Institute Programs and Activities

excerpted from the book

Workers of the World Undermined

American Labor's role in U.S. foreign policy

by Beth Sims

South End Press, 1992, paper

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Projects carried out by the AFL-CIO's own institutes or through the international trade secretariats are the primary mechanisms by which the AFL-CIO gains influence in foreign labor sectors. The institutes sponsor projects in several main categories of activities. These include education and training, agrarian union development, social projects, information dissemination and visitor exchanges, and political action. Institution-building is another major activity of the labor institutes and is designed to strengthen national labor federations and individual unions whose interests and methods run parallel to U.S. foreign policy needs. The U.S.-funded labor projects create patronage networks which enhance the appeal of allied unions and school up-and-coming union leaders in the principles and tactics of "business" and "bread-and-butter" unionism. In addition, recent emphasis on directly political activities such as voter registration and get-out-the-vote drives has magnified the political impact of the institutes, as they directly fund and guide programs aimed at selecting political leaders overseas.

Educating "Free" Trade Unions

The institutes' education activities include trainings at the local, national, regional, and international levels, aimed at the rank and file as well as union leaders. Because of the AFL-CIO's emphasis on the shop-floor aspects of unionism, course content stresses nuts-and-bolts labor topics such as techniques of collective bargaining, organization and administration of " free" trade unions, methods of conducting labor research, and conflict resolution. But the anticommunist fervor of the labor federation is represented too, in overtly political courses on political ideologies ("democracy" versus "totalitarianism") and international economics.

The courses offered in AFL-CIO trainings have political payoffs for the United States. In addition to defusing the militancy of foreign labor, the classes transmit a generally positive view of U.S. foreign policy and the U.S. political and economic system. Moreover, courses offered by the labor institutes help the AFL-CIO gain entry into foreign unions and shape their attitudes toward politics, economics, and the role of trade unions in society. The courses are used to identify prospective leaders of national union movements who are then sent on for further U.S.-sponsored trainings, thus embedding them in the AFL-CIO's worldview. These leaders are often returned to their national union centers as "interns," with stipends paid by the AFL-CIO. On various occasions, these trainees have acted as partners in activities with serious political repercussions. In Chile during the coup in 1973, for example, AIFLD-trained communications and maritime workers kept lines open for the military.

In South Africa, the African labor institute is trying to create a cadre of "Western-influenced labor leaders that can be brought to the United States to promote the views [on South Africa] that the conservatives in the AFL-CIO hold to," says Kenneth Mokoena of the National Security Archive. The AALC's trainings, Mokoena contends, are aimed at developing union leaders "who emphasize working conditions, not politics, who promote business, who don't promote nationalization, and who definitely don't emphasize labor dominance over business." The AALC "clearly has a political agenda, a particular purpose in South Africa," Mokoena insists. Its trainings are just one means by which the labor institute hopes to "gain influence in the post-apartheid system and to promote U.S. foreign policy interests."

The programs offered by the AFL-CIO today represent an abrupt shift from U.S. labor education in the early twentieth century. As noted by one critic, labor education was originally "a radical cultural and political enterprise. Its goals transcended teaching union skills, and focused on arousing working class consciousness, identifying working class culture, and developing commitments to progressive socioeconomic and political change." By the advent of the Cold War, U.S. labor's educational programs had become "trivialized," in the words of Stanley Aronowitz, and focused on "supporting and enlarging the influence of the trade union bureaucracies."

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Agricultural workers in the third world are a high-priority target for the AFL-CIO's projects overseas. Frequently unorganized, agrarian workers generally constitute the largest workforce in underdeveloped countries. Whether small farmers or landless laborers, these workers are strategic populations in economies that rely on the agricultural sector for foreign exchange earnings and for basic foodstuffs for urban populations. Their cooperation is also very important for economic strategies that seek export-led solutions to debt problems. Rising militancy among this population, the strategic value of the agrarian sector, the perception that small farmers could be mobilized as small capitalists, and the simple fact that so many workers still labor in rural areas led the AFL-CIO institutes to concentrate programs on this sector. Among the countries targeted for the AFL-CIO's agrarian projects are El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Mauritius.

The agrarian programs sponsored by the institutes often provide important benefits and services to rural workers overseas. They also, however, help to pacify populations who might otherwise join revolutionary movements in a frustrated effort to press their governments and their employers to provide needed services, redistribute landholdings, and raise wages to livable levels. In addition, they drain off supporters from organizations which pursue broad programs of social and political reforms and help counter the appeal of leftist movements.

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A peasant from a rival federation described AIFLD's general I approach in Honduras, "More than anything else, AIFLD promotes a political strategy that says there should be cooperation between the worker and the boss. We believe, however, and have found it to be true, that only through pressure and through struggle does the boss give concessions to the workers."

