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Democracy Backgrounder
``` [I've enclosed an article from Democracy Backgrounder, a publication of the Interhemispheric Resource Center, which publishes a wide range of valuable publications on international relations. Democracy Backgrounder is a subscription publication, but this one article is forwarded by permission.]
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Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996
From: Resource Center
DEMOCRACY BACKGROUNDER: A Forum for the Study of U.S. Government Democratization Programs and Other Democratization Issues.
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The DEMOCRACY BACKGROUNDER is a monthly publication produced by the Interhemispheric Resource Center, a private nonprofit research and policy institute located in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Founded in 1979, the Resource Center produces books, and policy reports about U.S. foreign relations with the Third World, as well as sponsoring popular education materials. The DEMOCRACY BACKGROUNDER is published six times annually. Subscription rate for The DEMOCRACY BACKGROUNDER is $15/year in the U.S., and $20/year for foreign subscriptions. To order by Visa or MasterCard, please call the IRC at (505) 842- 8288 from 8-5 MST. Or send a check to The Interhemispheric Resource Center, Box 4506, Albuquerque, NM 87196
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Vol. 2, No. 1, February 1996 Editor: Tom Barry Labor Bosses on Foreign Turf The AFL-CIO is the principal conduit for the U.S. government's democratization program abroad. Thanks to AID's Center for Governance and Democracy and through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which is funded by both AID and the U.S. Information Agency, the dominant labor organization in the United States has assumed the role of the great democratizer. Although the U.S. government also taps business associations, academic centers, research institutes, and advocacy groups to join its democratization campaign, the AFL-CIO's international operations receive far more democratization funding than any other organization or sector of U.S. society. During the AFL-CIO's 1995 campaign to elect a new labor chief, many unionists called for the labor federation to assume a more active international role to counter the effects of economic globalization. Few of labor's rank-and-file were aware, however, of their federation's already extensive international operations, which are coordinated by the Department of International Affairs (DIA). Although active throughout the world in promoting more open political and economic systems, the AFL-CIO's own members have been kept in the dark about what their federation is doing in such places as Hungary, Nigeria, the Philippines, and Haiti. Those few union activists who are knowledgeable about AFL-CIO's foreign programs have been unsuccessful in their efforts to reform or terminate these programs. The election of a new AFL-CIO president in October has raised some hope both within and outside the federation that its international operations will be revamped and instead will be refocused on building international labor cooperation to fight the adverse effects of globalization. But it must be remembered that Sweeney himself has been a longtime board member of the federation's four international institutes. Reform efforts will also be limited by the fact that AFL-CIO foreign operations are financed not by the federation's members but by the U.S. government. Only those programs that conform to U.S. foreign policy will be funded. Despite cutbacks in foreign assistance and Republican threats to dismantle the Agency for International Development, AID has remained loyal to its union partner. In 1995 AID administrator Brian Atwood said: "I am encouraged by the creative thinking of the AFL-CIO. I hope AID can be equally creative in thinking of new ways in which it can tap the great strengths of the U.S. free labor movement." The AFL-CIO's flexibility in adapting to changing U.S. foreign policy is evident in its subtle switch from a program largely framed by anticommunism to one committed to democratization and economic reform. This issue of the Democracy Backgrounder looks at three of AFL- CIO's four international institutes: the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), the African-American Labor Center (AALC), and the Free Trade Union Institute (FTUI). The fourth institute is the Asia-American Free Labor Institute (AAFLI). This examination of labor's role in "democratization" will be continued in the following issue. Latin America The end of the cold war has only slightly altered the operating style of AIFLD, the AFL-CIO's oldest foreign branch. Although there have been some signs that AIFLD is trying to change its approach to make it more a labor organization and less an arm of the U.S. government, its programs since 1990 in such countries as Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Haiti have followed familiar patterns. Rather than attempting to strengthen the labor movement in the countries in which it operates, AIFLD has, for the most part, continued its practice of establishing client relationships with marginal labor and agricultural organizations and of distancing itself from the main sources of popular organizing because of ideological differences. AIFLD remains an instrument of U.S. government policy as seen in its approach to democratization, economic development, and class conflict. Throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, AIFLD promotes the notion that freedom is a product of unregulated capitalist development and of U.S. hegemony in the hemisphere. During the cold war, AIFLD established client organizations as part of a U.S. strategy to build a social infrastructure of pro-U.S. and anti-socialist organizations. AIFLD described its associated unions as "free," "democratic," and "independent," even though they were rarely any of the above. It