What I hadn't realized until recently is that the AFL-CIO has become an arm of the government. If I had been thinking about it, I suppose that would have been an obvious fact. After all, the business of the big labor unions would be to keep money rolling in, and that's not going to come from enriching the laborer.
For example, take the union's activities in Venezuela...
The AFL-CIO, losing membership at home, nevertheless spent workers’ money to train and advise opposition anti-Chavez forces.
source
The AFL-CIO is once again on the scene, this time in Venezuela, just as it was in Chile in 1973. Once again, its operations in that country are being funded by the U.S. government. This time, the money is being laundered through the quasi-governmental National Endowment for Democracy, hidden from AFL-CIO members and the American public.
...ACILS [American Center for International Labor Solidarity] - also known as the Solidarity Center - has overseen all of the AFL-CIO's foreign labor operations since 1997, centralizing a previously decentralized set of regional bodies that had long worked in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America....[T]he continuing lack of transparency, accountability and even simple reporting to AFL-CIO members about ACILS has generated concerns among activists about what the organization actually does in the many countries in which it operates. Solidarity Center Director Harry Kamberis' background is not a typical labor background and looks suspiciously like CIA, which also adds to activists' unease.
Most of ACILS' funding comes from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), not the AFL-CIO. The NED was created by the Reagan Administration in 1983. One of the authors of the enabling legislation has said that NED was to do at least some of the work previously done by the CIA, albeit publicly: its talk appears progressive, but its actions are reactionary. One of the NED's initial directors was that well-known democrat, Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon's point man in the campaign against Chile's elected president, Salvador Allende.
NED is funded by the U.S. Government, through the State Department, but operates "independently" from any on-going governmental control. This enables the U.S. Government to deny any responsibility for NED's activities, and NED can claim it is an independent non-governmental organization (NGO), not a governmental one, and thus not subject to governmental scrutiny or oversight.
Labor Notes article
...ACILS [American Center for International Labor Solidarity] - also known as the Solidarity Center - has overseen all of the AFL-CIO's foreign labor operations since 1997, centralizing a previously decentralized set of regional bodies that had long worked in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America....[T]he continuing lack of transparency, accountability and even simple reporting to AFL-CIO members about ACILS has generated concerns among activists about what the organization actually does in the many countries in which it operates. Solidarity Center Director Harry Kamberis' background is not a typical labor background and looks suspiciously like CIA, which also adds to activists' unease.
Most of ACILS' funding comes from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), not the AFL-CIO. The NED was created by the Reagan Administration in 1983. One of the authors of the enabling legislation has said that NED was to do at least some of the work previously done by the CIA, albeit publicly: its talk appears progressive, but its actions are reactionary. One of the NED's initial directors was that well-known democrat, Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon's point man in the campaign against Chile's elected president, Salvador Allende.
NED is funded by the U.S. Government, through the State Department, but operates "independently" from any on-going governmental control. This enables the U.S. Government to deny any responsibility for NED's activities, and NED can claim it is an independent non-governmental organization (NGO), not a governmental one, and thus not subject to governmental scrutiny or oversight.
All that said, I think a new wave of labor unionizing is overdue here in this country - if it's not too late. After all, the jobs are going overseas. If it did work, the new unions would have to be focused on individual company locations and local membership, and the members themselves would have to take control, not turn it over to an administrative body. Administrators have an uncanny tendency to look to their own interests. Some day, in order to recognize true freedom and justice, we are all going to have to take personal responsibility, and quit giving our power to "representatives".
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
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