The American Federation of Labor (AFL), and later the AFL-CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations) have carried out their own foreign policy since the 1890s.  These operations, done in the name of union members but without their knowledge or consent, have never been reported to members of affiliated unions in a way that can be independently verified.  One thing is known:  they have almost always hurt workers in other countries, as many studies have demonstrated.

Over many years, rank and file trade members of a number of AFL-CIO unions have tried to get information from the AFL-CIO about their foreign policy operations.  Most significantly, the California State AFL-CIO, in its biannual conference in 2004 with over 400 representatives of over 2 million workers, unanimously condemned this foreign policy.  When its resolution was sent to the 2005 national AFL-CIO convention in Chicago, the resolutions committee under Gerald McEntee, then President of the American Federation of State, County and Munipal Employees (AFSCME) changed it to one supporting its foreign policy operation and then-AFL-CIO President John Sweeney refused to even let those supporting the California resolution speak out on the convention floor.  AFL-CIO foreign policy “leaders” have subsequently ignored all public efforts to seek this information.

As has been well-established, the AFL-CIO’s “Solidarity Center” has been one of four core institutes of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).  One of its key founders, Alan Weinstein, who helped write the legislation,  admitted to the Washington Post in 1991 about NED that, “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”  The NED, which has long claimed to be a “private” organization, was created by people in and around the Reagan Administration, was approved by both the US House of Representatives and the US Senate, and signed into law by US President Ronald Reagan in 1983, and has been funded ever since by an annual appropriation by Congress; private, my ass!

Again, never has any information been provided to union members on this, what this means, or what they are doing in this institutional position.

Until now.  The NED has lost its funding from the Trump Administration, an act the NED is claiming is illegal.  It filed a suit in the Washington, DC District Court on March 6^th, claiming that this defunding is illegal.

What is especially interesting in the filed legal brief is that they included “Exhibit C,” a signed statement by the Executive Director of the Solidarity Center, Shawna Bader-Blau.  In Exhibit C, Bader-Blau lays out some information to the Court that has never been shared with AFL-CIO affiliated union members (hereafter, AFL-CIO members).  She claims, “Since the 1890s, US labor leaders have collaborated with global workers to improve rights and working conditions.”  [As far as I can tell, I’m the only researcher who has made this claim previously; most believe it only started in the late 1940s, against the Communists:  it’s nice she confirmed!]  She talks about its role in founding the International Labor Organization after World War I, says nothing about foreign operations during World War II or the 1950s, and then states that the AFL-CIO “launched international programs in the 1960s and 70s, supporting workers’ rights across the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Europe.”  She provides no evidence to support these claims.

Unfortunately, Ms. Bader-Blau’s account makes the old Soviet news service, Pravda, look downright factual.  The reality is that research by a number of scholars and trade unionists has clearly demonstrated that the AFL, and then the AFL-CIO, has assisted in efforts to overthrow democratically-elected governments (in Guatemala in 1954; Brazil, 1964; Chile, 1973); and supported the unsuccessful military coup attempt in Venezuela in 2002.  These charges are not speculation; they have been established definitively.  The AFL-CIO has also supported dictatorships in those countries after the successful military coups, as well as governments in Indonesia, South Korea and Taiwan, and the Philippines after Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law in 1972.  It also supported the dictator, Mobutu in the Congo, and the white apartheid regime in South Africa.  [Besides other accounts, see AFL-CIO’s Secret War against Developing Country Workers:  Solidarity or Sabotage? by Dr. Kim Scipes (2010/11), and Blue Collar Empire:  The Untold Story of US Labor’s Global Anticommunist Crusade by Dr. Jeff Schuhrke (2024).]

While telling nothing of these confirmed activities, Bader-Blau writes, “Trade unionists have played a key role in democracy movements and struggles from colonialism that brought an end to dictatorships in Brazil, Apartheid in South Africa …” but unfortunately she refers to labor movements that emerged against the governments supported by the AFL-CIO, although she suggests of the AFL-CIO being on the “right side” when, with the single possible exception of Solidarnosc in Poland, they never have been.

She continues:  “By 2024, the Solidarity Center had partnered with unions in over 70 countries. with offices in 32, to help build stronger, fairer democracies worldwide.  

“The SC,” she writes, “estimates approximately 52 percent of the organization’s fiscal year 2025 would come from NED, or about $39.5 million.”  [About 40 percent comes from other US agencies, such as US AID (Agency for International Development)-KS.]  “Typically, the Solidarity Center would expect to have received approximately $3.3 million per month from NED.”

Unfortunately for Ms. Bader-Blau and her allies, increasing documentation through scholarly processes, along with an increasing number of in-person educational programs and webinars conducted by LEPAIO, has shown the political corruption of her and other AFL-CIO foreign policy leaders.  LEPAIO, the Labor Education Project on AFL-CIO International Operations, is an organization of trade unionists and their allies across the country and in a number of unions, including the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the Communications Workers of America (CWA), the National Writers Union (NWU), and the United Auto Workers (UAW), each who condemn the AFL-CIO’s foreign operations.

Bader-Blau and her allies have never reported honestly to AFL-CIO members.  For example, just in this above information shared with the court in this case, there is no explanation of which particular 70 countries, who they are working with and why, nor any information on how this is strengthening the global labor movement.  Nor why the US Government has been subsidizing to the tune of approximately $1 billion since 1983:  what has the AFL-CIO given to the government in exchange for all of this money?

Good question; but not one that is answered in Bader-Blau’s signed legal document.  You will have to turn to books like mine and Schuhrke’s to get the answers, but like said above, they have almost always hurt workers wherever they have intervened.  (There have been a few limited examples where they appear to help, but have they really been helping or have they been intended to divert attention from accounts of their detrimental interventions?)

Interestingly, along with pleading for the courts to order Trump to restore NED’s funding—and, by the way, the Solidarity Center’s—the leaders of the AFL-CIO have done nothing to mobilize American workers against Trump’s assault on people, against the Constitution and against established institutions in this country.  If you go to the AFL-CIO’s website (afl-cio.org), in regard to today’s crisis, all you get is a mealy-mouthed and pathetic call to “call your member of Congress right now!”  With over 10 million members in affiliated unions, this is all they can do???  Pathetic—especially in light of the almost total failure of Congress to stop Trump.  And a plea such as this shows the on-going failure of the top level AFL-CIO leadership.  Isn’t it time that union members deserve leaders who respect them and who are willing to fight for a better world?

Notes

For free webinars and educational programs on AFL-CIO foreign policy, see LEPAI’s web site at https://aflcio-int.education/.

For 2012 interview of Kim Scipes about his book, AFL-CIO’s Secret War against Developing Country Workers:  Solidarity or Sabotage?, by Steve Zelter of the Labor Video Project of San Francisco, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzUsLrlie_Q. For April 4, 2025 interview of Kim Scipes by Steve Zeltzer about the bankruptcy of the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center and its entire foreign policy program, see https://znetwork.org/zvideo/ned-funded-afl-cio-solidarity-center-warns-of-bankruptcy/.

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This article is a supplement to the video on the same topic published by Z here.

This article was co-published with Green Social Thought.

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