AFL-CIO’s Dark Past (5) By Harry Kelber, LaborEducator
Kirkland Built A Secret Global Empire With U.S. Funds to Control Foreign Labor
For a half century, American workers had been kept completely in the dark about the Meany-Kirkland covert operations in foreign countries, financed mainly by U.S. government agencies and giant corporations that expected a handsome return for their investments.
Union members were never told how, in their name, AFL-CIO leaders meddled into the internal affairs of dozens of countries, attacking indigenous labor unions and destabilizing nationalist movements that would not conform to America’s global ambitions.
Even in the historic 1995 contest for the AFL-CIO presidency, neither John Sweeney nor his rival, Thomas Donahue, discussed labor’s record on foreign policy during their debate, and it never turned up as an issue during the campaign. The prevailing view among top labor leaders was to keep the skeletons in the closet and move on.