ACTiON FORUM AFL-CIO leaders debate Central American policy

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SOCIALIST ACTION OCTOBER 1987 7 This month's FORUM section features articles on the dispute inside the labor movement over U.S. policy in Central America.

This issue was hotly debated at the 1985 national AFL-CIO convention and may reappear at this year's convention on Oct. 26-30. President Reagan's $270-million contra aid request and the current flurry of peace negotiations in Central America are all coming to a head in the next several weeks.

The views presented here reflect real debates going on inside the anti-intervention movement and within the ranks of labor. What position should the labor movement take in relation to the Arias and Reagan peace plans? What does it mean to support a "political solution" in Central America?

By offering a variety of viewpoints, we hope to stimulate further debate and discussion of these important issues.

Another AFL-CIO national convention is just around the corner. Eight hundred delegates will meet in Miami, Fla., on Oct. 26-30. Most observers predict a rather dull convention without much controversy.

But it may not be possible to get through the convention so easily. The 13million-member union federation still remains deeply divided over U.S. government policy in Central America.

The APL-CIO leadership is already circulating a draft pre-convention resolution on Central America which one anti-intervention union source described as "atrocious."

Apparently, the draft tries to identity with current peace negotiations in order to right of workers to organize political rather than a military solution to conflicts in the region.

On one level, the adopted formulation in support of peace negotiations represented a powerful rejection of an explicitly procontra stance. Nonetheless, the AFL-CIO resolution was fatally flawed.

Supporting a negotiated settlement in Central America is not the same as supporting self-determination for the peoples in the region. The demand of nonintervention in Central America-or "Hands Off Nicaragua" —is based on respect for the principle of self-determination— irrespective of the political course the Nicaraguan people may choose to follow.

Neither the United States nor any other country has the right to impose a particular form of government or a particular set of political tasks on the Nicaraguan people.

By conceding that the U.S. government should be seeking a negotiated settlement, anti-intervention forces can be easily caught off guard-and ultimately demobilized by shrewd imperialist "peace" gestures.

For example, dissident union leaders who oppose U.S. intervention in Central America have been partially disarmed by the reactionary AFL-CIO leadership's decision to embrace their central demand of supporting the peace-negotiations process. This could have been avoided had the opposition taken a clear stand for self-determination and non-intervention.

AFL-CIO duplicity

But even before it recently adopted a negotiations stance, the top labor bureaucrats have often tried to defuse the opposition which surfaced at the 1985 convention.

The AFL-CIO leadership has concealed its support to the contras through its official position of "no position" when it comes to congressional funding for the mercenaries. Support for repressive regimes in Central America is explained as an attempt to strengthen the "pro-democratic" elements against the right wing.

But despite these ploys, the debate at the last convention did not end the discussion; it only brought it out into the open. The differences dramatically surfaced again 18 months after the convention.

Nineteen international union presidents, representing the majority of organized labor, sponsored successful anti-intervention and anti-apartheid demonstrations on April 25, 1987.

This produced a barrage of red-baiting attacks by several national leaders of the AFL-CIO such as American Federation of Teachers President Albert Shanker. Lane Kirkland, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO, sent out a letter warning all affiliates against endorsing the demonstrations.

But the protest actions in Washington, D.C., and San Francisco went ahead as planned. Not one national union president withdrew support. Stanley Hill, the head of the largest union in New York City, defiantly answered the red-baiting attacks by publishing a New York Times ad reaffirming support for the April 25 actions.

Several days later, the same newspaper (continued on page 9)