fighting Communism: he felt that the AFL-CIO and ORIT were so ineffective and so obviously sold-out as to objectively further the spread of Communism...
...But particularly in the years following the 1965 U.S...
...As a former top official of the Architects' Association explained in an interview, there were three major complaints...
...One example was CONATRAL's position in the STAPI-POASI dispute...
...socialist" Norman Thomas...
...use of the law (sometimes illegally) to cancel the registration of independent unions...
...policy objectives - the U.S...
...Its Board includes some of the top executives of U.S...
...labor's early failure to gain control over the entire Dominican labor movement, the new tactic was this carefully engineered split within the leadership...
...The most ambitious was the project to construct a $3 million housing project for Dominican sugar workers in San Pedro de Macoris...
...This education (training) took place both in seminars in the Dominican Republic and (for "more advanced" students) at the AIFLD Front Royal Institute in the United States...
...1973 brought more strikes and demonstrations protesting the high cost of living...
...From the very beginning, FOUPSA became the object of intense struggle between leftist forces and "apolitical" U.S.-controlled forces...
...In 1971, a member of La Banda (a right-wing terrorist group) acknowledged that he had been ordered by police officials to assassinate the head of UNACHOSIN...
...Meanwhile, prices have skyrocketed...
...See Fred Goff, article in NACLA's Latin America & Empire Report, April, 1975...
...Andrew McLellan also got started in intelligence, working with the Office of Strategic Services during World War II, and continuing to serve the government after the war...
...Efforts of free zone workers to organize have been systematically smashed...
...In many respects, the formation of the CGT could be considered just one more in a long series of unity attempts by left labor forces...
...analysts viewed a dictator like Trujillo not as a stabilizing but as a destabilizing influence in the Caribbean...
...analyst concedes that CONATRAL owed its rapid growth and influence to "technicians, organizers, educational materials, and funds which the U.S...
...labor...
...For details, see "Labor-Community Struggle in Bonao," op...
...In short, AIFLD was attempting to impose its own conditions upon IDB funds and to use these for its own purposes - which were, according to the Architects' Association official, "destruction of all labor organizations [except CONATRAL...
...In fact, the struggle has been over a very small fraction of the Dominican working class: according to U.S...
...Philip Agee, Inside the Company: CIA Diary (Harmonds- worth: Penguin, 1975...
...Ahora, November 22, 1971, p. 56...
...The activities of AIFLD and other agencies in U.S...
...Interviews...
...those which are available are often out of date, and in any case vary widely from each other...
...481-82...
...El Caribe, January 3, 1966, February 25, 1966, March 7, 1966...
...CONATRAL's refusal to recognize labor's real friends and real enemies was not surprising, in the light of the education given by AIFLD...
...previously, in 1964, he had been transferred from La Romana because of his brutality against workers...
...intervention (at which time he sent his own list of "Communists" to the State Department) Volman became even more concerned about the spread of Communism...
...they need leaders...
...4 U.S...
...and progressive Latin American business still believe in the antiquated philosophy of the class struggle...
...trade unionists, that challenge can only be effective if AIFLD's true character is clearly understood...
...And although an official AFL-CIO statement of September, 1963, "deeply regret[ted]" the golpe, McLellan later criticized Bosch as too lenient with the extreme left and praised General Wessin y Wessin for overthrowing Bosch "when it became obvious that the Bosch administration was unable to control the lawlessness which had enveloped the nation...
...El Sol, October 26, 1974...
...A principal force behind this move was the left wing of CASC, known as Movimiento Renovador (MR...
...More important, during the 1950's, ORIT and the AFL-CIO established close working relations with exiled Dominican labor leaders (who organized a union-in-exile), and began training exiled unionists in Puerto Rico to "[ready them] to go back home at the opportune moment, and take charge of the reorganization of the CDT under democratic leadership...
...In taking advantage of this labor pool, G&W is implementing a broader investment strategy which maximizes the use of cheap labor and which essentially views the Dominican Republic as a cheap labor haven...
...This incitement was answered by a two-page newspaper aviso (declaration) in defense of the constitutional regime...
...In the countryside, a mere 2% is organized...
...Wall Street Journal, September 7, 1971...
...On another occasion, he stated, "Most of the people who criticize us because of our cooperation with U.S...
...Thus, in a struggle which has pitted the Dominican working class against U.S...
...243-44 and passim...
...This has meant pacifying the country and containing class struggle by whatever means possible...
...When asked about the failure to cooperate with CASC and other independent unions, several CONATRAL members acknowledged in interviews that ORIT and the AFL-CIO had prevented them from doing so...
...However, with the arrival to power of dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo in 1930 (until 1961), all independent labor organizing was prohibited...
...According to some well-informed Dominican labor leaders, Brito and his colleagues, together with police, forced workers to sign a form disaffiliating from the SU and joining the new company union...
...unionism which they mouthed...
...The cooperation between ourselves and the business community is getting warmer day by day...
...According to one former factory owner in the La Romana Industrial Zone, prospective employees are checked out by a private intelligence service run by Cuban exiles and Me your plant to an envronment likeour . TX fi . Incetivesuch as i brand new plant fcil with Gulf + Western pcking up the amscti tNa Netto thel t gar prodding m i in the word...
...Moreover, as several graduates of the ORIT Institute in Mexico and even the local AIFLD director admitted, all candidates for ORIT and AIFLD training programs have been selected and approved by the U.S...
...interviews...
...After 1946, new laws prohibited strikes...
...AIFLD representative Jack Goodwyn has been identified as a CIA contract agent (see below...
...In these zones the Dominican Republic's function as a cheap labor haven has been carried to its logical extreme: an unskilled, constantly replaceable labor force is forced to work for lower wages than anywhere else in the Caribbean (except Haiti...
...labor investors include: AFL-CIO President George Meany...
...The BFL was headed by AFL-CIO-trained Robinson Ruiz Lopez of the Santo Domingo chauffeurs union...
...Ahora, January 22, 1968...
...they threatened to blacklist those who didn't cooperate as "Communists...
...In the first days of the uprising (on April 26, 1965), CONATRAL leaders issued a weak statement in support of the Constitutionalist movement, provided it was "democratic...
...That Volman became a CIA man has been confirmed by several sources who were in a position to know - themselves CIA agents or close collaborators...
...Embassy (see box...
...LABOR AGENTS MOVE IN The "opportune moment" came in May 1961, when the CIA facilitated the assassination of Trujillo.'o With Trujillo out of the way, U.S...
...GULF AND WESTERN: "WORKER-MANAGEMENT HARMONY" The Gulf and Western (G&W) conglomerate is by far the most important U.S...
...Moreover, the organized sector of the Dominican proletariat is arming itself with a weapon powerful enough to combat even the most sophisticated tactics of U.S...
...Business Latin America, September 4, 1974, p. 284...
...labor leaders were, no doubt, shocked by the excesses of the Trujillo regime...
...cit., p. 65...
...One ITS observer visiting the Dominican Republic in late 1965 noted that CONATRAL leaders were completely out of touch with regional activities and were unaware of local movements todisaffiliate or to change the leaders and name of CONATRAL...
...Because there was no factual basis for pinning a Communist label on the rival organizations, McLellan and Somerford were, in turn, labeled by Dominicans as "interventionists" and promoters of divisionist activities...
...The U.S...
...independent confirmation of CIA uses of the ITS' have come from the 1967 revelations about the CIA and more recently from Agee and others...
...Labor as Investor-Developer Corporate giants like Gulf & Western aren't the only ones cashing in on the profits from Dominican tourism...
...However, once the class-conscious elements of the Dominican proletariat began to consolidate, to analyze and understand their own historical development, and to move beyond spontaneity, the old labor agents of U.S...
...Unpublished reports by AIFLD (1974), PTTI (1972...
...labor," or simply "U.S...
...government...
...2 0 CONATRAL reached the height of its influence and numerical strength under the unconstitutional military regime of Donald Reid Cabral (1963-65...
...Congressman Wright Patman publicly exposed the J. M. Kaplan Fund as a conduit for CIA funds - a revelation which led to the 1967 scandal about CIA funding of a wide network of institutions in the United States, in Latin America, and throughout the world...
...cit., p. 6; del Castillo, op...
...cit., pp...
...8. Summarized in Wiarda, op...
...capital, it has the potential of posing a real challenge to U.S...
...Second, it shifted from an aggressive to a more defensive strategy, from intervening actively in Dominican politics to containing the forces of change and holding the proletariat in check...
...After Trujillo's assassination in 1961, Bosch sent Volman to the Dominican Republic to survey the situation - and to prepare the ground for Bosch's return...
...cit., p. 51...
...del Castillo, op...
...interests in the Dominican Republic...
...In 1963, for example, CONATRAL officials who supported Bosch's proposal for a unified labor organization were expelled...
...in 1954 to form a pliable, pro-U.S...
...citizen contract agent" for the CIA, as well as AIFLD representative in charge of the Uruguayan Institute of Trade Union Education...
...255, 257...
...Latin America, March 7, 1975...
...In the aftermath of the 1965 revolution and CONATRAL's anti-revolutionary stance, CONATRAL's claimed membership plummeted from nearly 100,000 before the revolution to an estimated 25,000 in 1966.43 These realities led the * A final aspect of the housing project concerns AIFLD's exclusive contractor, Louis Berger Co., which supervised planning and construction of the housing project in the Dominican Republic and in other countries around the world...
...and that the demands of the working class can and should be limited to those which can be met without disrupting the capitalist system.14 In response to the growth of the Dominican labor movement, the methods and mechanisms for accomplishing these ends have changed since the early 1960's...
...During 1966 the SU forced a 2-month delay in the harvest, until a new labor contract was signed raising wages nearly 20% above the 1965 contract...
...interview...
...Ever since Balaguer took office in 1966, progressive and leftist unions have been subjected to constant harassment and persecution...
...See also Wall Street Journal, January 25, 1974...
...5 2 Moreover, as one report put it, As AIFLD, more closely identified with the U.S...
...An AIFLD report mentioned him as leading a pro-Balaguer, "democratic" conservative peasant organization which worked with AIFLD...
...La Noticia, December 7, 1973...
...725 U.S...
...Protests about his disappearance had no effect...
...labor movement, they became chief architects of AFL-CIO policy for the Dominican Republic during the next several years...
...In COOPFETYC, the coop of the AFL-CIO-affiliated telephone workers, for example, management and administration problems resulted in a number of resignations of coop officers and complaints from members...
...imperialism, and the manipulations of the CIA and the international apparatus of the AFL-CIO and its Dominican puppets...
...AIFLD, "Country Labor Plan," p. 4. 62...
...These moves, while yielding no immediate concrete result, proved important as antecedents for a new beginning in 1972...
...After the 1965 U.S...
...SU funds were frozen.* Even the New York Times acknowledged that the SU had been broken by police action.74 To replace the SU, La Romana called on the services of Danilo Brito Baez, who had worked with the U.S...
...This orientation led CASC to grow considerably during the 1960s and to play a progressive role vis-a-vis CONATRAL...
...Lens, "Labor and the CIA," Progressive, April 1967...
...One U.S...
...by the end of 1973, unemployment was at 24%.81 Being the ultimate in runaway shops, the free zone has aroused the concern of U.S...
...Simon Tadeo Guerrero Gonzalez, an old Trujillista official...
...Workers in G & W's La Romana sugar mill (Photo: Howie Epstein/LNS).30 55...
