Union president hits U.S. war in C. America

Scan page 9

Salvadoran trade unions demand an end to austerity and repression.

SOCIALIST ACTION OCTOBER 1987 of the American Federation of Government Employees, was the first person to speak on the floor of the APL-CIO's national convention in opposition to U.S. aid for the Nicaguaran contras.

In the debate that followed, the AFL-CIO passed a resolution on a compromise measure calling for a diplomatic, "political solution" to the Central American crisis.

The resolution, however, did not take an explicit stand on the Nicaraguan contras.

Blaylock is president of one of the unions that sponsored last April's Washington, D.C., rally for Peace, Jobs and Justice.

On Aug. 29, 1987, Blaylock spoke on the subject of Central America at a meeting in San Francisco sponsored by CISTUR the Committee for International Support for Trade Union Rights and co-sponsored by the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW). Here are excerpts from that speech:

A lot has been said about the speech I made on the convention floor, and if you thought you came here tonight to hear an expert on foreign policy you are not going to get that. linked together two very important issues. And I think this flows from positions the AFL-CIO has adopted at its national conventions.

It is the linkage between the cessation of the wars and cessation of aid to the insurgents in all the countries in the region with the implementation of a number of provisions for democratization. It is the linkage of those two things that provides the key and the hope in this peace process.

Now, of course the problem will be in compliance. This is a great concept on paper, but will it be complied with?

The Sandinistas must allow freedom of speech and freedom of association, true freedom of association, allow the unions to function, and allow true elections within the union movement so that workers can select their own leaders.

But there is a possibility that the Sandinistas will only try to pay lip-service to their promises. This wouldn't be the first time that they promised to have political pluralism in their country.

The following are excerpts from Gretchen Mackler's speech to the CLUW meeting.

CLUW's position on military intervention in the entire Central American region has been clearly stated in the resolutions adopted at our national conventions.

CLUW supports our trade-union sisters in Central America, many of whom play leading roles in their unions. We support peaceful political solutions but recognize 1 am not an expert but I know what I see with my own eyes and I know right from wrong. The foreign policy of this government is wrong and if labor supports it, it is wrong too, and as long as I'm a part of labor, I am going to do everthing I can to change it.

When I spoke on that convention floor I was thinking about one thing and that was what I saw on my trips to Central America. I knew our government's policy was wrong and I knew we ought to be reaching out to those people down there.

We ought to be letting them know that this is our nation, a nation of people with a heart, a nation of people with minds that will not be put to rest without freedom. A nation of people that supported them and their needs. Instead we send them the contras and we send them artillery shells and bombs, all of those things that bring about trauma. Trauma that a lot of people in this room can't even imagine. that these solutions can only be determined by the people of these countries themselves —not by outside intervention.

Further we oppose military intervention into the region and the spending of billions of tax dollars at the direct expense of domestic programs. These cuts especially impact women and minorities here at home.

CLUW supports organized pressure on our government to oppose all military, economic, and political efforts to destabilize or overthrow elected governments in Central America or attack in any way the trade-union movements in those countries.

The best way to exert this pressure, we believe, is to follow the example of the labor struggles of the past. We must remember that every gain, every victory, was won through organized struggle, demonstrations, and strikes.

For example, the April 25, 1987, Mobilization for Peace, Jobs, and Justice held in San Francisco and Washington, D.C., gave a tremendous impetus to the anti-intervention movement. It helped forge an alliance between labor and the peace More than 200,000 Americans, one-third of them unionists, turned out to show their sentiment against military intervention—in defiance of AIFLD and the top leadership of the AFL-CIO.

Trade unionists in Central America have a right to determine how to organize and govern themselves. We don't see it as the U.S. government's job to interject itself into the struggles of these countries. We have a problem understanding how this government, the same government that destroyed PATCO, could possibly speak to the needs of workers in foreign countries.

Look at the crisis in domestic and foreign policy. It favors the rich over the poor and over workers. Favors corporations over our communities. Favors a multinational over the workers and the peasants.

Favors a military over economic development. Favors things like Star Wars;

nuclear weapons; Rambo-adventure in the Persian Gulf, Beirut, and Grenada...over industrialization in Pittsburgh and Detroit, over healthcare in Central America, and over jobs in San Francisco.

People, something's wrong with all that.

Over half of the AFL-CIO executive board members sit on the National Labor For Democracy in Central America Committee. Twenty-six international presidents are now members of that committee. And that's progress.

We're going to go into the AFL-CIO convention this time hopefully to bring out of there a position against contra aid-plain and simple.