conditioned its support of "free trade unions" upon their willingness to oppose organizations and governments that were regarded as a threat by the U.S. government. With the cold war over, AIFLD has continued bankrolling dependent unions. Although no longer able to justify its operations as contributing to the fight against communism, AIFLD still uses the terms free, democratic, and independent to describe those unions that undermine leftist popular movements, support U.S. policies, and uphold capitalist principles. In its project summaries and in AID project evaluations, unions and groups deemed worthy of AIFLD support are described as being democratic. There is, however, no evidence of any attempt to judge whether AIFLD-supported unions are in fact democratically run. What does become clear from AID's own internal documentation is that these unions frequently have no certifiable membership lists, no enforced dues structure, and that their no open-book policy. Nicaragua
In Nicaragua, during the Sandinista years, AIFLD supported small union organizations that opposed the leftist government and allied themselves with counterrevolutionary forces. As an AID evaluation noted, these unions are commonly described as being free and independent, but the "independent labor movement in Nicaragua isn't independent at all. It is almost completely dependent on the United States. Thus, to the extent that it is U.S. policy to establish an independent labor movement, the AIFLD program, in some important senses, is counterproductive." Since 1990, when the Sandinistas were voted out of office, AIFLD has maintained its support of a few conservative unions, distinguished only by their lack of militancy and antipathy toward the Sandinistas. Internal evaluations reveal that the main objective of AIFLD and AID in Nicaragua is not to build a strong labor movement that fights for better wages and working conditions but to contest the power of the more militant and leftist unions that are opposed to neoliberal restructuring. AIFLD continues to describe the unions it funds as free and democratic when there is no evidence that their internal processes are any more democratic than other unions. Its client unions are certainly not accountable, as became clear during the AID evaluation when the unions declined to open their books. The AID evaluator of the AIFLD program in Nicaragua admitted that he did not examine the books of any union that AIFLD supported. He noted that "even peripheral questions about accounting were met with immediate suspicion." AID used membership numbers supplied to it by the AIFLD unions to justify the claim that the so-called independent union movement is gaining strength. But the evaluation that "the good guys are winning" seems hardly appropriate given the deepening impoverishment of the Nicaraguan people and the failure of workers to unify in the face of the government's antipopular policies.
El Salvador
In El Salvador, like in Nicaragua, AIFLD has continued to focus more on the comparative strength of conservative unions it supports than on the need to unify the debilitated and divided labor movement. Instead of making its technical assistance and training available to all unions, AIFLD supports only those unions that opposed the FMLN. According to a 1992 evaluation, "AIFLD should downplay, though not abandon, the anti-leftist strategy of the past." Though presenting no evidence to support its charges, the evaluation resorts to cold war rhetoric to label the competing labor federation as "undemocratic" and as having a "commitment to one-party Marxism in the old Soviet mold." Costa Rica
In Costa Rica, where AIFLD previously focused on opposing militant unions associated with the country's communist party, AIFLD has virtually abandoned the field of trade unions, which have been supplanted by solidarista associations controlled by management. Instead, it sponsors a program that encourages small farmers to abandon traditional agriculture and make more linkages with agribusiness. According to one AIFLD document, both it and its client, the National Confederation of Workers (CNT), "are firmly convinced, through the results of their agrarian experience, that the market-economy orientation should be the foundation of any development strategy." What AIFLD failed to note was that most small farmers in Costa Rica are affiliated with organizations that have opposed AID's efforts to end government protections and subsidies of the nation's basic grains market. Dominican Republic
The Dominican Republic is the one country from which there have been some positive reports about AIFLD's organizing program. Apparently, U.S. organizers paid by AIFLD have helped workers at several export-oriented firms to form unions. Yet at the same time that AIFLD has made some bonafide effort to strengthen labor organizing, it mounted a project "to improve the capacity of new export firms in the Dominican Republic to compete in the international market." Working within the Technical Secretariat of the presidency, AIFLD in the 1990-95 period worked to reform trade regulations and to enhance productivity through training programs. Haiti
In Haiti, AIFLD's support has gone to conservative, probusiness unions that have either stood apart from or opposed the popular movement that brought Jean-Bertrand Aristide to the presidency. AIFLD's main funding has gone to the Federation of Trade Union Workers (FOS), which it established in 1986 with the cooperation of the Duvalier dictatorship. The State Department requested AIFLD's involvement, according to a June 1986 briefing for U.S. corporate executives, "because of the presence of radical labor unions and the high risk that other unions may become radicalized." A similar objective explained the new surge in AIFLD funding to the FOS and other antipopular unions as part of the U.S. strategy to undermine the movement backing Aristide. Old Habits, New Directions