...AIFLD "Country Labor Plan for Dominican Republic, FY 1968," (Washington: AIFLD, 1967), p. 11...
...At first the Institute was funded by the CIA through Radio Free Europe...
...Moreover, other labor movements were "better prepared and educated," while few graduates of AIFLD training "have yet emerged as national leaders...
...see also Wiarda, op...
...Moreover, isolation was hampering its effectiveness: faced with the prospect of a unified Left in Dominican labor, U.S...
...4 5 Eventually these doubts about CONATRAL were voiced even in official AIFLD circles...
...when he was released a day later, Guerrero told him "we don't guarantee your life here...
...6 s * CASC reported to international labor authorities that during a land take-over, a regional leader of FEDELAC (the CASC-affiliated peasant organization) was killed by a local landowner and government contractor...
...organized labor was used as the principal instrument to keep the Dominican working class in line, under the guise of promoting "democratic unionism...
...The clear failure of U.S...
...cit., and NACLA, op...
...Once these had been completed, the resort opened in 1971...
...Comptroller General Report, "Review of Activities Under Contracts with American Institute for Free Labor Development" (Washington: GAO, 1968), reprinted in Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Survey of the Alliance for Progress: Labor Policies and Programs, July 15, 1968, pp...
...The half-million dollar investment began in 1969, when a Dominican sold 15,000 acres (including seven miles of coastline) to the investment group, operating under the name CODDETREISA...
...interests...
...The investment has given U.S...
...But for several years after CONATRAL was discredited, the left was unable to provide a unified alternative...
...Even during the Trujillo era, they had launched the strikes of 1942 and 1946...
...Ruth Needleman, "The AFL-CIO Abroad: Behind the Chilean Coup," Guardian Labor Supplement, Fall 1974, pp...
...Jose Moreno, "Lessons of the American Intervention" lmimeo: 1975), C. M. Gutierrez, The Dominican Republic (N.Y.: Monthly Review Press, 1972...
...In a radio broadcast of May 2 - four days after the U.S...
...23 If any doubts remained, U.S.-controlled Dominican labor exposed its anti-national character in the 1965 Constitutional17 ist uprising...
...7 (4) Trujillo was contemptuous of the AFL-CIO and ORIT (from which he was excluded...
...As one AIFLD representative in the Dominican Republic put it, "Unions exist to obtain economic benefits for their members - period...
...Interviews...
...In fact, however, very few local union officials, much less rank and file members, know about these activities...
...Interviews and unpublished memos...
...when their demands were not met, the union, affiliated with CASC, went back on strike in June 1970...
...3 2 In the early 1970's, new evidence emerged about the uses of AIFLD as a front for the CIA - particularly its role in building for the 1973 coup against Allende in Chile...
...Ahora, June 25, 1971, and May 7, 1973...
...He served as an intelligence research analyst in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (the State Department's intelligence division) for many years...
...Interviews with, and unpublished memos by, participants...
...As Volman himself made clear, the league had much less to do with organizing peasants than with the political objectives of electing Bosch and of combatting Communist influence by shaping peasant leadership...
...LOWERING THE PROFILE Once CONATRAL was discredited, U.S...
...Dodd in Congressional Digest, November, 1965, and in Congressional Record, September 16, 1965, pp...
...It was a well-known fact (denied not even by CONATRAL leaders) that since its creation CONATRAL was almost totally financed by U.S...
...another source states that 3000 new jobs would be needed each month just to keep up with youths entering the job market - unionization: less than 10...
...labor report points out that Trujillo's Labor Code was "applied only to companies not owned or controlled by the Trujillo regime...
...cit...
...In May 1970, the entire construction force staged a 4-day strike for higher wages and better working conditions...
...In the La Romana free zone, nearly 2000 workers - mostly women - are employed at 25 cents per hour (the most skilled workers make 60 cents per hour...
...Writing in 1975, the point is no longer to prove that AIFLD and other international institutions of the- U.S...
...this tradition of struggle continued, as more than 20 La Romana labor leaders were killed or "disappeared" between 1946 and Trujillo's assassination in 1961...
...By September 17, 1961, a coalition of anti-Trujillo forces had formed a new labor movement called FOUPSA (United The Emissaries of U.S...
...In the end, however, only 110 units were constructed at a cost of $600,000, and these financed directly by AID...
...During the transitional period between 1961 and 1963 in the Dominican Republic Fred Somerford was subjected to bitter publicity attacks from the Communists and other totalitarian forces, but he never wavered in his defense of democracy and democratic trade unionism...
...In February 1975, 40,000 construction workers went on strike for their first wage increase since 1962 (during which time prices rose 65%).56 Since 1972, Balaguer has been forced to raise wages in a number of sectors - although by no means enough to compensate for the rise in the cost of living...
...For those who are looking for an answer to the Dominican Republic's unemployment problem, the "free zones" are a losing game: companies which come here from Puerto Rico are likely to move on to the one place where wages are still lower and workers even less organized: Haiti...
...Robert Hurwitch, letter to Father Richard Armstrong, October 23, 1974...
...Specifically, what had been primarily a political struggle for democracy (to elect Bosch in 1962, to restore Bosch and the 1963 constitution in 1965) developed into a more overt class struggle and a struggle against imperialism...
...Hirsch, op...
...POPULATION: - urban/rural distribution: 60% rural in 1970 (more than 75% in 1950) - population growth rate: 3.6% a year - per capita income: less than $230 a year (no higher than before 1965) - according to one source, $92 a year in the countryside ECONOMY: - structure: around 25% of gross domestic product from agriculture, 17% from industry (including the sugar industry) - very little change from 1962 to 1970...
...Interview...
...workers will be based in part on an understanding that, in the long run, AIFLD operations bene- fit not U.S...
...Idem...
...Fred Hirsch, "An Analysis of Our AFL-CIO Role in Latin America: Under the Covers with the CIA" (San Jose: 1974...
...Dominican newspapers...
...Both Rosell and Guerrero were known for their fierce antiCommunism...
...and Philip Agee mentions McLellan as a "close collaborator with CIA in labor operations...
...He began by setting up the Instituto de Educacion Polltica in 1959 in Costa Rica, to give potential leaders of Latin American social democratic parties the ideological and practical training they would need to counter "Communist penetration...
...In short, Trujillo was not reliable or predictable, and he could become a threat to hemispheric stability...
...By the spring of 1962, they had become so unpopular that angry Dominicans burned them in effigy and paraded through the streets of Santo Domingo with coffins bearing their names...
...By the end of 1966, however, the leaders of the SU and their lawyer, Guido Gil, realized that there was a plan to smash the union (which was already undergoing internal political divisions...
...By 1962, Volman had independent reasons for moving to the Dominican Republic...
...More fundamentally, AIFLD is an instrument of the U.S...
...Dominican newspapers from 1964...
...Offie nngers and plant engineers, $6,000 a year Worldwide "mn "micgiom Paved rmad Dependable ainexpensive electric powe Plentyof den water Noimporta atduties And a 20earta esemtion with no stringsaachd...
...As a key leader in the Dominican exile movement in New York during the Trujillo era, Nicolas Silfa had been in close contact with the international apparatus of the AFL-CIO...
...trade union philosophy was exportable, AFL-CIO representatives educated their Dominican students to focus solely on "bread-and-butter" issues...
...William Doherty statement to House Foreign Affairs Committee, March 31, 1965 (reprint...
...And in 1970, he was formally appointed as assistant to the President of Falconbridge Nickel in charge of labor relations...
...Official repression has been stepped up, making strikes and nearly all methods of struggle illegal...
...in any case, some of the demands were won...
...provided [and which] were too overwhelming for the rival federations to compete...
...During the 1966 election campaign, he was the "only line of communication between Juan Bosch and the State Department," 1 0 attempting to assure Washington that Bosch remained anti-Communist and to insure Bosch's fidelity to U.S...
...See newspaper accounts of 1967 revelations...
...labor manipulators to establish their creation, CONATRAL, as an effective labor organization in the Dominican Republic by the mid-1960's was not accidental, but the logical consequence of objective conditions in that country...
...The international apparatus of the AFL-CIO was to play a crucial role in that process...
...Firms Flee to Caribbean," condensed from AFL-CIO American Federationist, in Guardian, November 7, 1973...
...Norman Gall, "How Trujillo Died," New Republic, April 13, 1963...
...By October, 1974, these problems had become so serious that AIFLD felt obliged to offer special seminars in Jarabacoa to combat the "propaganda" against COOPFETYC being spread by its "enemies...
...Other leaders were killed or disappeared, and workers were threatened not to have anything to do with the SU...
...Senator Thomas Dodd who justified the U.S...
...7 " By 1974 the infamous Tadeo Guerrero (who had been removed for several years after the Gil affair) was back again to repress any insurgent labor militancy...
...interests...
...For years, Volman had regarded the self-isolating policies of AIFLD and CONATRAL (e.g., their support of the U.S invasion) as ineffective, and had pushed for more sophisticated anti-Communist strategies...
...The experience of 1965 had shown that even political democracy could not be won without deepening and intensifying the class and anti-imperialist struggle...
...Jose del Castillo at al., Corporaciones Multinacionales (Santo Domingo: UASD, 1974...
...7. Romualdi, op...
...El Nacional, October 24, 1974...
...at one point, government troops were used to carry out the evictions...
...In the late 1950s, Volman was transferred to Western Hemisphere operations...
...see also Charles Ameringer, The Democratic Left in Exile (Coral Gables: University of Miami Press, 1974...
...The first step was to get the Sacha Volman: Born in Rumania, Sacha Volman began his career by fighting first against the Nazis and then against the Communists in that country...
...In order to clear the land for use as a resort and plantation, it was necessary to evict nearly 100 Dominicans who were living and working on the land, and who refused to accept the $50-$70 compensation to move...
...This action was carried out by MAR (Agrarian Movement of the Reformist Party, Balaguer's party), a band of peasant thugs mobilized by the Right and at the beck and call of the government and police...
...A GAO report on AIFLD included a classified (secret) section on this subcontracting arrangement, in which it laid out that several AID Mission directors had complained of having no control over the activities funded through this program, and in some cases not even knowing of their existence...
...The CGT has been a special target...
...In addition, union sources charge, Volman had the union office in Bonao shut down while police prohibited a workers meeting...
...As proof, he went on, "The statement issued by CONATRAL was outspoken on the subject of Communist control of the rebel movement, and accepted the necessity for American intervention...
...16, 17, 19, 21, 24...
...By 1966, when G&W chairman Bluhdorn began buying into the La Romana operation, the workers were organized (since 1964) in the Sindicato Unido (SU), a strong coalition of 33 agricultural and industrial unions...
...but eventually there was no alternative other than to liquidate COOPFETYC...
...Initially, it envisaged 700-900 housing units, to be financed by loans to the Dominican National Institute of Housing - 67% from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and 33% from the AFL-CIO guaranteed by AID...
...For example, the International Transport Federation (ITF) has worked with a governmentcontrolled transport workers' organization, SINACHOD, to weaken the powerful drivers' union UNACHOSIN...
...Andrew McLellan and Michael Boggs, "U.S...
...80% of foreign exchange earnings from agricultural exports, mainly sugar - foreign investment: $135 million in 1966, $411 million in 1974 (nearly all U.S...
...By the 1970's, the older strategies of the U.S...
...8 4 Volman's other strategy was to buy off the workers by setting up a multi-purpose cooperative, Coofalcondo...
...CGT, op...
...cit., p. 22...
...In short, the union was neutralized politically by being led by company agents...