... AFL-CIO (continued from from page estimated that one-third of the protestors in Washington, D.C., were unionists. The debate at the 1985 convention had spilled onto the streets. The success of the demonstrations, which drew a total of 200,000 people, was broadly recognized as a repudiation of national AFL-CIO policy in Central America.

These setbacks for the right-wing AFL-CIO leaders have forced them to retreat from their traditional brand of frenzied anti-communism. Unlike the 1950s, today most American people disagree with the Cold War stance of the AFL-CIO.

Ferment in U.S. society There have always been divisions within the AFL-CIO. But never have the differences mirrored so closely the political ferment within American society as a whole. This factor makes today's differences more significant than earlier shakeups within the upper layer of the union officialdom.

The biggest example of an earlier split in labor occurred in 1968, when Walter Reuther, then president of the United Auto Workers union, pulled the 1.3-millionmember UAW out of the AFL-CIO. Reuther criticized reactionary AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer George Meany as "the complacent custodian of the status quo.' Reuther insisted that unions had to alter their right-wing stance in order to relate to the radicalizing youth of the 1960s. But Reuther was more interested in refurbishing the deteriorating image of the Democratic Party. The UAW threw itself into the Hubert Humphrey 1968 presidential campaign and failed to provide leadership to the antiwar and civil rights movements of that period.

As a result, nothing much came of Reuther's defiance.

And with the troublesome UAW out of the AFL-CIO, Meany dealt severely with dissidents. He intimidated anti-Vietnam War delegates at AFL-CIO conventions by calling them "delegates from Hanoi." No significant anti-Vietnam War opposition developed within the AFL-CIO.

Things are different today. Individual leaders of the unions have not politically changed much in the last 20 years since Reuther. Unfortunately, all retain allegiance to the capitalist Democratic Party.

But the circumstances are different. Much different. Tens of millions of Americans lived through and remember the horrible experience of the Vietnam War. As a result, these millions are far less vulnerable to government war propaganda today. And the economic hardships of most American families fuel even more the mass skepticism and distrust of the government's Ken Blaylock I think it's very possible to bring out of there a position where labor will strongly get behind the current peace process going on in Central America where the four countries are trying to solve their problems themselves. They need all the assistance they can get from us, and we ought to do our damndest to make sure they get that.

And if we change labor's positions, then labor can play a role in changing the politicians' positions.

motives in Central America.

Anti-intervention sentiment has penetrated much deeper into the working class than during the Vietnam War era.

In the last several years, a significant number of national union leaders have identified with this anti-intervention sentiment. Many see that unions often need community allies to defend against corporate assaults. A growing number of union heads understand that it is unwise to be isolated from the movement for peace, jobs, and justice.

Slave-labor conditions abroad But another factor drives forward the process of involving the labor movement in anti-intervention protests: That factor is the connection between slave labor conditions abroad and runaway shops and plant shutdowns here. U.S. military power protects repressive regimes which serve as havens for corporations taking advantage of sub-human working conditions.

Steelworkers, for example, have lost jobs in this country while imports from racist South Africa have increased 5000 percent since 1975. Black workers in that country earn one-third what white workers do. A United Steelworkers union pamphlet describes a Phelps Dodge-owned fluorspar mine where "Africans earn less than 40 cents an hour, working 60 hours a week in 26 ten-hour shifts a month and sleeping 12 to a room in migrant labor hotels."

The story is not much different for other workers in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

The average manufacturing wage in Chile was $0.98 in 1983. It was $1.41 in Hong Kong and $1.52 in Taiwan. In 1984, the average manufacturing wage in Mexico was $1.20 and $1.68 in Brazil.

The jobs of American workers are being sacrificed to the growing profits of U.S multinationals. Working people will find it increasingly difficult to ignore its effects. Most glaring of all is the lost jobs: 11,489,000 displaced workers between 1979 and 1984.

The debate inside the AFL-CIO represents the initial, and largely timid, signs of the future class confrontation between the wealthiest corporations in the world and the American working class. This fight will only succeed if the American workers join in alliance with working people all over the world. Solidarity among workers will end capitalist tyranny, which pits one country's workers against another.

A solidarity consciousness will inevitably develop through the actual experiences of the workers, as more plants close up in order to reopen under slave labor conditions in countries protected by the U.S. military.

We can, therefore, predict more explosive future conflicts within the AFL-CIO, no matter how quiet the 1987 convention ends up to be.

Scan page 10

16 years of age. This means that there is a young