Cloaks and Daggers

The "AFL-CIA" and the Venezuelan coup

By Jamie Newman and Charles Walker

Is the AFL-CIO using the cover of union solidarity to aid reactionary foreign policy aims of the US government? Why was the AFL-CIO involved in funneling State Department money to a corrupt labor federation in Venezuela that recently tried to overthrow that country's democratically elected government? While the Senate Intelligence Committee is conducting an inquiry as to whether the US government had a connection to the coup, at least one California regional labor council is asking AFL-CIO President John Sweeney whether the labor federation helped out coup organizers.

In early April a short-lived military coup in Venezuela attempted to replace democratically elected President Hugo Chavez with a top business leader. On April 25 the New York Times disclosed that the AFL-CIO's international arm, the American Center for International Solidarity, had received $154,377 from a US Congressional conduit "to assist the main Venezuelan labor union in advancing labor rights." The Confederation of Venezuelan Workers (CTV) was a principal player in the military coup.

Two months before the April coup the AFL-CIO had hosted a closed forum where, "according to one union member who participated in the meetings, the CTV representatives noted that they were here to discuss the chances for a coup in Venezuela." The AFL-CIO's representative acknowledged that "the CTV was dominated by the two traditional (and corrupt) Venezuelan political parties opposed to Chavez, but insisted that the CTV was reforming." (Labor Notes, May 2002)

If the AFL-CIO did have a role in the Venezuelan coup, it certainly wouldn't be its first such intervention. Under the leadership of George Meany and Lane Kirkland (1960 to1995) the AFL-CIO was widely known overseas as the "AFL-CIA." The AFL-CIO worked hand-in-hand with one US administration after another, Democrat or Republican, to oppose, subvert, and destroy democratic movements across the world, especially in Latin America. Even now, under the "New Voice" leadership of John Sweeney, the Solidarity Center receives more than $15,000,000 a year from the government, partly so that the AFL-CIO can carry out its Latin American activities.

Make no mistake. The US political establishment is out to get rid of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. And no wonder: he's helping push up the price of world oil, he's selling oil at reduced prices to Cuba, he doesn't support the so-called War on Terrorism, and he won't join the State Department's "Plan Columbia." On the other hand, those policies may partly account for his popularity with Venezuela's poor and needy, a majority of the population.

"A working agency of the United States"

The Solidarity Center is successor to the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), an organization created by the AFL-CIO for international outreach in 1961. Eighteen months after the 1959 Cuban revolution Meany and President Kennedy agreed that federal funds should be given to the federation's group "for union-sponsored projects in Latin America." Meany called the AIFLD "a working agency of the United States government" (Joseph C. Goulden, Meany). A specialist on AFL-CIO international policy described the way the AIFLD supported US government and corporate interests overseas: "AIFLD's approach was to support or create 'free trade unions,' and use these unions to split any labor movement that was critical of the United States or US corporate investment, or even one that was critical of the government in their country for its policy of supporting the United States." (Kim Scipes, "It's Time to Come Clean," Labor Studies Journal, Summer, 2000).

How this intervention looked to progressive activists during these years is aptly described in an article published last summer in the American Prospect, a journal founded by former Labor Secretary Robert A. Reich. The AIFLD "was especially notorious for its CIA connections and for siding with repressive governments, often against progressive unions." The Prospect backs up this analysis with eyewitness accounts: "In the 1980's, during the reign of death squads in El Salvador, AIFLD threw money at the most conservative and most pro-government union factions,' says the Reverend David Dyson, a longtime union activist. When the Reagan administration was supporting terror throughout Latin America, Dyson says, 'we'd find AIFLD people sitting around the embassy drinking coffee like they were part of the team.'" (Simon Rodberg, the American Prospect, Summer 2001) Even before the AFL's merger with the CIO Meany's agents backed the 1954 overthrow of Guatemala's president by CIA-financed counter-revolutionaries. The new dictator smashed the unions representing the United Fruit workers and imposed a labor law so draconian that even Meany's right-hand agent in Guatemala lamented that it was "much more difficult for a trade union to operate and exist." (Meany) Even so, the AIFLD continued to aid reactionary interventions in Guyana in 1963; Brazil in 1964; the Dominican Republic in 1965; and Chile in 1973.

Sweeny on the defensive as unionists ask why On April 26, the federation issued a statement disclosing that it "has supported the CTV's process of internal democratization and its freedom of association against attacks of the Chavez government." It claimed that Chavez attempted "to weaken or eliminate the principal institutions of Venezuelan civil society, includingunions." For three years the AFL-CIO has mischaracterized Chavez as anti-union because he insists that the corrupt CTV leaders should stand in democratic elections inside the union. Union members in the US who call for direct elections of their leaders here have also been labeled "anti-union" by the AFL-CIO leadership.

On May 3 California's Monterey Bay Central Labor Council wrote Sweeney "to ask why the AFL-CIO would be involved in funneling State Department money to a labor federation in Venezuela that was actively involved in trying to overthrow that country's democratically elected government. Given the AFL-CIO's past in Latin America and just as importantly the current federal financing of at least $15,000,000 a year partly so that the AFL-CIO can carry out its Latin American activities, Sweeney is going to have a tough time convincing even some supporters that the federation's hands are no longer dirty. Although US government officials now acknowledge several meetings before the coup with Venezuelans who participated in the short-lived provisional government, the officials insist they "unequivocally discouraged a coup in these meetings" (Washington Post, May 5, 2002). What explanation will John Sweeney give to union members about the AFL-CIO's meetings before the coup? When Sweeney replaced the AIFLD with the Solidarity Center, did he turn the federation away from its sordid past practices in Latin America? Or does the Solidarity Center continue to support corrupt unions and dictatorships? All those who look to the AFL-CIO to promote labor rights and democracy are entitled to some straight answers.

Jamie Newman (cdu@igc.org) co-founded the Center for Democratic Unions which sponsored the 1999 Washington State Initiative 702, the Union Bill of Rights. Charles Walker edits LABOR TUESDAY!, an online labor newsletter.