...intervention and simultaneously with President Johnson's announcement that the revolution had been taken over by "Communists" - CONATRAL Secretary-General Diego Diaz denounced the revolution as having been captured by Communist elements...
...economic strategy uses the Dominican Republic as a cheap labor haven, employing masses of cheap, unorganized - almost unorganizable - workers...
...Six pln-are poducingedy We'd like yours tooa...
...labor official put it, a strong-arm man for the AFL-CIO...
...83 labor leaders - virtually the entire SU leadership - were fired, while police occupied the plant...
...As one investment analyst pointed out in a report on Caribbean Leisurewear, a tenant in the G&W free zone, ". .. with 4 to 5 applicants available for every company job in the Dominican, the Company has the opportunity to expand rapidly within a framework of labor peace and dedication to work...
...see also Needleman, op...
...In interviews, CONATRAL officials insisted that their single objective was "mds" - higher wages and better conditions for organized workers...
...They missed the point that was obvious to other Dominican labor leaders: that in a country where less than 10% of the labor force is unionized, where wage ceilings are more common than minimum wage laws, and where business and landowning interests dominate, decent conditions for labor presuppose basic social changes and income redistribution...
...In Uruguay, Goodwyn's job had been to "develop a pool of anti-CNT labor leaders through the training programs of the Institute...
...Jose del Castillo et al., Gulf & Western en la Republica Dominicana (Santo Domingo: Universidad Aut6noma de Santo Domingo, 1974...
...Miami Herald, November 19, 1962...
...labor could not afford to rely solely on its own discredited forces or to oppose CASC as vehemently as before...
...Comptroller General, Report to Senate Foreign Relations Committee, "Follow-Up Review of Activities Under Contracts with the American Institute for Free Labor Development" (Washington: GAO, 1970), p. 6. 43...
...government than the [ITS'] encounters increased resistance [as an agency of intervention in labor affairs] in particular countries, the Union-to-Union program offers an alternative for maintaining efforts to build the free labor movement...
...Roberts et al., op...
...The 1971 contract spoke of "worker-management harmony...
...PTTI reports (1972, 1973), AIFLD Report (monthly...
...FREE" AND "DEMOCRATIC" UNIONISM What was the internal character of the AFL-CIO's creation...
...workers, and using 23% of their union dues...
...Listin Diario, October 27...
...the growth and concentration of that working class could not be arrested without stopping the industrialization process itself and hence the opportunities for U.S...
...intervention in the Dominican Republic, in which Mann, as Under Secretary of State, played a key role...
...In fact, relations with the government are so close that one AIFLD objective is to get leaders of its union affiliates appointed to government boards and commissions...
...CGT, op...
...business publications such as the Wall Street Journal and Forbes to gloat about the spectacle of U.S...
...Just as the development of the CGT took the workers' struggle to a higher level, Sacha Volman has taken capital's response to a higher level, one appropriate to the new challenge...
...Now that AIFLD is being challenged by a growing number of U.S...
...However, not much could be proven about its funding - particularly after AID picked up the tab for more than 90% of the operating expenses of AIFLD (along with other "CIA orphans...
...The Dominican labor movement has not overcome these obstacles...
...Among sixty investors in a new resort project at Punta Cana (on the eastern coast) are some of U.S...
...Actually, the MR had existed since late 1969, having evolved out of CASC as a result of the contradictions within CASC between anti-imperialist and anti-Communist tendencies...
...The events of 1965 had forced all groups to choose sides...
...La Noticia, December 10, 1973...
...capital and the Dominican government to smash the strongest, most militant labor organizations - particularly in areas which affected U.S...
...regarding other irregularities of Berger, see Kurzman in Washington Post, January 2, 1966...
...labor bureaucracy had a task more specifically related to its trade-union nature: to divide the Dominican working class and to instill within it an ideology of class collaboration...
...It was closely identified with Bosch's party, the PRD, until late 1965, when its Secretary-General, Miguel Soto, who also headed the Labor Bureau of the PRD, withdrew with his followers, alleging "Communist influence" since the Constitutionalist revolt earlier that year...
...Thus, for example, during 1973 contract negotiations, by meeting immediate wage demands, the company managed to avert a strike and to reject all the longer-range social demands...
...As of 1974, AIFLD was running several savings and loan cooperatives for its affiliated unions - the coops being viewed as a way of giving workers "a stake in the system...
...Senator J. William Fulbright told labor columnist Victor Riesel, "I have had suggestions that they [the CIA] had taken very strong part in labor union organization in the Dominican Republic...
...What this strategy means for labor is perhaps the most efficient way to avoid labor "problems": to create a situation which obviates the need to deal with any labor organization...
...Some of its services include: construction of a workers' housing complex, a transportation coop, a low-cost pharmacy (which has led to controversy with the local pharmacists), political education and leadership training courses similar to others set up by Volman in previous years (see box...
...Director of AFL-CIO's Committee on Political Education Alexander Barkan...
...Juan Bosch, Crisis de la Democracia de America en la Republica Dominicana (Mexico: CEDS, 1964) (Panoramas no...
...Shortly before the September 1963 golpe against Bosch, CONATRAL officials issued an aviso asserting their faith in the armed forces as the bastion against Communism and reportedly participated in nation-wide "Christian" antiCommunist businessmen's demonstrations against the government...
...Symptomatic of this great gap between CONATRAL leaders and the rank and file were periodic internal revolts...
...Clearly this strategy is not limited to the sugar fields...
...labor in the Dominican Republic after 1961...
...La Noticia, December 22, 1974...
...by 1974, inflation was running around 25% a year...
...capital and influence...
...In April, after some workers began a work slowdown to protest the biweekly pay system and the SU backed them up, the company, supported by government officials, took advantage of the opportunity to annul the contract with the SU...
...6. AIFLD, op...
...According to official Dominican figures, the cost of living rose by 24.6% from 1969 to 1972...
...358, 473, 488...
...2. Hirsch, op...
...AIFLD's extensive educational and training program in the Dominican Republic has also served intelligence purposes...
...Forbes, October 15, 1971...
...This has taken a number of different forms: strike-breaking through use of police...
...Dan Kurzman in Washington Post, January 1, 1966...
...What made these strikes and protests far more threatening was a second factor: the gradual consolidation of left forces in the Dominican labor movement by the early 1970's, capable of organizing and channeling the growing discontent...
...El Caribe, September 27, 1963...
...8 3 While succeeding in its immediate goal, however, the company realized that the strike had been very costly in terms of giving it a repressive image...
...After Bosch took power, CONATRAL remained hostile...
...ORIT, Inter-American Labor Bulletin, June, 1965...
...t The Union-to-Union program has become quite controversial...
...He was also in El Salvador for ORIT while Thomas Mann was Ambassador there (1955-57...
...Hal Hendrix column, May 26, 1966...
...To cite a few examples: * In 1967, the Balaguer government systematically harassed the unions affiliated with F-C...
...The striking thing about both of these men is their total lack of trade union experience...
...so much has been revealed in recent months (e.g., about their role in Chile, and throughout Latin America)' that these agencies stand publicly exposed...
...The principal organizers were not workers but representatives of petty bourgeois political parties...
...s 1962 street demonstration with protesters carrying signs reading, "Somerford and McLellan, divisionists of the workers' movement, get out!," and bearing coffins with their names.THE POLITICS OF "APOLITICAL UNIONISM" Despite its professed commitment to "apolitical unionism," the AFL-CIO and its Dominican affiliate intervened actively in Dominican politics during the crucial period from 1962 to 1966 - the period of Bosch's election in December 1962, Bosch's overthrow in September 1963, the Constitutionalist pro-Bosch revolution in April 1965, and the 1966 election...
...For example, La Noticia, November 23, 1973...
...labor's most prominent officials, as well as New York labor mediator Theodore Kheel and labor mediator-turned-Nixon-adviser John Dunlop...
...organized labor...
...By using these terms, I do not mean to imply that these people represent the interests of the U.S...
...Indeed the activities of a number of CONATRAL members before and during the revolution gave the appearance of intelligence-gathering...
...strategy...
...Interviews...
...2. Susanne Bodenheimer, "The Bankruptcy of the Social Democratic Movement in Latin America," New Politics, Vol...
...Concretely, while the U.S...
...4. Serafino Romualdi, Presidents and Peons (NY: Funk & Wagnalls, 1967), pp...
...Alan Howard, "A Report on Gulf & Western in the Dominican Republic" (mimeo for Dominican Republic 10th Anniversary Seminars April 24, 1975...
...But none was as blatantly controlled by outside forces as CONATRAL...
...A few words are necessary to put into perspective the recent discussion about AIFLD and its relation to the CIA...
...5 8 Moreover, this group within CASC was radicalized by objective conditions in the Dominican Republic - the 1965 revolution, the intensification of imperialist penetration, the worsening economic situation and the repression...
...It was on this trip in December 1962 that he and Bosch met with Meany, Lovestone, and McLellan regarding the future of the Dominican labor movement...
...An unlimit abor force, With tu kimployees earnng 40K an hour...
...labor strategy was the decreasing effectiveness of CONATRAL and even of AIFLD as primary instruments, and the increasing need to maintain a lower profile and to work more closely with new allies...
...many of its leaders have been jailed, arbitrarily arrested or exiled, and its offices attacked...
...5. Romualdi, op...
...unpublished memo from official of Dominican Architects' Association...
...business and the U.S...
...Soto relates that during a general strike in the winter of 1961-62, McLellan offered him $30,000 to call off the strike...
...We had hoped that CASC could serve as a means of uniting all workers' forces...
...Another such congress in April 1967 also failed because of sectarianism and government repression...
...Fred Goff and Michael Locker, "The Violence of Domination: U.S...
...in a very real sense, they are agents of imperialism rather than agents of the U.S...
...on the job, not one of hundreds of union members polled had ever heard of AIFLD...
...After the election an ORIT publication hailed Balaguer's victory as a "clear mandate for his program of peace and tranquility...
...ITS activities have been funded through the "Union-toUnion" program, whereby AID funds are channeled through AIFLD to U.S...
...15 ff...
...5 923 Despite official repression and other obstacles placed in its path, the CGT has grown both numerically and politically since 1972...
...Professional Anti-Communist Agent crucial function of providing political-technical training to middle-level personnel.6 Like its predecessors, CIDES ran on CIA funds, channeled through the Kaplan Fund and IILR - a cover which "permit[ted] American activity while protecting both governments against charges of intervention...
...Even before the assassination of Trujillo, he had been in contact with social democratic Dominican exiles...
...San Juan, Puerto Rico), May 1, 1970, p. 15...
...but after being temporarily "exiled" following the coup, Volman was back...
...5 5 This situation has led the workers to respond with several waves of strikes...
...investment in the Dominican Repub- lic.1 0 By 1966, G&W chairman Charles Blhhdorn had acquired enough stock to gain a position on the Executive Committee of South Puerto Rico Sugar (SPRS), which owns the La Romana installations in the Dominican Republic...
...President of sheet metal workers' union Edward Carlough...
...influence within the Bosch government...
...8 At this time Volman also helped direct an operation to purge Communists from Dominican trade-union leadership (although he remained critical of the AFL-CIO/CONATRAL anti-Bosch approach...
...Thus we find that same Andrew McLellan who spent years dividing the Dominican labor movement, and whose allies helped smash the union at G&W, now writing indignantly that "the wage "scales [at the La Romana Industrial Zone] are an affront to human decency...
...creation of parallel unions...
