The AFL-CIO, the major labour center of the United States, has an office of its Solidarity Center in Johannesburg. There is no American trade unionist outside of the highest levels of foreign policy leadership that has the slightest idea of why the Solidarity Center is in South Africa, or what it is doing there. Yet the Solidarity Center uses the fact that Cosatu works with them to undercut American union criticisms of the reactionary foreign policy of the AFL-CIO (AFL). The question must be asked: is Cosatu playing with the Devil?

Despite some good efforts by labour activists to get some control over their biggest labour central, there's obviously a lot more work to do.

I'm not sure if even the COSATU leadership knows what it's dealing with--just as long as it gets some cash to fund some of its programs.

The fact is these secretive NED-tied groups were set up by back-room deals between Kirkland, Meany and the US government with no mandate from the affiliated unions or their members. That's why no one there knows about them.

The whole exercise is about AFL-CIO presidents selling out their organizations' principles in return for some limited tolerance of unions by the US state and corporate America (and obviously some personal featherbedding for themselves). It's little more than a capitalistic puss growing in the US labour movement.

These groups need to be abolished, and that money put back into organizing workers.

For anyone interested, here's the web site for both The Worker to Worker Solidarity Committee and US Labor Against War, two large labour groups that have done a great deal of good work on labour foreign policy and reform to offset the goofiness of these secretive sell-out groups.

I have some serious concerns with some of the folks and politics involved in the new Change to Win Federation, the coalition of unions that split from the AFL-CIO last year to form a new labour central. But at least I can see the legitimacy of some of the motives--namely the AFL-CIO's inability to get a united and coordinated organizing and education program going.