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Through publications and international visitor exchanges, the AFL-CIO participates in the global war of ideas. There is no question that these two activities also provide a useful service for overseas unionists. Union publications funded by the institutes, for instance, may report on issues such as minimum wage battles, organizing efforts, and strike activities. International exchanges help to transmit new ideas and forge alliances useful for expanding and strengthening global solidarity. But these institute activities also spread a doctrine of unionism compatible with the expansion of the U.S. economic and political sphere of influence.

International visitor exchanges, for instance, serve many purposes for the AFL-CIO and its government allies. They help to promote a worldview and develop skills compatible with the U.S. economic and political system. Meetings with media and government representatives, as well as with unionists and members of other private organizations lay the groundwork for alliances between foreign labor and important political actors in the United States. Such alliances can facilitate U.S. government and corporate expansion overseas by providing contact points with pro-U.S. unionists for U.S. government and business leaders.

A propaganda function is also served. Visits to the United States by U.S.-backed foreign unionists have helped to shape public opinion in this country about the political character of foreign governments and the "proper" role for the United States to play in international affairs. Other international visits-say to countries or conferences in Europe or Latin America-help frame the terms of debate in those regions as well. In the process, U.S. foreign policy is implicitly justified and promoted.

During the 1980s, for example, a central focus of AIFLD's NED-funded exchange program was "to bring to the attention of the international free trade union movement the issues at stake in the struggle for peace, democracy and economic progress in Central America." Both top and mid-level labor delegations from the United States made repeated trips to Central America, especially to El Salvador and Nicaragua, to meet with AIFLD-backed unions and discuss political events there. Similarly, representatives from those countries came to the United States to present their cases to U.S. unions, the media, and Congress. There was an international dimension to the exchanges as well. For instance, three women from the Confederation of Trade Union Unity, an anti-Sandinista Nicaraguan confederation supported by AIFLD, were sent to the United Nations' "Decade on Women" conference in Kenya to "counter the presence of the official Sandinista delegation."

Backing up propaganda-linked visitor exchanges are publications put out by the institutes. A 1983 report prepared by AIFLD's William Doherty entitled Nicaragua, A Revolution Betrayed: Free Labor Persecuted was especially influential. The 12-page report contained 29 allegations of Sandinista repression of "free" Nicaraguan unions and was used by the Reagan administration to win congressional approval of funds for the contras.

In response, the National Lawyers Guild in New York conducted its own fact-finding mission and produced a 62-page reply. "Virtually every claim of trade union repression made in the AIFLD report is disputed by representatives of the [AIFLD-backed Nicaraguan unions], by respected human rights groups, or by credible evidence provided by the Nicaraguan government," the lawyers reported.

AIFLD publications critical of the Sandinistas continued throughout the 1980s and into the 1 990s, each demonstrating the same haphazard relationship with the truth. Even Omar Baca Castillo, a member of the Confederation of Trade Union Unity, confessed to a progressive U.S. labor delegation that "Our international friends [at AIFLD] sometimes exaggerate the situation here." Observing that the institute was kicked out of the country in 1983, Baca explained, "AIFLD was creating many problems for us. Their last director in Nicaragua was making statements on his own for the CUS. He almost provoked a split. It didn't matter to us that they kicked AIFLD out."

Besides promoting international visits and producing their own publications, the labor institutes have helped purchase office and press equipment, paid for the production and distribution of foreign union publications, and trained union journalists. Unions in South Africa, Indonesia, Nicaragua, Portugal, and Hungary have been among those who have received grants for such programs. During the years leading up to the collapse of the Soviet Union, the labor institute was actively boosting the anti-government media activities of nationalist unions in the Soviet republics and the Baltic states. With the demise of the Soviet bloc, such projects are continuing in an attempt to completely eradicate class-based analyses and substitute procapitalist ideas.

The media supported by the AFL-CIO's regional institutes disseminate an anticommunist perspective that bolsters Washington's foreign policy interests. The French publication Social and Labor Studies is subsidized by the Free Trade Union Institute with grants from the National Endowment for Democracy. The journal focuses on the activities of "communist-dominated trade unions" and international worker rights. In the Philippines, the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines receives NED grants through AAFLI to purchase office and press equipment and train union journalists. The objective, according to the endowment, is to "counteract left-wing propaganda." In 1984, AIFLD used NED funding to produce a series of manuals for regional labor education programs. They focused on political action and the debt crisis, as well as topics such as the "democratic process, totalitarianism, and the less absolute forms of dictatorship found throughout the region." Likewise, in Poland, the Free Trade Union Institute is using AID grant money-funneled through NED-to support the Foundation for Education for Democracy's efforts to introduce "democratic concepts and institutional reforms" in the schools.

... Because of the strategic importance of labor in political and economic arenas, grants funneled through the AFL-CIO's international institutes are used to support political action overseas. The institutes' allied unions abroad have been mobilized in attempts to stabilize and legitimize governments backed by Washington. Alternatively, they have hit the streets and the polls to oust governments opposed by the U.S. government. According to the Free Trade Union Institute's former executive director, Eugenia Kemble, "The basic point [of FTUI's support for foreign unions] is to build interest groups capable of shaping public policy in other countries."