...intervention and told the Senate, "I do not see how anyone could reasonably argue that Latin American progressives were uniformly on the side of the rebels and opposed to American intervention...
...AID" WITH STRINGS ATTACHED Even AIFLD's "social projects" came with strings attached and were tailored to U.S...
...39-44...
...Rather it viewed these factors in the context of several internal factors: the structural weaknesses and underdevelopment of the Dominican labor movement inherited from the past (low level of industrialization, low degree of worker organization corresponding to the economic structure, Trujillista repression...
...5 4 In each case, AIFLD and the ITS' are working with docile parallel unions to counter militant leftist Dominican unions...
...Associated Press, January 23, 1975...
...What the workers learned from their own direct experience was sufficient to counter the ideological campaign launched by the United States...
...Its ideology was expressed by William Doherty who became AIFLD's Executive Director: "We welcome [the] cooperation [of management] not only financially, but in terms of establishing our policies...
...The more important task now is to understand what this means in the context of the struggle against imperialism...
...To develop a "modern" approach, they hired a CIA man with long and intimate involvement in the Dominican Republic - perhaps the most knowledgeable, best-informed man in the country - Sacha Volman (for background, see box...
...La Noticia...
...and international labor movement (particularly the ITS'), suspicions arose about the role of AIFLD...
...While the offices of CASC and F-C were raided, their leaders periodically arrested, and their members fired, CONATRAL enjoyed a "comfortable relationship with the government and immunity from official persecution.21 As featured speaker at CONATRAL's second National Congress in December 1964, Reid Cabral commended CONATRAL as the only responsible element of labor and reportedly offered CONATRAL the use of government office space...
...Thus, to the extent that the AFL-CIO and AIFLD were successful for awhile, this was a result of the political underdevelopment, as well as the historical structural weaknesses, of Dominican labor...
...The Trujillista CDT collapsed in late 1961, leaving FOUPSA dominant...
...intervention could be taken seriously as a representative of the working class...
...39 ff, and "Tactics," p. 14...
...However, in contrast with other labor leaders and workers who played a crucial role, CONATRAL leaders took no active part in the Constitutionalist struggle...
...Affiliated with CLASC, the Latin American Confederation of Christian Trade Unions, CASC saw itself as a "third force" - anti-American, but also anti-Communist...
...An attempt in the late 1960's to form a National Federation of Industrial Unions failed...
...After the 1963 coup (which, according to some sources, occurred after J. M. Kaplan, who had a monopoly on Dominican molasses sales, withdrew his support 9 ), CIDES was closed down...
...Nevertheless, it became apparent that AFL-CIO officials never accepted the idea: accusing Bosch of trying to dominate the labor movement ("like the dictator Trujillo"), AFL-CIO and CONATRAL representatives obstructed the unity talks.' 2 The AFL-CIO not only refused to cooperate with other labor organizations, but actually became embroiled in a bitter feud with them...
...labor bureaucracy maintained its AIFLD and ITS programs in the country and attempted to build up its own pliable labor network, these efforts bore little fruit...
...44 Both in interviews and in written documents, AID officials were quite critical of AIFLD operations and of CONATRAL...
...The company, on the other hand, greatly increased its profits.72 The company also instituted biweekly rather than weekly pay...
...interviews...
...And in COOPSINAES (for U.S.affiliated stevedores), according to AIFLD reports, serious personality struggles and other internal problems developed...
...labor apparatus in the Dominican Republic for years.t Brito helped form a new union, the Sindicato Libre, which was immediately recognized by government labor officials...
...see also Carlos Acuasiati, Diez Anos de Economica Dominicana (Santo Domingo: CEPAE, 1971), p. 18...
...6 7 Estrella was forced to resign after less than a year...
...labor official acknowledged the failure when he said in an interview, referring to CONATRAL, "Poor guys...
...4 0 UAW's Victor Reuther to comment that U.S...
...Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Labor Conditions in the Dominican Republic" (1964...
...cit., p. 209...
...unions, which then pass the funds on to their ITS affiliate.t The advantage of this program is that the ITS' do not appear to be receiving U.S...
...William O. Douglas, Holocaust or Hemispheric Cooperation (N.Y.: Vintage, 1971), p. 37...
...in 1960, more than half of the agricultural labor force was seriously underemployed, and the "apparent labor surplus" in the countryside was over 75% (as compared with 33% in Chile and 50% in Brazil...
...23294 ff...
...INTRODUCTION Ever since the CIA arranged the assassination of Dominican dictator Trujillo in 1961, the U.S...
...1) Funding 2) Provides cover 3) Control 4) Training20 groups while denying recognition to workers' organizations of a known democratic orientation [STAPI...
...He began by setting up the Institute for International Labor Relations (IILR) together with U.S...
...labor apparatus became less important, as new agencies were required for accomplishing these goals...
...Sources: Wall Street Journal, May 25, 1973...
...By 1974, the Dominican Republic had three free zones, and more were being planned...
...James Pines (Transcentury Corporation), "The Union-to-Union Program" (1974), p. iii and passim...
...1971 manuscript by Solon Barraclough.15 police of the Trujillo tyranny...
...Also working for the AFL-CIO in the Dominican Republic were anti-Castro Cuban exiles - primarily remnants of the Confederation of Cuban Workers, Batista's corrupt and discredited labor arm, which had been run by Eusebio Mujal in collaboration with Batista and supported by the AFL-CIO...
...and passim...
...La Nacibn, October 5, 1965...
...In addition to the unviability of CONATRAL, objective conditions in the Dominican Republic after 1965 necessitated this change of U.S...
...Pefia Valdez et al., op...
...Latin America, March 7, 1975...
...the rest of the land is used as a tobacco plantation...
...labor was working with a "very small and unrepresentative group...
...in 1973 alone, it rose by 15.1...
...cit., pp...
...Even more active has been the Postal, Telegraph and Telephone International (PTTI), whose Dominican affiliates have organized the strategic communications unions parallel to the leftist telephone workers' union...
...labor but U.S...
...ITF and AIFLD also continued working with STAPI, the parallel port-workers' union established to counter POASI (see above...
...Abraham Lowenthal, "Foreign Aid as a Political Instrument: the Case of the Dominican Republic," Public Policy, Vol...
...Power in the Dominican Republic," p. 268...
...cit., p. 59...
...to this end, from 1961 to the mid-1960's, U.S...
...capital and to the right-wing Balaguer government These actions made clear his loyalty to one principle only: anti-Communism...
...policy objectives...
...After U.S...
...p. 11...
...cit., p. 402...
...This puts U.S...
...CASC developed a strong base in the countryside, largely by building upon the infrastructure of the Church...
...Ibid., p. 19...
...3 3 Then Philip Agee, ex-CIA agent who operated for years in Latin America with AIFLD as his chief cover, revealed that AIFLD had been created and was directly run by the CIA.34 As was already believed, most of AIFLD's top personnel were close to, if not agents of, the CIA...
...When POASI, the independent union of port workers in Santo Domingo, went on strike in 1964, the Reid Cabral Government placed troops in charge of the port and broke the strike by creating a parallel union, STAPI...
...By early 1962 the BFL had established firm ties with ORIT and was receiving financial aid and training from the AFL-CIO...
...El Sol, October 26, 1974...
...From 1966 to 1972, Balaguer maintained an austerity program featuring a strict freeze on wages...
...Philip Agee, who was in Uruguay for the CIA at the same time as interview that CASC was Communist-infiltrated...
...Meanwhile, AIFLD maintained its basic program of seminars and social projects...
...Cane cutters earn less today than in 1964 (immediately after the Bosch era...
...Kurzman in Washington Post, January 2, 1966...
...intervention was necessary to prevent "another Cuba" - was identical with that of the AFL-CIO and the State Department...
...An ORIT statement denounced the Provisional Government for "authorizing the legal recognition of undemocratic workers' Goodwyn, identifies him as a "U.S...
...that the CDT was an adjunct of the government more than a "genuine trade union...
...CHEAP LABOR HAVEN Perhaps the most significant fact about G&W's La Romana installation is that 70% of the labor force at peak session is not organized at all - the Haitian braceros who work for lower wages and are essentially unorganizable...
...This entire section is based largely on personal interviews...
...From this time on, Volman developed strong disagreements with the approach of the U.S...
...Nor was this the only example of CONATRAL involvement in parallel unionism and strike-breaking...
...6 1 * POASI, the leftist port workers' union became the target of a government campaign in which since 1973 a fraudulently imposed "leadership" made up of police agents has occupied the POASI offices in order to prohibit any meetings and to arrest the legitimate leaders when they tried to enter...
...labor's international bureaucrats attempted to splinter, manipulate, and mold the Dominican labor movement...
...Thus, the representatives of U.S...
...73 1 Brito has been identified as a former employee of SPRS and an anti-Bosch army man (some called him a Wessin y Wessin thug...
...A number of Berger employees were thought to have ties with the CIA...
...workers are finding out about AIFLD's involvement in such bloody events as the 1973 Chile coup, and are beginning to condemn it...
...3 Several labor sources claimed to know of U.S...
...ruling class has had a stake in maintaining that country as a preserve for investment by U.S...
...When Romualdi moved on to set up AIFLD in 1962, McLellan took over his post as Inter-American representative of the AFL-CIO, in which post he directed the labor operations in the Dominican Republic...
...Volman was also a good man for the job because of his identification for many years as a reformer and confidant of Juan Bosch...
...The current U.S...
...56-58...
...4 (In fact, once having served its function, FENHERCA was abandoned and left to deteriorate...
...interests such as AIFLD and CONATRAL were clearly inadequate, and U.S...
...Moreover, the economic crisis is moving other unions to the left, and is creating new possibilities for unity...
...and promotion of a minority of construction and engineering firms most likely to...
...As Francisco Antonio Santos, Secretary General of CGT (formerly Secretary of Organization of CASC, and leader of the MR tendency within CASC) explained this evolution, Many of us who founded CGT were in CASC...
...capital and its Dominican allies...
...also Richard Dudman, St...
...but this proved impossible because of the strong anti-Communism within CASC...
...The AFL-CIO's pat excuse for non-cooperation was that the other federations were Communist-controlled or -infiltrated...
...5, October, 1974...
...3 Yet, this fraction of the Dominican working class has become crucial to the U.S...
...because, unless organized by unions friendly to U.S...
...5. Interviews...
...9. Romualdi, op...
...Even AIFLD gives a figure of 30,000 for 1966 - see AIFLD "Country Labor Plan," p. 17...
...AIFLD, "Emergency Plan for the Dominican Republic," November 15, 1965...
...One high AFL-CIO official, asked whether he had learned about the 53 Communists in the 1965 revolution from the State Department, laughed and replied, "The State Department can thank us for much of its information...
...A free zone is an enclave in which the government offers special tax laws and other incentives so that foreign companies will locate there that part of their production process which requires large amounts of cheap labor...
...Thus it is not surprising that his wife, having studied at the ORIT Institute in Mexico, and having worked for CONATRAL during the 1960's, still maintains close ties to AIFLD.24 Meanwhile, the AFL-CIO's CNTD has had little occasion to protest because it is generally identified as pro-government and has suffered no attacks by Balaguer's official forces...
...First, AIFLD had violated a Dominican law under which any contract channeled through an official Dominican agency such as the Housing Institute must be awarded on the basis of an open public hearing...
...labor manipulators...
...The result was a polarization of the centrist CASC...
