Labor International Action: One Step Backward

This year labor fought a losing battle to defeat the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) as part of an ongoing struggle against pro-corporate trade pacts.  This year also saw unionists at all levels of the labor movement publicly criticize the war in Iraq.  These developments would seem to argue for an increased importance to organized labor of a broad range of international issues, yet unfortunately the opposite may be the case.  A decision by the AFL-CIO to dissolve its international affairs department reflects, as a matter of practice, diminished attention to global struggles, a step backward from recent progress. 

Made because of cost-cutting needed due to the disaffiliation of the Change-to-Win (CTW) unions, the measure nonetheless reflects the gap between labor’s overseas work and the day-to-day activities of most unionists – a gap evident in both wings of our now-divided labor movement.  While it is still unclear what resources the CTW will put into international action, indications are that it will not be a high priority.  This is likely even though some of the unions involved have been strongly committed to global labor work, for the whole purpose of the CTW’s formation is to concentrate resources on domestic organizing.  Thus the emphasis given in many public statements that the dissident unions mainly represent workers – janitors and truck drivers, hospital, grocery store, hotel employees – who are less subject to job loss from globalization than manufacturing workers.

Individual unions will still engage in actions that require mutual support from unions abroad, all workers must deal with the reality of transnational corporations and our shrinking world.  Current steps within labor, however, appear to increase the existing tendency toward a pragmatic, do-it-alone approach to international solidarity – usually expressed in campaigns by unions in a dispute with a foreign-owned company, or representing workers in an industry where intense exploitation overseas means a loss of jobs at home. These are valuable and sometimes lead to meaningful victories, yet they suffer from being ephemera, leaving no permanent structures in place after a particular battle is won or lost.  Moreover, by its very nature, control – direction, funding, the decision when to begin, when to end, a particular campaign – remains with the initiating U.S. union rather than being shared by all parties.

Appropriate for a given struggle though this may be, it is insufficient to systemically counter global corporations which can and do develop labor policies with all their workers in mind wherever employed and are willing to take the time to implement those policies over a period of years (as seen in the manner by which “just-in-time” production became universalized).  And, as experience has shown, individual campaigns are also insufficient to fundamentally overcome the anti-labor policies governments adopt at corporate behest.  Such initiatives, to have greater impact, would require working through international union bodies on a basis of equality with labor in other countries, and on a jointly-developed agenda – and to do so before and after as well as in the midst of a crisis.  A prospect now all the more unlikely given the absence of any central union international affairs body in the U.S.

Another consequence of these developments has been to increase the importance of the Solidarity Center (SC) which, though union-run, relies primarily on government funds.  Created after the AFL-CIO dissolved its old Cold War institutes – vehicles to divide militant labor worldwide under the banner of anti-communism – the SC has been a dramatic improvement over its predecessors, devoting its energies mainly to supporting labor movements battling U.S. business/government-supported labor rights violations.  This has not been without contradictions, as the SC (in a controversial decision) did provide shop steward training to the anti-Chavez central labor organization (CTV) in Venezuela, but far more representative of its work has been its consistent opposition to U.S. military aid to Colombia.

Nevertheless, the reality of it being government-funded has limited the SC’s independence and the scope of its work to skill-based training, labor rights monitoring and similar activities.  Important work but, like corporate campaigns, one with a narrow agenda that can sometimes inhibit an equally needed broader orientation, undoubtedly contributing to an outlook that failed to take into sufficient account the importance of the Chavez government’s attack on neo-liberalism when determining what policy to take vis-à-vis the CTV.  Moreover, the very nature of the SC as a structure apart from the international labor movement reinforces U.S. unions’ tendency toward a go-it-alone approach to the rest of the world.  Similar problems exist with government-funded union institutes in Europe, yet are more pronounced in the U.S. because of our labor movement’s political weakness. 

Given this picture, the need remains to better root international union solidarity within local union structures in order to strengthen cross-border campaigns, provide a firmer foundation within national union structures for the work of the SC, and link these more directly to labor’s overall agenda.  Attempts to move in that direction were made after John Sweeney was elected AFL-CIO president in 1995, an attempt not as successful as it might have been because of a lack of commitment by most affiliates.  A problem that itself reflects the existing too-wide organizational gulf between most union members and global labor action.

Arising out of the changes being made within labor in the wake of the split in its ranks, there may now, however, exist a possibility to begin that process.  Industry Coordinating Committees of local unionists being established by the AFL-CIO (and something similar may be formed by the CTW) could – and should – have an international component.  Through existing organizations, such as international trade secretariats, these might provide a link between those locals with unions around the world in the same industry, with the same employer, or related by stages in the production process.  National unions, in turn, could, through these committees, encourage their locals to have an international affairs contact at each worksite, in the same way that many locals have community service liaisons, employee assistance program volunteers, health benefit representatives.  This would provide a framework at the membership level that could tie together international strike support/organizing campaigns against transnational corporations and labor/human rights campaigns with those waged against CAFTA-like trade deals and those against the war – a model of the kind of coordination that central labor organizations ought to provide.

Building international union solidarity in this manner is the path that will give strength to struggles for fair trade and for peace, that will give to global labor the resources, attention, direction that its importance in today’s world makes a necessity.  A step forward that might have the added benefit of contributing to building the unity needed in our now badly divided labor movement.

--Kurt Stand, Petersburg, Virginia

Submitted to Junge Welt October 2005