More questions than answers, indeed. I think I still lack an “appreciation or understand[ing] of how it works, and thus, the why of it.” My takeaway so far was a lot of bureaucratic stuff about how the AFL-CIO actually doesn’t work, and the technical why of that. Stay tuned for part 2, I guess?
I mean, when you say “we need to know what it actually is,” the first response is what it isn’t (not a union). Then when you ask what does the AFL-CIO “actually do,” the first response is what it does not do: not collective bargaining (for “practical and legal reasons”) and not really organizing (because “it’s not a union.”)
Finally there’s a peremptory summary of the functions that most people who even know the AFL-CIO enough to criticize it do indeed know: “coordinating and support,” “research and analysis,” and the classic “jurisdictional disputes.” Somewhere also it’s “a space” for the “working class” to “come to the same table,” (though this is presumably metaphorical, and not at its DC redoubt) and it’s a family home where the family doesn’t live (ugh a family metaphor). Personally, I’ll stick with the traffic cop metaphor.
Oh and on the subject of those critics and their “volleys”: people still call it “AFL-CIA” because
1. The Solidarity Center is still financed by the NED, which was explicitly set up by the Reagan administration as a CIA cutout and is currently run by a man who is either a CIA officer under civilian cover or has a resume so fitting of one that he might as well be (NSC, NATO, Embassy chief of staff in Baghdad ‘07, NSC, Orange Revolution interagency coordinator, Atlantic Council, etc.) The “D” in NED stands for “democracy,” like “Project Democracy,” get it?
2. The Solidarity Center is still opaque about the details of its international work, both historically and currently.
3. The Solidarity Center remains an “extension of anticommunist American foreign policy” even if it doesn’t quite play its old “Cold War role” because the Cold War is over. In fact, the Wikileaks cables, which were the last look we really had into Solidarity Center operations abroad, showed that its operatives were so preoccupied with identifying and countering “communist,” “socialist,” and “far-leftist” forces in foreign unions that it seemed they failed to get the memo about the end of the Cold War. And we know this because they were so eager to share their intelligence and political analysis with the US State Department, to help that august body further its totally righteous foreign policy objectives. It’s also clear that the Solidarity Center aided the destabilization of the Venezuelan government under Chavez, demonstrating clearly that the “past history” of the AFL-CIO is not dead, it isn’t even past.
It’s worth considering whether “how it works” internationally the way that it does, with no oversight or even insight by labor membership or the public might actually explain some of its domestic bureaucratic impotence, in fact might be “the why of it”?
Appreciate the feedback! It seems as though you came in with some fairly keen pre-existing knowledge looking for a different angle on the question, or even a very different piece altogether.
Totally understand that! Hope you still give future parts a read, and happy to hear feedback on those as well.
Very interested in reading the future parts, especially your perspective on how “we can better understand points of leverage to change it for the better” and “how the terrain can be shifted to bring collective interest to the forefront.” Might the Vermont AFL-CIO enter the discussion?
I am clearly the sort of AFL-CIO critic you refer to, who does not really understand how it can wield so many resources and still seem so irrelevant. I admit that this is in part because I still do not really understand how it works internally. As I think Hamilton Nolan also criticized, why was the AFL-CIO convention such a boring coronation that didn’t even include Amazon and Starbucks organizers, if it’s supposed to be this “space” for the working class to come together and discuss important national issues? Why does that responsibility fall to the comparatively under-resourced Labor Notes, while dynamic new organizing and training is taken up by the volunteerism of EWOC and DSA Labor?
I am skeptical of AFL-CIO’s ability to rise to the occasion and take a more active role in building the labor movement, and frankly also in its desirability, given the ongoing influence of NED/State Dept. and the federation’s institutional conservatism. But I am willing to be persuaded that “shifting the terrain” can and should be done, and I look forward to reading your analysis on how and why!
More questions than answers, indeed. I think I still lack an “appreciation or understand[ing] of how it works, and thus, the why of it.” My takeaway so far was a lot of bureaucratic stuff about how the AFL-CIO actually doesn’t work, and the technical why of that. Stay tuned for part 2, I guess?
I mean, when you say “we need to know what it actually is,” the first response is what it isn’t (not a union). Then when you ask what does the AFL-CIO “actually do,” the first response is what it does not do: not collective bargaining (for “practical and legal reasons”) and not really organizing (because “it’s not a union.”)
Finally there’s a peremptory summary of the functions that most people who even know the AFL-CIO enough to criticize it do indeed know: “coordinating and support,” “research and analysis,” and the classic “jurisdictional disputes.” Somewhere also it’s “a space” for the “working class” to “come to the same table,” (though this is presumably metaphorical, and not at its DC redoubt) and it’s a family home where the family doesn’t live (ugh a family metaphor). Personally, I’ll stick with the traffic cop metaphor.
Oh and on the subject of those critics and their “volleys”: people still call it “AFL-CIA” because
1. The Solidarity Center is still financed by the NED, which was explicitly set up by the Reagan administration as a CIA cutout and is currently run by a man who is either a CIA officer under civilian cover or has a resume so fitting of one that he might as well be (NSC, NATO, Embassy chief of staff in Baghdad ‘07, NSC, Orange Revolution interagency coordinator, Atlantic Council, etc.) The “D” in NED stands for “democracy,” like “Project Democracy,” get it?
2. The Solidarity Center is still opaque about the details of its international work, both historically and currently.
3. The Solidarity Center remains an “extension of anticommunist American foreign policy” even if it doesn’t quite play its old “Cold War role” because the Cold War is over. In fact, the Wikileaks cables, which were the last look we really had into Solidarity Center operations abroad, showed that its operatives were so preoccupied with identifying and countering “communist,” “socialist,” and “far-leftist” forces in foreign unions that it seemed they failed to get the memo about the end of the Cold War. And we know this because they were so eager to share their intelligence and political analysis with the US State Department, to help that august body further its totally righteous foreign policy objectives. It’s also clear that the Solidarity Center aided the destabilization of the Venezuelan government under Chavez, demonstrating clearly that the “past history” of the AFL-CIO is not dead, it isn’t even past.
It’s worth considering whether “how it works” internationally the way that it does, with no oversight or even insight by labor membership or the public might actually explain some of its domestic bureaucratic impotence, in fact might be “the why of it”?
Appreciate the feedback! It seems as though you came in with some fairly keen pre-existing knowledge looking for a different angle on the question, or even a very different piece altogether.
Totally understand that! Hope you still give future parts a read, and happy to hear feedback on those as well.
Very interested in reading the future parts, especially your perspective on how “we can better understand points of leverage to change it for the better” and “how the terrain can be shifted to bring collective interest to the forefront.” Might the Vermont AFL-CIO enter the discussion?
I am clearly the sort of AFL-CIO critic you refer to, who does not really understand how it can wield so many resources and still seem so irrelevant. I admit that this is in part because I still do not really understand how it works internally. As I think Hamilton Nolan also criticized, why was the AFL-CIO convention such a boring coronation that didn’t even include Amazon and Starbucks organizers, if it’s supposed to be this “space” for the working class to come together and discuss important national issues? Why does that responsibility fall to the comparatively under-resourced Labor Notes, while dynamic new organizing and training is taken up by the volunteerism of EWOC and DSA Labor?
I am skeptical of AFL-CIO’s ability to rise to the occasion and take a more active role in building the labor movement, and frankly also in its desirability, given the ongoing influence of NED/State Dept. and the federation’s institutional conservatism. But I am willing to be persuaded that “shifting the terrain” can and should be done, and I look forward to reading your analysis on how and why!