...this was accomplished between February 1966, when Bluhdorn was appointed to the SPRS Executive Committee, and July 1967, when G&W formally purchased the La Romana installations...
...Kurzman, Washington Post, June 13, 1966...
...El Caribe, September 5, 1962...
...Despite AFL-CIO boasts that CONATRAL was the only "democratic" labor federation in the Dominican Republic, CONATRAL showed no particular aptitude for union democracy...
...see also Sidney Lens, "Lovestone Diplomacy," Nation, July 5, 1965...
...Having spent much of his life in Texas, McLellan was already a good friend of Mann - a friendship which was renewed during the 1965 U.S...
...7 This was supplemented by a White House contingency grant...
...Clarification of this point is important for political as well as semantic reasons...
...Needleman, op...
...In 1961, when the Dominican working class had its first opportunity for independent action, it was young, inexperienced, divided - easy prey even for the inept U.S...
...Their effectiveness was limited, however, by the independent development of that class in the Dominican Republic...
...The main thrust of AIFLD's educational program was anti-Communism...
...Upon arriving at La Romana, Rosell stated that G&W Vice President Rosell and G&W public relations head meeting with three company union officials (Photo: Howie Epstein/LNS) he had not the slightest doubt that the SU was Communist-dominated...
...It was signed by representatives of all labor organizations except CONATRAL, whose leaders continued to criticize Bosch for not suppressing the Communists vigorously enough...
...cit., p. 402...
...When Bosch was defeated and Balaguer won in the 1966 election, however, Volman lost no time in becoming a top "development adviser" to Balaguer...
...labor leaders such as Joseph Cohn, Vice President of the Meat-Cutters' Union, took the opposite view, and criticized the AFL-CIO leadership for its stand...
...The primary threat to this objective has come from the potential development of an organized, conscious working class in the Dominican Republic...
...In fact, a significant number of AIFLD, ORIT, and ITS personnel do not come from the U.S...
...cit., p. 268...
...McLellan statement (AFL-CIO, mimeo...
...3 6 (This obsession with anti-Communism was reflected also in the personal outlook of the AIFLD director in the Dominican Republic, Jack Goodwyn,* who insisted in an * On his previous assignment as AIFLD representative in Uruguay, Goodwyn had been the target of protests and had been burned in effigy...
...But they maintained close relations with other dictators such as Batista in Cuba, whose labor practices were no better...
...unemployment: 33-40%, 50% in some parts of Santo Domingo...
...Lucy de Silfa is the wife of Nicolas Silfa, a former PRD leader (who split with Bosch in the early 1960's...
...Most early Dominican organizers fought for economic gains and for political democracy, but were not conscious of their role in a class struggle...
...and the D - fniegovvernmet...
...labor's international "bureaucrats," "agents," "officials," "strategists," "manipulators," the "international apparatus of U.S...
...unpublished memo by Volman, September 1965.28 CONCLUSION The experience of the past few years has made clear that the struggle between the Dominican working class and U.S...
...any organizing efforts are immediately detected by this intelligence network and dealt with...
...This kind of pacification became increasingly important as massive amounts of U.S...
...In all cases, I am referring to the same group of people: those who have implemented U.S...
...41 ff...
...The intimate relationship between Reid Cabral and the AFL-CIO was cemented when Serafino Romualdi, director of AIFLD, was decorated by Reid Cabral on April 12, 1965, for his services to the cause of "free trade unionism" in the Dominican Republic...
...When Soto refused this and similar offers, he was denounced as a Communist...
...cit., p. 155...
...he also told one labor leader at La Romana that he was "a specialist in busting unions...
...Louis Post-Dispatch, April 13, 1969, William Greider, Washington Post, April 21, 1969...
...The actual consolidation of a class-conscious sector of the proletariat altered the character of the Dominican class struggle...
...working class, of the rank and file of organized labor in the United States...
...working class...
...prohibition of legal union activities such as marches, or use of police to break them up...
...227 ff...
...labor strategists had to create a new lower-profile replacement...
...An objectively antiimperialist stance by U.S...
...Finally, in order to destroy all militant forces in Dominican labor - particularly where U.S...
...At the time of his mysterious death (some attributed it to suicide) in 1965, the ORIT Inter-American Bulletin eulogized: The deceased was widely known and highly respected in Inter-American trade union circles and was identified with the development of the democratically oriented National Confederation of Dominican Labor (CONATRAL) which he advised and counselled from its inception in 1962...
...Mundo Latino (Miami), July, 1972...
...ruling class and multinational corporations to divide the working class in Latin American countries and to spread the ideology of class collaboration...
...facilitate the invasion of our construction market by powerful American companies...
...multinational corporations were involved,' as in the cases of Gulf & Western and Falconbridge - the AFL-CIO apparatus became secondary to other actors...
...Prensa Latina, September 24, 1974...
...4 2 But by the late 1960's there was little to show for it...
...Howard Wiarda, "The Development of the Labor Movement in the Dominican Republic,' Inter-American Economic Affairs, vol...
...monopoly capital, such as J. Peter Grace and Berent Friele (a Rockefeller man...
...labor representatives have not acted independently, but indirectly and in concert with the multinational corporations and the Balaguer government...
...40-42...
...La Romana workers staged several strikes during the early 1960's...
...Operating on the assumption that U.S...
...This super-coop is by far the largest in the country - "as powerful as a bank...
...Power and the Dominican Republic," in Irving Louis Horowitz, Josue de Castro and John Gerassi (eds.-), Latin American Radicalism (NY: Vintage, 1969), p. 260...
...In 1974 the union elected a new leadership, which began talks with the CGT...
...On January 30, 1972, the initiative came from delegates from 50 unions, who announced their intention to launch a new Central General de Trabajadores (CGT) in the congress of CASC, to be held in early February...
...McLellan statement (AFL-CIO, mimeo...
...The struggle between Volman and progressive labor forces is significant not only at Falconbridge, but nationally...
...Shortly after his election in June 1966, Balaguer unilaterally voided POASI's collective pact and recognized STAPI, which immediately affiliated with CONATRAL and with an ITS, the International Transport Fedeiation.38 In this case CONATRAL publicly identified itself with a parallel union, which most Dominicans regarded as promoting the interests of labor's enemies...
...interviews...
...Agee, op...
...A few years later, in 1956, a similar fate befell Jesus de Galindez, a former labor adviser to Trujillo, who had resisted Trujillo's anti-labor policies, and eventually had gone into exile in New York...
...interviews...
...Ruth Shereff, "How the CIA Makes Friends and Influences Countries," Viet-Report, January-February, 1967...
...hence that whatever differences do exist can be negotiated with the capitalists...
...COUNTER-OFFENSIVE BY CAPITAL This consolidation on the left and the general increase in combativeness in the 1970's led U.S...
...On September 26, the day after the golpe, various unions affiliated with CONATRAL were cited in the newspapers as hailing "unconditionally the heroic gesture which our armed forces have made in defense of liberty, democracy, and justice, [by ousting] the pro-Communist government...
...Finally, CONATRAL leaders - supported by the AFL-CIO and ORIT - adopted union practices which violated even the principles of U.S...
...Doherty, radio interview, December, 1963, and testimony before Inter-American Subcommittee of House Foreign Affairs Committee, May 6, 1969...
...4 6 A well-informed U.S...
...interests...
...labor movement at all, but rather from the intelligence community...
...Once the AFL-CIO-created and -financed faction, CONATRAL (National Confederation of Free Workers), had broken away from FOUPSA, the AFL-CIO undermined subsequent attempts to unify the Dominican labor movement...
...YELLOW UNIONISM First, what kind of trade unionism did the AFL-CIO and AIFLD teach its Dominican proteges...
...Even before Bosch took office, Volman installed himself as the President-elect's main adviser, accompanying him to Washington and Europe...
...corporations...
...As CASC remained in the hands of its old leadership, the MR group left CASC and allied with FOUPSA-CESITRADO and independent leftist unions to begin forming CGT...
...Comptroller General, 1970 "Follow-Up Review," pp...
...labor squarely on the side of "law and order" - which has always been used to repress Dominican workers...
...Agee, op...
...Just several months after its formation, one unionist resigned from its Executive Committee, protesting that, "the AFL-CIO, like other foreign elements, has relegated native leaders to the second level...
...In late 1971, these same forces convened a congress for the formation of the National Confederation of Dominican Workers (CNTD...
...McLellan and Boggs, op...
...see also Central General de Trabajadores (CGT), Primer Pleno Ampliado de Dirigentes Nacionales (August, 1973), "Revision Critica e Historica de la CGT Hasta la Fecha" 59...
...Finally, the Dominican labor movement has by no means rid itself of the political errors which have divided it in the past...
...In 1964, U.S...
...As a result of the 1967 revelations about the CIA and its use of the U.S...
...in 1942 and 1946 were met by fierce repression - although the 1946 strike did achieve the doubling of salaries...
...None of these early labor organizations, as one Dominican unionist and writer has pointed out, was really led by the Dominican working class...
...in NACLA 's Latin America and Empire Report, April, 1974...
...In his work, Goodwyn wa to "watch carefully for prospective agents who [could] be recruited...
...labor apparatus, in alliance with U.S...
...Given the post-intervention situation, no organization that claimed to offer "apolitical unionism" while in practice supporting the U.S...
...These ironies enabled U.S...
...he was also convinced that the PRD was the only political force which refused to cooperate with Communists...
...Some of the U.S...
...According to a breakdown of the curriculum for Dominican students published in the AIFLD Report, 18 hours were devoted to the course in "democracy and totalitarianism" ("totalitarianism" meaning "Communism"), with only 5 hours in collective bargaining, 5 in rural problems, and none in organizing the unorganized, educational techniques, social security, or labor legislation...
...The 1965 revolution exposed the U.S.-controlled labor apparatus for what it was, thereby permanently stunting its growth...
...AIFLD's usefulness to the CIA is important to understand...
...investment more than doubled...
...The strike was smashed brutally in 8 days by police and army forces and union leaders were fired...
...When Bosch paid a visit to CONATRAL headquarters in May 1963, he found there Ruiz Lopez (who was no longer Sectetary-General) and several other known conspirators against his government...
...2 2 Only two weeks earlier, AIFLD Social Projects Director William Doherty had told the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, "The President of the Dominican Republic [Reid Cabral] is a warm friend of the workingman and the labor movement...
...Armed with this understanding and with a commitment to discipline, militancy and mass action, the CGT posed a new kind of threat to U.S...
...These considerations became more important as the stakes rose - that is, as the Dominican Republic continued to industrialize in the 1950's, and the CDT grew to a claimed membership of 250,000...
...multinational corpora-tions...
...Whatever pretensions Volman might ever have had about projecting himself as a reformer and a defender of democracy were blown away when he surfaced as a direct adviser to U.S...
...Fred Goff and Michael Locker, "The Violence of Domination: U.S...
...corporations, and the U.S...
...AFL-CIO claims that CONATRAL was "free" of control by any political party, government, or outside influence were soon belied by its actions...
...New York Times, October 26, 1969...
...it has been developed in another area which G&W also pioneered: free zones...
...Although the MR group had a majority there, the government used police and false delegates to intervene on behalf of the conservative sector of CASC, to prevent a victory by the MR forces...
...Perhaps the reason for these mysterious dealings is that the ITS' are performing certain tasks for the CIA...
...Soon after the 1963 golpe against Bosch, various unions withdrew from CONATRAL, protesting the golpista policy of the top leadership...
