Report Card
Fiefer, William Paul
REPORT CARD William Paul Fiefer AIFLD Rides Again ARE NICARAGUA'S TRADE UNIONS FREE? A Response to the American Institute for Free Labor Development Report, 'Nicaragua, a Revolution Betrayed:...
...organized labor to support the Reagan Administration's plans to "destabilize" the Nicaraguan government...
...The payoff, say the authors, would be substantial...
...Since 1916, when the Federal Government first sought to boost oil production for World War I, the industry has received subsidies totaling $123 billion...
...Rather than continue doling out the money, Government should concentrate on assisting producers and innovators in alternative energy fields...
...If subsidies are to remain, he adds, the Federal Government should provide "a modest gesture of support—$2.3 billion, spread over five years—to conservation and renewables to counterbalance the flood of tax breaks for oil and nuclear power...
...The Lawyers' Guild report also shows that the two unions, which together account for less than 2 per cent of Nicaragua's organized labor force, are holdovers from the Somoza regime and now have close ties to the contras...
...This could best be achieved, the authors say, by eliminating subsidies...
...labor movement a disservice by tying it to such ignoble events as the Brazilian military coup of 1964, which resulted in two decades of military rule and the suppression of labor union activities there...
...Congressional Republicans recently seized upon the report to support aid to the contras...
...As well as boosting competition within the industry and diversifying available sources of energy, reallocating or eliminating subsidies would lower the cost of energy...
...The domestic oil industry, which is now lobbying for an import surcharge to buffer sagging world petroleum prices, received almost $9 billion worth of Federal subsidies in 1984, according to the authors of this report...
...These subsidies—$44 billion in 1984 for the entire U.S...
...AIFLD has done the U.S...
...Fueling Around THE HIDDEN COSTS OF ENERGY by the Center for Renewable Resources 1001 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 638, Washington, DC 20036...
...In December 1983, the National Lawyers' Guild sent a delegation of labor lawyers to Nicaragua to investigate AIFLD's allegations...
...28pp...
...Renewable energy technologies should be free to slug it out with the big guys in an unstacked marketplace—just as personal computers and small cars and fiber optics are doing," writes Denis Hayes in his introduction to this pamphlet...
...The conversion will take time and substantial political will, they say, but the rewards will be a slower depletion of America's nonrenewable resources and a "broader, more resilient and competitive economy...
...A Response to the American Institute for Free Labor Development Report, 'Nicaragua, a Revolution Betrayed: Free Labor Persecuted' National Lawyers' Guild, 853 Broadway, Suite 1705, New York, NY 10003...
...energy industry—discourage conservation, contribute to inflation, raise taxes, and create little incentive for fledgling or established enterprises to develop new energy sources...
...Organized labor in the United States would do well to get the whole story about Nicaragua before following AIFLD's lead again...
...Hayes chairs the Solar Lobby, which published the report...
...Their findings, documented in this response to the AIFLD report, show how AIFLD used distortions, exaggerations, and possibly some outright fabrications in its effort to malign the Sandinista government...
...AIFLD, along with some top AFL-CIO officials, is trying to coax U.S...
...The American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), a branch of the AFL-CIO reputedly affiliated with the CIA, is up to its old tricks again...
...The centerpiece of AIFLD's latest foreign-policy campaign is a much-bally-hooed twelve-page report purporting to document the Sandinista government's repression of two Nicaraguan "free trade unions...
...Contrary to AIFLD's assertions that members of the two unions have been harassed and arrested for legitimate trade union activities, the report documents that when union members were arrested it was for committing illegal acts, such as industrial sabotage, on behalf of the contras...
...AFL-CIO President Lane Kirk-land sent a copy of the report to AFL-CIO affiliates, claiming it offered "historical as well as current documentary proof of the beginnings of the destruction of the free trade unions in Nicaragua...
...62 pp...
Vol. 50 • April 1986 • No. 4