As part of an unprecedented AID evaluation of AIFLD's overall programming in 1993, investigators found that U.S. labor programs in Latin America and the Caribbean were virtually unmonitored by AID. "AID responsibility for monitoring program implementation has been so unclear as to be virtually nonexistent," stated the report. In Washington, AID officials told the evaluators that they thought that AID field missions were monitoring the implementation of AIFLD programs, while the AID missions denied having such a responsibility. "Only one AID official, of all those interviewed by the team, had any knowledge of or interest in labor affairs. With that same exception, none saw labor as an essential area to be considered in formulating AID country programs. Labor is considered a political rather than a developmental area and hence outside of AID's concerns." The political character of AIFLD goes a long way in explaining the lack of reporting and accounting of its programs during the past three decades. From its beginning in 1962 AIFLD was designed more as a counterinsurgency program than as a developmental one. As such, AIFLD was intentionally excluded from the kind of routine evaluations and accounting standards demanded of other AID-funded programs. The AID evaluators reached the following conclusion about the objectives of AIFLD programs: "In the course of carrying out this study, the team gained the impression that the U.S. focus on labor in Latin America and the Caribbean was limited to: 1) assuring it does not constitute a threat to U.S. interests; and 2) attempting to procure more sympathy with and understanding of the Untied States and its objectives." But rather than recommending that AIFLD be terminated as a U.S. government program, the report called for a new round of funding to assist AIFLD in "its present search for new models of labor- management relations." Furthermore, the AID report recommended funding to allow AIFLD to help "replace the old, confrontational modes [of labor-management relations] with collaborative modes, based on increased productivity form which both entrepreneurs and labor gain." In this regard, it was recommended that AID help AIFLD establish close connections with AID's Private Enterprise development program. AFRICA
The AFL-CIO's African American Labor Center (AALC) receives grants from both NED and AID to carry out labor programs in Africa. A $25 million AID regional grant covers activities in thirty countries in the 1991-96 period. There is also individual country funding for Egypt and South Africa. In 1993 and 1994, NED contributed a total of $1.3 million to AALC programs. A few examples from South Africa and Nigeria illustrate why the AALC, like AIFLD, should be discontinued.
Nigeria
During the summer of 1994, there was a major strike by oil workers in Nigeria. It was a political strike calling for the removal of the military dictatorship and for the release from prison of the president-elect. The Nigerian Labor Congress (NLC), AIFLD's client union federation, met with the military dictatorship and stunned Nigerian oil workers by declaring that the strike was over, even though none of the strikers' demands had been met. Repudiating the NLC, most workers remained on strike. Nigeria is one of the leading suppliers of U.S. oil, and the U.S. companies, Chevron and Mobil, brought in scab workers and secured military protection to continue oil production. In opposing the strike and advocating that labor take a more conciliatory position with respect to the dictatorship, the NLC was apparently acting more to protect U.S. concerns about maintaining political and economic stability in Nigeria than to represent the concerns of workers about their repressive government. According to one expert familiar with the events: "Rather than having the objective of building strong independent trade unions, the priority has been to work with unions that would discipline Nigerian workers and would ensure that they are not a threat to the dictatorship. U.S. policy puts imports ahead of human rights, and the AALC implements the US foreign policy of the day. They choose friends on the basis of their politics, not membership." South Africa
Until 1990, the AALC did not fund the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). Pointing to its affiliation with the African National Congress (ANC), the AALC refused to give any support to COSATU, which is arguably the most powerful of South Africa's trade unions. With the collapse of apartheid, however, the U.S. government and the AALC were forced to revise their anti-ANC posture. In recognition of the changing circumstances in South Africa, the AALC began to fund COSATU and its fifteen associated unions, although smaller, less progressive union federations received a larger ratio of funding. The AALC, like NED, which also started funding the ANC, was apparently trying to gain influence over COSATU without losing the influence it has achieved over less progressive unions. Hoping to convince South African labor leaders of the benefits of capitalist development, the AALC has sponsored trips to the United States where union activists attend lectures about economic policy. In October 1995, COSATU refused to send a representative to the AFL-CIO convention and decided to suspend all relations with the AFL-CIO until the U.S. labor federation acknowledges its right to run its own affairs. The dispute arose when COSATU adopted a resolution opposing the U.S. economic boycott of Cuba and was then visited by an AALC representative who told the union that this position was not acceptable and demanded that it be rescinded. Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union The Free Trade Union Institute (FTUI) plays a major role in the U.S. government's democratization and economic restructuring efforts in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Of all NED funding in 1994 to the New Independent States (NIS) of the former Soviet Union, 44 percent went to the AFL-CIO's operations under FTUI. In Eastern Europe, more than one-third of NED's funding went to FTUI that same year. Besides NED funding, FTUI also receives a large proportion of AID's direct funding to the two regions. As in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, the foreign operations of the AFL-CIO in the former socialist bloc aim to promote "free" and "democratic" unions. In most cases, these operations do not serve to build a strong workers' movement or even to foster democratic sentiment within unions. Instead, FTUI's programs have proved highly divisive. Its staff promote the virtues of the market, and FTUI's rhetoric regarding such issues as privatization is indistinguishable from that of U.S. investors or the IMF. As part of AID's "democracy-building" program, FTUI's main mission is to assist in the transition to what AID calls "free market democracy." It does this mainly by training "independent" unions and worker groups in the virtues of the market, although it does not restrict its propaganda and training efforts to workers. As one FTUI project proposal argues, by working with a consortium of groups, including business and government, FTUI can accelerate the transition to a market economy and the democratic institutions it associates with capitalism. One of the major challenges facing FTUI is finding unions with the proper credentials. Since most unions are linked to government-owned companies or have leaders who had ties with the communist party, the field of unions with which FTUI can work is quite limited. Corbyn Lyday, the AID manager of FTUI in Washington, stated that unions that existed under communist rule now have to "jump through hoops" to prove they have reformed themselves sufficiently to be eligble for FTUI assistance. "Otherwise," he explained, "the U.S. government might be getting into bed with people it shouldn't be getting into bed with."
As Leslie Diak, an attorney formerly with FTUI in Moscow, explained, "As far as the AFL-CIO is concerned, the cold war is still on. FTUI will not deal with union that have a previous history with the communist party." In practice, this means that FTUI is not working with the most powerful unions. "In Russia, they are working with unions that represent 3-5 percent of the population," added Diak. "Some of these are good unions, but they are ignoring the vast majority of organized workers." The same is true in Eastern Europe, where FTUI is also having trouble finding "free" unions. According to AID's Lyday, the largest union federation that FTUI supports in Hungary probably does not represent even 5 percent of the country's organized labor. One of the reasons that FTUI is so unwilling to associate with unions that existed before the collapse of the socialist bloc has to due with its commitment to promoting the privatization of state enterprises. Most of the unions that FTUI labels as "antidemocratic" represent both workers and management of state enterprises that FTUI, the World Bank, and AID all insist should be privatized. Because privatization commonly means major layoffs or closure of work places, the "antidemocratic" unions are resisting this aspect of economic restructuring. According to FTUI, itself a dependency of the U.S. government, these unions are not "independent" because they are tied to the government and the government owns the companies. FTUI also objects to working with unions that were associated with the communist party and considers all such unions corrupt. But as Diak observed, "Old communist unions are sometimes corrupt, but this is not 100 percent true. To say that is to paint a black-and-white picture." In its project proposals to AID, FTUI points out that Stalin referred to the unions in the Soviet Union as "transmission belts" for the policies and ideology of the state. It declines to recognize, however, that serious reform movements exist within many of these unions. Ironically, the project proposals go on to advocate that AID support FTUI efforts to establish new research centers, printing houses, radio stations, unions, and other institutions to transmit the ideology of the market. FTUI-supported institutions aim to "provide details of the transformation," "explain why certain sacrifices have to be made," and "outline the final payoff citizens can expect in the future for their hard work in a free market system." In recent FTUI project proposals to AID, the labor institute explains the urgency of training workers in the virtues of capitalism and of explaining the need for economic restructuring. "In the eyes of many citizens of the New Independent States, these new features of daily life--unemployment, dramatic rise in violence, organized crime and corruption--are associated with the words democracy and market reforms. Under these circumstances, it is easy to see that new trade unions advocating more democracy, economic reform, and a new way of doing things might be met with caution if not outright hostility." Acknowledging the the kind of economic restructuring advocated by the U.S. government is resulting in widespread unemployment, FTUI conceded that for many unions "this will be a fulfillment of the horrors they were told are characteristic of capitalism. Therefore, the economic transformation in Russia must have the firm support of democratic workers who understand that the pay- off of a free market system will indeed come in the future." Worried about the destabilizing effect of workers striking during a time of transition, FTUI tells AID that it will instruct workers that "there are many other options other than a strike....If Russian workers were to exercise these dialogue- based options, they could contribute to the stabilization of the process of economic transformation." With arguments such as these and with foreign operations so attuned to the interests of the U.S. government and global capital, it is easier to understand why the U.S. labor movement has become so debilitated.
** This series on AFL-CIO's foreign operations will be continued in the next issue of Democracy Backgrounder. ```
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