...capital has also employed new methods, combining fierce repression where necessary with sophisticated manipulation as exempli- fied by Volman at Falconbridge...
...El Caribe, February 21 and March 1, 1965...
...CONATRAL's deep involvement in politics first became clear when, three days before the 1962 Presidential election, Somerford "suddenly discovered" that Robinson Ruiz Lopez, Secretary-General of CONATRAL, had been actively campaigning against Bosch...
...Behind their pious protestations about Trujillo, in fact, lay several deeper fears: (1) in the mid-1940's, Trujillo's CDT belonged to the Communistoriented CTAL (Latin American Confederation of Workers), and Trujillo permitted Communists to operate openly in politics and unions...
...Subsequently, the company set about destroying the union...
...Under pressure from the Dominican Architects' Association (an unaffiliated professional organization), the IDB withdrew its loan, leaving AID to bail out the AFL-CIO...
...FOUPSA-CESITRADO (F-C), the successor to FOUPSA, provided the main support for Juan Bosch among workers...
...Howard, op...
...Romualdi, op...
...Although neither came from the ranks of the U.S...
...2% organized in countryside - working conditions: 44 hours a week legal maximum (9 hours a day for four days, 8 hours on the fifth) - minimum wage: 25-26 cents an hour, or $2.07 a day (as compared with $3.46 a day in Guatemala, $4.94 in Mexico, $20.29 in the United States) - average wages: $478 a year in 1961, $908 in 1966, $941 in 1971 - average wages in sugar: $397 a year in 1955, $918 in 1964, $563 in 1969 Sources: New York Times, January 28, 1973...
...In August 1974 the CGT denounced this administrative intervention, police attack, and the creation of a parallel union to destroy POASI to the International Labor Organization...
...Wall Street Journal, September 7, 1971...
...On several occasions dissenting leaders were ousted...
...Nevertheless, a few independent U.S...
...investment...
...At various points in this article I refer to U.S...
...2 6 Finally, while claiming to take no partisan position during the 1966 election campaign, CONATRAL issued a statement supporting "the candidate of peace...
...am + am*as .ac.26 police...
...3s The point, in short, is to convince Latin American workers that there is no such thing as imperialism, no class struggle, no basic difference between the working class and the capitalist class - in short, to mask reality...
...2 9 Thus CONATRAL leaders spoke in the name of thousands of workers whom they did not really represent...
...cit., p. 15...
...During 1962, Volman established the Inter-American Center for Political Training (very similar to the school in Costa Rica) whose primary function was to train cadres to organize a pro-Bosch Dominican peasant federation...
...as Falconbridge moved into the production phase, the firm's executives realized that they would have to develop a more "modern" and scientific approach to its 1400 (later 1900) workers...
...La Noticia, November 30, 1973...
...interview with CGT leader in Prensa Latina wire service, May 7, 1974...
...labor officials explain their hostility to Trujillo on the grounds of legitimate labor concerns: that the Dominican labor movement was "created and controlled by the secret Indicators NOTE: It is almost impossible to obtain reliable up-to-date statistics...
...Interviews...
...Having failed to secure control of FOUPSA, McLellan and Somerford charged Communist infiltration, and convinced several members of its Executive Committee to pull out of the coalition...
...One ad boasts that hourly wages in the Dominican Republic are 1/3 to 1/4 of those in nearby Puerto Rico...
...A 1957 mission by Daniel Benedict of the AFL-CIO and Raul Valdivia of Batista's Cuban labor movement reported that there was no freedom of association under Trujillo and no genuine unions, that collective bargaining did not exist, and there was some forced labor...
...cit., p. 47...
...officials hailed the San Pedro housing project as an "excellent example of the Alliance for Progress at work...
...As background, it is necessary to look briefly at economic conditions and their effects for the working class, and at the slow but steady consolidation of left labor forces...
...labor's international agents was to divide the Dominican working class...
...capital...
...Although representatives of workers from all major industries attended the March 1965 congress, this effort broke down as a result of "sectarianism...
...In addition to permitting parallel unions, Balaguer's 1966 constitution closely regulated even peaceful political assemblies and demonstrations...
...Finally, the myth of "independence" (which few Dominicans ever believed) was shattered by evidence that the AFL-CIO and CONATRAL worked directly with the CIA...
...An AIFLD report written in 1967 stated that "the revolution of [1965] caused the democratic labor movement to split widely...
...and recognize[d] the patriotic gesture of the armed forces...
...labor officials a concrete material interest in maintaining stability in the Dominican Republic - after all, tourists come to the island for rest and relaxation, not for trouble...
...2 5 The final touch was added several months later by U.S...
...1, 1965-66, p. 46...
...In fact, CIDES had been set up to circumvent the existing government planning agency, which Volman felt to be Communist-infiltrated, and to institutionalize U.S...
...AIFLD Report, May, 1965...
...banana workers' union...
...Embassy or AIFLD...
...As a result, the stance of the AFL-CIO and ORIT shifted from passive distaste to active intervention...
...Wiarda, op...
...AIFLD, "Country Labor Plan," p. 17, and older AIFLD and CONATRAL reports...
...citizen, a CIA agent, and a key figure in Dominican politics - see below) met with George Meany, Jay Lovestone and Andrew McLellan in Washington...
...According to Volman, it was agreed at the Washington meeting that unity discussions should follow...
...As further evidence of worker discontent with CONATRAL leadership and policy-making, CONATRAL's numerical strength declined dramatically as a result of its position during the 1965 revolution...
...In 1956 he became Acting Chief of Middle American Plans in the Division of Biographic Information...
...5) From a longer-range perspective, many U.S...
...6 2 After meeting with POASI leaders to investigate the conflict, Secretary of Labor Oscar Estrella Sahdala received threats from MAR...
...Ambassador Robert Hurwitch, pointing proudly to his trade union and labor attache past, recently gave G&W "high marks" for its labor relations.79 * More recently, two former leaders of the SU called for an investigation of the disappearance of SU documents being held by police (to prevent any real investigation of how SU's registration was cancelled...
...cit., regarding role of the ITS...
...Second, AIFLD insisted that only CONATRAL-affiliated unions be employed for construction of the housing...
...Yet U.S...
...CIAP, Domestic Efforts & the Need for External Financing for the Development of the Dominican Republic, 1971, 1975;' T. Roberts et al., Area Handbook for the Dominican Republic (Washington: GPO, 1966...
...14, Suplemento), p. 211...
...Interviews...
...In 1970, Volman was made special assistant to the President of Falconbridge for labor relations, one of the highest officials in the company...
...2 Today, with economic crisis changing the fortunes even of organized labor in the United States, U.S...
...intervention...
...AIFLD "Country Labot Plan," pp...
...The AFL-CIO, of course, took this opportunity to assert that F-C and the PRD Labor Bureau had always been Communistdominated...
...Although Trujillo had many staunch supporters and a powerful lobby in the United States, by the 1950's he had also acquired a number of firm enemies - among them the leaders of the AFL-CIO and its inter-American affiliate, ORIT (Inter-American Regional Organization of Workers...
...Pena Valdez et al., op...
...and union leaders had decided to associate with the CGT for the formation of a National Federation of Mining and Metallurgical Workers...
...The Falconbridge story begins in 1969 when 2000 workers were hired to construct the nickel mining facility...
...39* Most Dominicans regard this kind of "aid" as thinly disguised intervention...
...STAPI was composed primarily of veteran and active members of the police and armed forces...
...Small wonder, then, that these men became the target of public attack and demonstrations by Dominican workers.16 Workers' Front for Autonomous Unions...
...7. Lowenthal,op...
...VIII, No...
...Kheel, who is well known in business circles as a promoter of new investment schemes, is the largest investor in Punta Cana...
...and the divisions within the labor Left remain serious...
...Yet AFL-CIO members in Northern California read in their local union newspaper a glowing account of COOPSINAES.s 5 Inside Gulf & Western's LaRomana sugar refinery...
...The full extent of Volman's day-to-day decision-making influence in the Bosch government becomes clear in the memoirs of John Barlow Martin, U.S...
...use of shock troops against militant unions...
...In fact, with the exception of one small revolutionary leftist federation, La Uni6n, CONATRAL's major rivals - FOUPSA-CESITRADO, CASC and various independent unions - were themselves non-Communist, even antiCommunist...
...John Bartlow Martin, -Overtaken by Events (Garden City: Doubleday, 1966), p. 551...
...labor" or the "AFL-CIO...
...After the 1965 revolution, Garcia-Godoy's Provisional Government refused to recognize this parallel union, declaring that the 500 (out of 2,000) STAPI members who were real workers could work in the ports by joining POASI...
...The main instrument for this purpose was the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), an enterprise run jointly by the AFL-CIO, U.S...
...In fact, CIDES was part of a (CIA-funded) Inter-American network, and Volman viewed his work in CIDES as the beginning of a strategy for all Latin America...
...Police attacked the office of the CGT, which was organizing the workers and arrested a large number of leaders...
...Given this reality, it was not surprising that a sizeable sector could be temporarily bought off by the labor agents of U.S...
...as a result, the workers were paid less to do the same amount of work and lost other benefits...
...La Noticia, October 24, 1974...
...3. Sacha Volman, "Latin American Experiments in Political and Economic Training" (Washington: Brookings, April 1964...
...for full details, see "Labor-Community Struggle in Bonao," "A Project Camelot in the Dominican Republic," and Fred Goff, "Falconbridge - Made in U.S.A...
...Peace and tranquility" just happened to be the campaign slogan of Joaquin Balaguer, who was unofficially the State Department's favored candidate...
...GAO also expressed dissatisfaction with the lack of monitoring arrangements for this program...
...And at the school in Costa Rica, he became a close confidant of Juan Bosch, exiled leader of the social democratic Partido Revolucionario Dominicano (PRD), who was teaching at the school...
...interests in the Dominican Republic), but also to the greatly increased post-1965 investment by U.S...
...John Bartlow Martin, Overtaken by Events, p. 309...
...after 1959, the CIA funds came through other channels, mainly the J. M. Kaplan Fund and others used for that purpose...
...cit., pp...
...Ambassador to the Dominican Republic during the Bosch era...
...cit., p. 3. 53...
...One important consequence of the events of 1965 was an evolution in the nature and level of the struggle...
...This type of behavior earned CONATRAL and its parents, ORIT and the AFL-CIO, a reputation for fostering antiobrerismo (anti-worker practices...
...unpublished memos...
...Clearly, then, Dominican labor was being used to promote U.S...
...In September 1974, the Dominican Oil Refinery (a subsidiary of Shell Oil) cancelled its union contract, firing key union leaders on charges of inciting a work stoppage...
...6. Volman, "Latin American Experiments," pp...
...Volman's strategy was to use the coop - which was also profitable to Falconbridge - to maintain the union dependent on its services, while simultaneously retaining absolute company control over the whole operation...
...Kurzman in Washington Post, January 1, 1966...
...Volman had its funds cut off (although it later found other CIA sources) and he moved his base of operations to the Dominican Republic...
...By September 1974, the CGT was giving a course -for Falconbridge workers...
...The U.S...
...By its very nature, AIFLD represents class collaboration...
...Some examples are in CGT, "Revisi6n Critica," op...
...One indicator was that in July 1966 the company hired Teobaldo Rosell, a Cuban ekile, as Vice President and General Administrator of La Romana...
...discrimination against construction firms that did not support the 1963 coup against Bosch...
...intervention, the class struggle developed to a much higher level in the Dominican Republic...
