Progressives challenge AFL-CIO on ‘Solidarity Center’

An important, well-thought-out intervention by progressive activists is being planned for the upcoming AFL-CIO convention in Chicago in late July.

A group called the Latin America Solidarity Coalition has prepared a flier and a resolution to educate delegates on the reactionary character of the labor federation’s American Center for International Labor Solidarity—known as Solidarity Center.

It also hopes to build genuine labor support for the wave of progressive and revolutionary developments in Latin America, and appeals to convention delegates to support real solidarity with the workers of Haiti, Venezuela, Iraq and elsewhere.

“The Latin America Solidarity Coali tion (LASC) is an association of national and local U.S.-based grassroots Latin Amer ican and Caribbean solidarity groups, many of which have long histories of working with grassroots organizations through out Latin America and the Carib bean,” explains the group’s web site, www.lasolidarity.org.

The LASC flier points out that the Solidarity Center is presently funded mostly by the federal government, not by the AFL-CIO, and the resulting government control makes it “an instrument of George W. Bush’s interventionist foreign policy.”

The flier also comments on the source of the Solidarity Center’s operating funds. Most of these funds come from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). This nefarious organization also funds the International Republican Insti tute, the National Democratic Institute, and the Chamber of Commerce’s Center for International Private Enterprise—”strange bedfellows,” the flier comments, “for an organization supporting worker rights.”

While the Solidarity Center has, in fact, aided workers’ struggles in Haiti, the Inter national Republican Institute actually trained the armed bands that helped to overthrow Haitian President Jean-Bert rand Aristide. It has also provided financial backing for Haitian sweatshop owners.

And the Solidarity Center itself, through its funding of the pro-U.S., pro-business Confederation of Venezuelan Workers (CTV), has attempted to undermine progressive organizations, other unions and the elected Chávez government itself in Venezuela.

This fact certainly substantiates the flier’s assertion that the center acts to support the Bush foreign policy agenda in Venezuela. Although a coup attempt supported by Washington ended in humiliating failure, the Bush regime has not wavered for a second in its ongoing attempts to derail the Chávez government, whose popular programs to improve the lives of Venezuela’s poor and working class, while widely admired in the rest of Latin America, are bitterly opposed by Washington.

With regard to Iraq, the flier states, “Solidarity Center resources will be used in violation of the AFL-CIO’s commitment to workers’ self-determination. Projects will be designed to give exclusive support to the union officially sanctioned by occupation and interim governments, while undermining the development of independent unions.”

The flier urges delegates to the AFL-CIO convention to endorse a resolution from the California Labor Federation (CLF) called “Building Unity and Trust Among Workers Worldwide.” This resolution, passed by the CLF, “calls for a clearing of the air regarding AFL-CIO activities in Chile, Venezuela and elsewhere. It further calls for an end to Solidarity Center depen dency on NED and other government funding in favor of mutual international worker solidarity programs funded primarily by union dues and with open books, accountable to, and operated by, union members.”