The AFL and then the AFL-CIO have had an imperialist foreign policy program where they have operated in other countries around the world for over 100 years, beginning in the late 1890s. They have never given an honest report of these operations to their members that can be independently verified. Activists and scholars have discovered they have supported military coups that overthrew democratically elected governments, supported dictators, and right-wing labor movements operating against progressive ones, etc. In ALL cases, with the arguable exception of their work in Poland in the 1980s, these have only hurt workers, their families, and destroyed their unions.
These operations have received over 90 percent of their funding from the US Government, reaching approximately $1 BILLION just since 1983! Again, unreported to members.
From his own perspective—not progressive—Donald Trump has cut off funding to US AID (Agency for International Development) and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), each major funders of AFL-CIO foreign operations.
It is time for US trade unionists to recognize the interconnection between failure of domestic operations and offensive operations overseas, and work to force the AFL-CIO to end all US Government-funded operations overseas.
Kim Scipes is a former factory worker, a printer, who later returned to academia and taught at Purdue University Northwest in Westville, Indiana from 2004-2022. Among other things, he’s worked to build global labor solidarity since 1983. He has concentrated his studies mostly on the KMU Labor Center of the Philippines, and the AFL-CIO’s foreign operations. Altogether, he’s published four books, with another one in press, and over 280 articles and book reviews in the US and 11 different countries. His website can be accessed for free at https://www.pnw.edu/