...Jesus de Galindez, The Era of Trujillo (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1973), pp...
...These AFL-CIO bureaucrats are not workers, but intelligence operatives...
...173, 398...
...But despite its lack of resources, its clever enemies, and its own continuing mistakes, the CGT has stabilized, is progressing, and is learning through self-criticism...
...For although they are linked to U.S...
...Several important unions - including food and hotel workers (FUTA), the teachers' union (ADP), the heavy machinery operators (SINOMAPE) - regional federations in Santo Domingo, Santiago, and Puerto Plata, and the national formations MR and F-C affiliated with the CGT...
...Listin Diario, December 25, 1973...
...Perhaps the more significant difference this time was that the formation of the CGT was based on careful analysis of the history of organized labor in the Dominican Republic, of the strengths and weaknesses of the movement...
...3. T. D. Roberts et al., Area Handbook for the Dominican Republic (Washington: GPO, 1966), p. 319...
...McLellan report on Dominican Republic labor situation, April 9, 1962...
...1965, November 5, 1965, March 7, 1966...
...When necessary, CONATRAL stood by while the Army was called in to break strikes - as happened in November 1966 when sanitation workers struck...
...The CONATRAL "do-nothing bureaucracy," as one provincial leader referred to it, seemed oblivious to widespread resentment that CONATRAL's Santo Domingo address was identical with that of AIFLD and that several high officers were on the AIFLD payroll...
...Nevertheless, at its inauguration in 1967, undaunted U.S...
...In the mid-1950s, he became the ORIT organizer for Central America, going first to Honduras after the long banana workers' strike against United Fruit Co...
...These organizing efforts culminated in August 1973 in the first full plenary meeting of national leaders of the CGT to adopt an organizational structure and program...
...Semi-skille, 60X an houw Bi-lingu sereties, $3.000 a yea Bookkeepers, $2,000 a yer...
...Philip Agee, Inside the Company...
...the sectarianism that has characterized Dominican leftist politics and labor organizing...
...October 31 and November 2-5, 1974...
...And in fact this investment gives top U.S...
...for Cohn's statement, see Butcher Workman, June, 1965...
...Photo: Howie Epstein/LNS)confederations, the ITS' perform "more specialized" work...
...The CNT was the militant leftist labor confederation which, according to Agee, represented 90-95% of organized labor...
...ORIT's representative in the Dominican Republic, Rolando Leonard, had also been trained under Mujal...
...labor to join hands with U.S...
...We teach the principles of democratic trade unionism," said McLellan in a November, 1962, interview in the Miami Herald "We also teach defense tactics - how to recognize Communist penetration and defeat it...
...6% are working under collective pact...
...Wiarda, op...
...In a recent survey conducted in Southern California, only two officials out of fifty knew about AIFLD...
...Carlos Acuasiati, Diez Anos de Economia Dominicana (Santo Domingo: CEPAE, 1971...
...and incorrect methods of struggle and organizing...
...La Noticia, December 18, 1973...
...By holding a private bidding and favoring American firms," he added, "the AFL-CIO was handling the project as if it were a private one...
...According to Romualdi, McLellan became "the liaison man between ORIT and the AFL-CIO...
...2 8 In addition, CONATRAL leaders consistently made crucial policy decisions, such as the denunciation of the 1965 Dominican revolution, at the top level without consulting its members...
...6 8 -from CGT magazine, with title, "Que se Vaya la Shell"--"Shell, get out...
...Conversely, under the unconstitutional Reid Cabral regime and under Balaguer, CONATRAL supported austerity programs in which wages were frozen or reduced, many strikes were illegal, dissident labor leaders were arrested, and protesting workers fired...
...Embassy no longer had a labor attach6...
...While CASC and F-C categorically condemned the golpe and called for a general strike, CONATRAL in an aviso of September 27 "greet[ed] the new junta...
...4 8 By 1974, CNTD was still an empty shell, maintaining a low profile, refraining from overtly political statements, attempting (in vain) to shed the pro-government identification it inherited from CONATRAL...
...Most significant has been the smashing of militant workers' organizations in the foreign investment enclaves - G&W's La Romana, the free zones, and Falconbridge Nickel...
...One reflection of this radicalization was the beginning of a movement toward unification of the left forces within the labor movement (including the most progressive wing of CASC), leading to their eventual consolidation in the Central General de Trabajadores (CGT) in the early 1970's (see below...
...government and worked more directly with U.S...
...and other unpublished documents...
...trade union imperialism...
...Interviews, La Nacibn, July 15-20, 1963...
...In January 1967, the SU's respected leftist lawyer, Guido Gil, was arrested...
...On February 11, 1962, they formed the Bloque FOUPSA Libre (BFL), later known as CONATRAL...
...Noticias, May 15, 1968...
...Several other important unions, including taxi drivers (UNACHOSIN), port workers (POASI), phone workers (STT), and electrical workers (SITRACODE) remain independent but have collaborated with the CGT frequently...
...Not only in the Dominican Republic, but throughout Latin America, the ITS' have been recognized as a necessary complement to AIFLD: while AIFLD builds up national * Serious problems of mismanagement and corruption developed in several of these coops, resulting in internal power struggles and resignations...
...government (see below...
...as company officials explained to the press, "we saw no alternative [but] to crack down hard...
...cit., p. 53...
...labor agents have been retooling to deal with the heightened class struggle in the Dominican Republic...
...Garcia-Godoy's decision was vigorously protested by CONATRAL and by FENETRADO (CONATRAL's federation of transport workers...
...From another perspective, one could say that the CIA has taken matters out of the hands of the corrupt, discredited labor operators and turned it over to one of its most sophisticated manipulators...
...When early AFL-CIO directed attempts to oust "undesirable" ("pro-Communist") elements from FOUPSA backfired, and when "their man," Augusto Rodriguez, was himself expelled, a new tactic became necessary...
...However, to see AIFLD merely as a tool of the CIA is to miss its basic character or essence...
...what was needed was an entirely new strategy...
...Agee, op...
...re Reid Cabral at the CONATRAL Congress, see El Caribe, November 21-December 2, 1964...
...Labor (World Confederation of Labor bi-weekly, Brussels), February, 1975...
...Labor" Born in Cuba of American parents, Fred Somerford joined the State Department in 1948...
...8 Official minimum wage laws are violated in practice here...
...But the II LR itself turned out to be little more than a funding conduit for Volman's operations in Latin America...
...2 FALCONBRIDGE'S "MODERN METHODS" More sophisticated than the G&W thugs have been the union-busters and labor manipulators of the Dominican Republic's other large foreign investor, Falconbridge Nickel...
...First, they sent a series of international labor missions to investigate conditions, and to pressure Trujillo to make certain changes...
...They first attempted to buy the support of veteran labor leader Miguel Soto, Secretary-General of FOUPSA from 1961 to late 1965...
...During the 1940's, when industrialization created a larger working class, some protective legislation and social benefits were adopted, culminating in the 1951 Labor Code...
...He had been a high official in CONATRAL and became an assistant to AIFLD representative Jack Goodwyn - as one U.S...
...In response to this shift in the level of class struggle, the United States had to develop a new strategy and to define a new role for U.S...
...Thus, these statistics should be read as indicative, rather than as exact...
...This disappearance, they charged, was related also to $86,000 of frozen SU funds...
...The more pronounced anti-imperialist character of the struggle corresponded not only to the 1965 intervention (to protect U.S...
...Moreover, the CGT charges that government labor officials have conspired with the CIA, AIFLD and AIFLD-connected Dominicans such as Lucy de Silfa* to destroy the CGT and stifle the development of legitimate unions...
...labor representatives" there on the CIA payroll...
...AFL-CIO, ORIT, and ITS personnel were conspicuously present at all major CONATRAL functions and participated actively in CONATRAL decisionmaking...
...capital and its allies has evolved to a higher stage...
...also La Noticia, NovemberDecember, 1973...
...A private report done for AID, on the other hand, explicitly recommended that formal reporting and monitoring procedures for these ITS activities should be avoided...
...Ahora, July 31, 1967;interviews...
...Ahora, September 8, 1969...
...18 Glossary AFL-CIO - American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations AIFLD - American Institute for Free Labor Development ITS - International Trade Secretariats ITF - International Transport Federation PTTI - Postal, Telegraph & Telephone International ORIT- Inter-American Regional Organization of Workers FOUPSA - United Workers' Front for Autonomous Unions (DR) BFL - Bloque FOUPSA Libre - Free FOUPSA Bloc (DR) CONATRAL - National Confederation of Free Workers (DR) CNTD - National Confederation of Dominican Workers (DR) CLASC - Latin American Confederation of Christian Trade Unions CASC - Autonomous Confederation of Christian Trade Unions (DR) MR - Renovating Movement (of CASC) (DR) CGT - General Workers' Central (DR) (DR) indicates organizations which operate exclusively in the Domincan Republic AIFLD: COOPERATION WITH MANAGEMENT Aside from its extracurricular (political) activities - using Dominican labor to support U.S...
...22 rally in Santo Domingo, 1965 LABOR MOBILIZATION While maintaining these programs, U.S...
...AIFLD also lowered its profile by working through the ITS...
...The strike ended only when the government threatened to close down the schools indefinitely and to suspend the teachers...
...3 Together with his trainees, Volman set up a peasant league (FENHERCA) with several hundred thousand "members," which was key in gaining rural votes for Bosch in the December 1962 election and in insuring Bosch's victory...
...AIFLD, "Country Labor Plan, FY 1968...
...9. Goff and Locker, op...
...labor movement have been used as covers for the CIA...
...cit., p. 335...
...AFL-CIO statement, May 19, 1965 (mimeo...
...1, pp...
...Labor officials refused to legalize CGT until August 1974...
...Inter-American Labor Bulletin, June, 1966...
...64 * In the Dominican Institute of Social Security, the F-C union was replaced on the executive council by representatives of a parallel union affiliated with the U.S.-controlled CNTD...
...8 In short, those whom Volman could not manipulate, he got rid of...
...8. Volman, "Latin American Experiments...
...In all this, AIFLD and U.S...
...6 1 * UNACHOSIN, the powerful independent drivers' union has also experienced heavy repression...
...If only we were working with the CASC boys...
...La Noticia, December 22, 1974...
...the International Trade Secretariats (ITS) which today coordinate the activities of "free" [anti-Communist] unions in the same trade or profession throughout the world...
...corporations, and more broadly as a part of the capitalist system in the hemisphere...
...Thus, the potential threat that AFL-CIO agents were sent to the Dominican Republic to prevent - an organized, class-conscious proletariat - is in the process of developing into an actuality...
...and in the cement factory, 50% of the workers who supported the leftist executive board of the union were replaced...
...1974 report of Mexican Secretaria de Industria y Comercia...
...These cases are particularly important because they illustrate most clearly how the repression of labor is a necessary condition for keeping monopoly capital in the Dominican Republic...
...according to FEDELAC, during 1974, 5660 peasants were arrested during land take-overs...
...La Noticia, November 2, 1974...
...4. Volman memo, "Tactics of Communism" (mimeo...
...funds - from the AFL-CIO, AID, and most likely the CIA...
...but this is precisely what they cannot do any longer - in fact what their every action belies...
...While teaching the students how to combat a take-over of their union by "extremists," AIFLD officials could observe and keep files on them - to be used for recruitment for the future...
...but its anti-Communism eventually split CASC's ranks in the early 1970s (see below...
...Recognizing that the CGT initiative represented a threat not only to Falconbridge, but also to two other U.S...