Using NED grants, the labor institutes finance various types of electoral activities around the world. These include civic education courses, technical assistance for setting up and administering political wings of the unions, voter registration drives, get-out-the-vote campaigns, media efforts, and related activities. "Political education committees" have been set up with institute funding in unions in Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, and the Dominican Republic. Unions in Chile, El Salvador, Haiti, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Botswana, the Philippines, and Eastern Europe have been among those to participate in institute programs with a specifically electoral focus.

In Nicaragua, the Confederation of Trade Union Unity and its allies in the Permanent Workers Congress (CPT) received NED support through AIFLD for their anti-Sandinista activities prior to the February 1990 elections. As part of these efforts, a "special cadre training program" was conducted for "selected" CPT leaders. They attended classes in political action and voter participation at the George Meany Center in Maryland and the Labor University of the Venezuelan Workers Confederation in Caracas.

"Cadre development programs" inside Nicaragua supplemented the foreign training and reached other workers throughout the country. The unionists were mobilized for demonstrations, voter registration efforts, get-out-the-vote drives, and other actions that implicitly promoted the candidacy of Violeta Chamorro and the National Opposition Union (UNO). Following the elections-in which Chamorro was victorious-the U.S.-backed labor sectors were targeted for further aid from the United States in order to contest the progressive leadership of the Nicaraguan labor movement.

A 1990 internal-NED document discussing the post-election funding of the Nicaraguan trade unions described the priority placed on union efforts:

There is a danger that the democratic process will be undermined by post-election events. After having suppressed strikes for years, some Sandinista trade unionists now threaten mass political strikes to 'protect the gains of the revolution.' A successful organizing drive by independent trade unionists aimed at creating a viable democratic presence in communities and industries throughout Nicaragua is crucial to maintaining a stable transition period.

As in Nicaragua, directly partisan activities have been assisted by grants from the labor institutes in a number of countries. Revelations that the Panamanian Confederation of Workers used FTUI funds to campaign for the military-backed candidate in 1984 stimulated a flurry of criticism. In response, Eugenia Kemble, then head of FTUI, said, "We did not think it was fair, or in the interest of democracy, to tell the union that as a condition of getting assistance from us to teach their members about political activity and to develop training programs and canvassing and so on, that the union not endorse a candidate." Even after the fiasco in Panama-which stimulated the outrage of the U.S. ambassador-FTUI continued to award grants to unions which endorsed candidates. As Kemble described it, "The kind of training and voter activism that we started there [in Panama] is the kind of thing we still do. We did it in the Philippines. In Peru the union did take a position, and we had a training program there.''

During the recent upheavals in Eastern Europe, the Free Trade Union Institute fed financial resources and technical assistance to its labor allies. This support allowed Eastern European union federations such as Bulgaria's Podkrepa and Poland's Solidarity to mount their historic campaigns against the communist governments and to prepare for subsequent elections. In Bulgaria, Podkrepa and the NED-backed Union of Democratic Forces led mass demonstrations that helped topple the government of the Bulgarian Socialist Party (the reformed communist party), a government that had been legitimately elected in a multi-party contest in June 1990. The leaders of Podkrepa revealed to the Los Angeles Times that "the determination" of the anticommunist coalition was "bolstered by American solidarity and implied promises of better times to come." Oleg Tchulev, Podkrepa's vice president, said that U.S. advisers and diplomats had provided the union with funding "sent through private channels, such as the AFL-CIO, which has sent computers, fax machines and advisers to help the trade union get organized and gain strength."

In Bulgaria as in the rest of Eastern Europe, material assistance from the U.S. labor federation accelerated following the downfall of the old regimes. Now, however, the focus is on erecting western economic and political structures, revamping the educational system, and eroding the institutional remains of the previous regimes. The construction of pro-U.S. trade unions which will back planned radical economic restructuring in the region is a fundamental part of this process.

Such politicized activities have historical precedents. In the 1960s and 1970s, for instance, AIFLD-backed unions in the Dominican Republic, Guyana, and Chile were instrumental in efforts first to destabilize progressive governments and later to stabilize the reactionary regimes which took their place. This scenario was replayed in Grenada in 1984, when AIFLD provided NED grants to the Organization of Citizen Awareness for civic-education activities following the U.S. invasion the year before. The organization is a labor-initiated coalition of groups from different political and economic sectors. It used the grant money to conduct leadership trainings and target sectors such as young people in order to mobilize voters for participation in the elections.

There are many other examples of labor institute funding designed to stabilize pro-U.S. regimes. The Trade Union Congress of the Philippines has received U.S. funding through NED and AAFLI to shore up the government of Corazon Aquino. Likewise, U.S.-funded unions in South Korea, Zaire, and Indonesia-all notorious for repressive labor policies-have been maintained as relatively passive institutions whose activities are almost strictly apolitical and shop-floor oriented. Whether by intent, oversight, or hapless planning, the result is a de facto endorsement of the anti-union stances of those governments.

Workers of the World Undermined

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