A union activist's call for change.

• Author: Egnatz, Nick
• Position: Thinking Economically - Book review

AFL-CIO's Secret War against Developing Country Workers: Solidarity or Sabotage? by Kim Scipes, Lexington Books, 2010, 276 pp., ISBN 978-0739135013.

Kim Scipes's new book AFL-CIO's Secret War against Developing Country Workers documents the history of AFL-CIO leadership in supporting the US government policy of Empire in the developing world. AFL-CIO leadership, in secret and completely without the consent and support of their rank and file membership, has worked to thwart popular bottom-up organic democracy in the developing world and instead supported elite, top-down democracy, friendly to US corporate interests.

Specifically what is Scipes charging labor with?

"... that since the end of World War II, US Labor has intervened in a number of countries. These interventions fall into three categories:

1. directly operating to help undermine democratically elected governments which, in each case, led to the establishment of a reactionary military dictatorship, the death and/or imprisonment of thousands, and decimation of respective labor movements (as in Guatemala during 1954; in Brazil in 1964; and Chile in 1973);

2. supporting reactionary governments and their affiliated labor movements against workers and their organizations seeking democratic changes (Indonesia during the 1970s-late 1990s; El Salvador throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s; the Philippines, 1980s-early 1990s; and South Korea, 1970s-late 1980s;

3. indirectly operating with local labor movements to attack pro-labor, progressive governments (in Guyana in 1963; Dominican Republic in 1965; Nicaragua in the late 1980s; and Venezuela in the late 1990s to 2002-03 ...

"Each of these interventions, ironically, limited if not destroyed militant labor movements in these countries, providing safe haven for US corporate investment. Thus, the foreign policy activities of the AFL-CIO provided places for US corporations to invest, taking jobs from and/or providing increased competition to companies that had American employees."

Was the labor leadership simply carrying water for the CIA and US Empire? One might make that assumption, but Scipes demolishes the theory that labor leadership were merely accomplices to Empire.

The fear of "communism" by labor leaders--beginning with (Samuel) Gompers, and then of subsequent AFL/AFL-CIO leaders--has been based on these labor leaders' ideology, and not some rational evaluation of what really was taking place. In other words, these labor officials...