Haiti and Venezuela: Reverse Solidarity of International Labor Organizations

Dennis Bernstein/ Flashpoints: Many in the U.S. see the AFL-CIO as a huge effective union [federation] representing tens of thousands of workers in this country, which may be true and is but it is not widely understood that the union joined hands with the U.S. State Department and spy and propaganda agencies to undermine foreign governments in the guise of supporting democracy in the good old USA fashion. In recent days this is no where more obvious than in Haiti and Venezuela – the United States has been heavily engaged in both countries and has availed themselves of various subsets of the AFL-CIO to subvert the will of the people and to undermine self determination in both these countries. Joining us to talk about this is Jeb Sprague. He is the author of "Failed Solidarity," an article about the AFL-CIO and other organizations and their secret and not-so-secret work to undermine the will of the people in Haiti. It appears on the web and magazine Labor Notes. Also appearing with us is Kim Scipes, an assistant professor in Sociology at a branch of Purdue University. He is an expert in the foreign operations of the AFL-CIO. We appreciate both of you joining us on Flashpoints. Let me start with you professor. Give us a blueprint because of those of us who are unionists get nervous when we think about the AFL-CIO abroad it could be the CIA. Kim Scipes: Well that’s true. But it’s a little more complex. The AFL-CIO leadership, and this is the top leadership, I want to state from the beginning, it’s [going on] behind the backs of [AFL-CIO] members. But the top leadership going back into the nineteen teens-has run its own independent foreign policy. They were involved in the Mexican revolution, they were involved setting foreign policy about the Soviet Union. Coming forward, they were involved in helping to overthrow the democratically elected government of Guatemala in 1954, the democratically elected government in Brazil in 1964, the democratically elected government in Chile in 1973 and the attempted coup against the democratically elected government in Venezuela 2002. So they’ve got this long foreign policy that is done behind the back. They refuse to come clean to individual members such as myself but the California AFL-CIO has also rejected [critique of] the foreign policy programs. So despite different efforts at all kinds of levels within the labor movement they have hid, they operate behind our backs although in our name. See the rest of the interview at http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/327/1/