...El Caribe, April 26, 1966...
...Interviews...
...arbitrary jailing or exiling of union leaders on the slightest pretext...
...Kurzman in Washington Post, July 13, 1966...
...On a more specific level, what all this meant for U.S...
...labor manipulators were inadequate to the new conditions in the Dominican Republic...
...These factors resulted in the radicalization and increasing militancy and political independence of the Dominican proletariat...
...Completing the team, another Cuban exile, Alvaro Carta, was placed in charge of G&W's sugar operations...
...Subsequently, in 1950, a key leader of the 1946 strike, Mauricio Baez, living in exile in Cuba, was kidnapped, presumably by Trujillo agents, and disappeared forever...
...only the government-controlled Dominican Confederation of Labor (CDT) was permitted to function...
...Interviews with principal leaders...
...CASC, FOUPSA-CESITRADO and several independent unions came together in 1970 to oppose the re-election of Balaguer, but they were unable to move beyond this limited aim...
...5 3 AIFLD's past record there has made the Dominican Republic such a country...
...Clearly, in order to have the docile labor force it required, G&W would have to smash the SU...
...imperialism, the role of U.S...
...labor, and particularly to the leadership of the AFL-CIO (and a few are themselves union officials), they represent not the working class, but the capitalist class and the state it controls...
...cit., pp...
...cit., p. 209...
...New York Times, January 13, 1973...
...imported components are assembled or transformed for re-export...
...THE TRUJILLO ERA The first efforts at spontaneous labor organization in the Dominican Republic date back to the 1920's...
...also El Caribe, December 21, 1961, February 16, 1962, March 3, 1962...
...From 1965 to 1975, U.S...
...6 6 * Secretary of Labor Oscar Estrella Sahdala was the target of constant right-wing pressures because he refused to go along with anti-labor maneuvers and even annulled repressive measures (cancelling the registration of more than 300 unions) taken by his predecessor, Jaime Guerrero Avila (an old Trujillo cabinet minister...
...They showed no interest in organizing the unorganized...
...La Noticia, December 18, 1973...
...6 9 This group, according to the CGT, is responsible for the entire campaign of violation of trade union rights...
...Bluhdorn realized that the 17,000 (now 20,000) workers at La Romana had always been among the most combative in the country...
...2 In 1962, major disagreements developed between Volman and other directors of the school...
...newspaper account about COOPSINAES in "A Loan for Hilario," AFL-CIO, Northern California Labor, March 14, 1975...
...capital, had as its main task to convince Dominican workers that there is no class struggle and no struggle against imperialism...
...In late 1962, shortly after Juan Bosch was elected President of the Dominican Republic, he and his close adviser Sacha Volman (a Rumanian, who became a naturalized U.S...
...Ambassador John Bartlow Martin reports that CONATRAL used this occasion to bring additional pressure against the Bosch government.' 7 In his memoirs, Bosch singled out CONATRAL, "the favorite of ORIT and the AFL-CIO as openly golpista through some of its leaders...
...The efforts for unity date back to 1965, when two independent unions - POASI and the La Romana sugar workers' union, Sindicato Unido - called for a congress of labor organizations to form a united front...
...Working closely with Rosell as chief of police for La Romana was Col...
...CONATRAL's other rival organization was CASC, the Autonomous Confederation of Christian Trade Unions, organized in 1962...
...interests faced a difficult task: to contain the explosion of forces which were permitted to function freely for the first time, to channel the newly loosed energy into "constructive" - non-militant, anti-Communist - channels, receptive to foreign (U.S...
...On the next day, en route to Santo Domingo, he was kidnapped by plainclothes police and was never seen again...
...it also recommended measures to counter the generally accepted image of CONATRAL leadership as corrupt...
...subsequently he served in consular posts in Ecuador and the Dominican Republic, finally becoming labor attache in the Dominican Republic...
...capital: political ideology and analysis of the real situation 8 7 - class consciousness - which can serve as a real basis for unity of action...
...3 At timeE the weapons were sharper than words: BFL members who refused to support a general strike in early 1962 fought in the streets with steel hooks against striking workers armed with bicycle chains...
...In analyzing the obstacles to the organization of the Dominican proletariat, the CGT did not focus the "blame" on governmental repression, U.S...
...Washington Post, March 16, 1975...
...Daily Oklahoman, August 15, 1966...
...corporate investment...
...see also Howard, op...
...moreover, it represents a modem alternative both to the thuggery of G&W and the Dominican government and to the bungling and ineffectiveness of the AIFLD and its CNTD...
...4 9 Another sign of the new low profile was that after 1972 the U.S...
...cit., p. 425...
...see also Robert Crassweller, Trujillo (NY: Macmillan, 1966), pp...
...This Plan called for increased propaganda (country-wide education programs), special educator-organizer terms, and a specially trained mobile group to handle "emergency situations...
...labor strange bedfellows - as seen, for example, in the partnership of a top Seafarer's Union official with officers of a large shipping line...
...Since its official formation at that plenary, the CGT has continued to expand its membership, to deepen its analysis, and to consolidate as a disciplined mass organization independent of any political party...
...6 0 In short, the CGT was born on the basis of a self-criticism of past errors, thus opening the possibility that these errors could be corrected...
...Thus, the only solution was to weaken the organization of the working class by creating divisions within it, and to weaken its consciousness by teaching a philosophy of class collaboration.* It is within this context that we can understand the task given to the inter-American apparatus of U.S...
...Norman Gall, "Santo Domingo: The Politics of Terror," New York Review of Books, July 22, 1971, p. 17...
...The AFL-CIO Executive Council declared its "unequivocal support" for Johnson's policy, and McLellan praised General Wessin y Wessin, leader of the anti-revolutionary forces, as "one of the few incorruptible top elements in the Dominican Army...
...CIDES also performed the27 union to disaffiliate from CASC in 1971 and to reconstitute it as an independent bread-and-butter union...
...AIFLD Report, April-May, 1967...
...imperialism had the advantage of the Dominican proletariat's traditional weakness and inexperience, its lack of organization, and the sectarianism which kept it divided...
...In fact, both are listed in "Who's Who in the CIA...
...Militant strikes were staged in late 1972, the most important being a 25-day teachers' strike for higher salaries, a guaranteed salary scale, and higher government expenditures for education...
...The decisive split occurred at the February 1972 CASC congress...
...The arrangement between G&W and the new Sindicato Libre was hailed in Mundo Latino, a Cuban exile magazine, as an example of "solidarity between workers and management," typified by Rosell's speech at the workers' May Day celebration.' 6 The price for this "harmony" has been the greatly increased exploitation of the workers (speed-up, etc...
...I refer also to the statement [supporting intervention] issued by ORIT...
...Julio de Pena Valdez et al., "Al Congreso Sindical para la Unidad de Accion de los Trabajadores" (mimeo: March 31, 1974), p. 3 (communication from La Victoria prison...
...capital - this time led by the multinational corporations - had to formulate a new strategy...
...In order to ward off challenges to the company's control of the coop, Volman remains an executive of the coop...
...CGT (magazine) no...
...figures, less than 10% of the employed labor force is organized (many Dominicans give lower figures) and only 6% is working under collective contracts...
...His strategy can serve as a model for other mining enterprises...
...and the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), the AFL-CIO's joint venture in Latin America with U.S...
...2 4 As Diaz rationalized his position in an interview, "For the sake of democracy we will accept anything - even the intervention," CONATRAL's position - that U.S...
...20, no...
...Sources: 1. Christopher Felix, A Short Course in the Secret War (1963), p. 56...
...For a number of years - as long as it was useful - the apparatus of U.S...
...9 U.S...
...AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Lane Kirkland...
...In 1969, when a union strike paralyzed the country, the government used strikebreakers, sacked the union headquarters, and created a parallel union to divide the drivers...
...The philosophy of class collaboration holds that there exists no basic opposition of interests between the working class and the capitalist class - in fact, they share a mutual interest in promoting prosperity under capitalism...
...First, U.S...
...In addition, CONATRAL leaders refused to cooperate with the reformist Bosch regime, which assured workers'19 Imperialist Labor Network rights, constitutionally prohibited parallel unions (by recognizing only the majority union in each enterprise as the legal bargaining agent), and institutionalized profit-sharing...
...The "real purpose" of AIFLD there was to enable U.S.-controlled unions to "take national leadership away from the CNT...
...Even a pro-U.S...
...mining operations - Alcoa and Rosario - Volman arranged the firing of 25 of the main union leaders by the end of October...
...In La Romana the existence of the free zone has created more unemployment than employment, because so many people go there seeking work...
...All other labor organizations denounced the CNTD as a tool of the United States and the 21 Balaguer government, in which the majority of the participating unions were "fantasmas, yellow unions, or company unions," part of a government plan to keep the working class divided...
...Feeling that Dominican labor had been weakened by the competition - at times open struggle - between labor federations, Bosch proposed that they merge into a single federation (which he compared to the AFL-CIO in the United States...
...The growing concentration of capital in the agricultural and industrial sectors since 1961 has increased the size and import of the working class, both urban and rural...
...41 TIME FOR A CHANGE From 1962 to 1969, AIFLD alone spent $1.6 million in the Dominican Republic (not counting AID housing project funds) - more than in any other country except Brazil...
...labor leaders as "Yankee imperialists" who are "doing business with a right-wing dictatorship...
...In July 1963 - at a time when military plotting against Bosch was rife - Ruiz Lopez made a public radio announcement praising the Ecuadorian armed forces for ousting President Arosemena and calling upon the Dominican Army to follow the example...
...The key was to "raise worker salaries and benefits above the national average to reduce militancy" while cultivating relations with and assisting the rise of cooperative union leaders...
...While opposing Bosch's project for a central labor organization on the grounds that it could be too easily manipulated, the AFL-CIO itself demonstrated little respect for the independence of CONATRAL...
...And in the winter of 1964-65 shortly after being elected Secretary-General of CONATRAL, David William, a Dominican activist who wished to change CONATRAL's orientation and image, was suddenly ousted in an extraordinary Executive Council session, on the flimsy charge of having attended an ORIT Congress in Mexico without obtaining permission from the Executive Council...
...The Zonr Franca at La Romna is a cerative effort of Gulf + Western Americas Corp...
...investment capital moved into the Dominican Republic, threatened by a mobilizing Dominican proletariat...
...government funds, and thus cannot be labeled "puppets" of the U.S...
...labor's international apparatus are being carried out in the name of U.S...
...Pines, op...
...the project has also brought Keith Terpe, Vice-president of the Seafarer's International Union for the Caribbean, together with Joseph Kahn and Howard Pack, chairman and president of Seatrain Lines, which services the Dominican Republic and employs members of Terpe's union...
...Advisers were sent from the AFL-CIO and its regional and global agencies: ORIT...
...Nevertheless, Volman's operation did not prove totally air-tight...
...At this stage of the struggle, the Dominican labor movement faces new obstacles...
...Third, under AIFLD's terms, the project was to be open only to CONATRAL members...
...Report of investment analyst on Caribbean Leisurewear, PRFG Securities Corp...
...6 (3) Trujillo instigated constant plots against the AFL-CIO's social-democratic liberal anti-Communist allies in Latin America such as Venezuelan President Romulo Betancourt...
...After serving as Inter-American representative of the International Federation of Food and Drink Workers, McLellan returned to Washington as the Associate Inter-American representative of the AFL-CIO - Romualdi's assistant...
Vol. 9 • April 1975 • No. 3
