>I just passed this along. The AFL is trying to make it clear they weren't
>involved in the coup, as the NYT's Chris Marquis insinuated the other day.
>But I think the AFL needs to explain how its programs fit into what NED is
>doing. NED gives money to groups that are in opposition to governments the
>US won't tolerate. I'd much rather see the labor movement use its own funds
>for its overseas work rather than coordinate with Carl Gershman and the
NED.
>TS
Since as I understand it, the NED legislation gives the AFL-CIO a mandated amount of money with no discretion by the government on how much to give, how much coordination is necessarily involved? (The AID money the AFL-CIO gets is probably more problematic since that is discretionary on the part of the government).
The fact is that in many countries you will find NED money funding opposite sides of various conflicts, with the Chamber of Commerce money going to capitalist forces, AFL money going to opposing unions, GOP NED money going to rightwing parties, and Dem NED money going to social democratic forces. The overall effect no doubt leaves non-union far left forces with less relative funding (part of the goal of the legislation no doubt), but that is a bit different from the version of the NED that sees it as a coordinating force, as has been implied in Venezuala.
Whether people like Chavez or not, the fact is undisputed that he led a massive assault on trade union rights in Venezuala and, as the AFL noted, was condemned by not only US unions but by the ICFTU and the ILO (and apparently even the World Federation of Trade Unions, which I had not known). Chavez tried to engineer a state takeover of the labor unions in that country and was outvoted by the rank-and-file of the CTV. He lost and then tried to create government-run unions as an alternative.
If this was done by a rightwing regime, folks on this list would have been applauding and justifying the mass uprsing and "attempted peoples revolution" that almost occurred.
On the other hand, I agree with Tim that it would be better for the AFL-CIO to use its own funds in principle, but given the fact that the NED supplies cash on the order of 1% of the total budget of AFL-CIO unions, I don't buy the idea that such a minor relative amount of money could really change the unions political decision-making on what regimes or unions are worth supporting. The US government hands out massive amounts of money to business forces around the world; the NED actually helps funnel a bit to working class forces.
-- Nathan Newman