Worker Solidarity Action Network

4 days ago

EPA Whistleblower Alleges Agency Provided Falsified Documents in East Palestine Investigation

whistleblower.org/press/epa-whistleblower-alleges-agency-provided-falsified-documents-in-east-pal…

November 13, 2024

EPA Whistleblower Alleges Agency Provided Falsified Documents in East Palestine Investigation

WASHINGTON – Dr. Robert Kroutil, a former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) contractor and whistleblower represented by Government Accountability Project, has submitted a new sworn declaration to the EPA Office of Inspector General (OIG) alleging EPA provided falsified documentation in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request regarding the East Palestine, Ohio train derailment.

Dr. Kroutil, who served as the data quality manager for the EPA’s Airborne Spectral Photometric Environmental Collection Technology (ASPECT) program, stated that the Quality Assurance Project Plan (QAPP) provided by EPA through FOIA was backdated to February 6, 2023, despite being created approximately six weeks after the East Palestine disaster.

The ASPECT program, EPA’s only real-time chemical and radiological detection platform, was deployed five days late to the February 3, 2023, Norfolk Southern train derailment. In May 2024, Dr. Kroutil disclosed that as a result, EPA missed its opportunity to gather chemical data about the plumes that dissipated by February 7, one day after the open burn of vinyl chloride filled train cars. Consequently, just 8 minutes of data was collected from ASPECT’s flyover. Additionally, he disclosed that program managers had instructed operators to turn off chemical sensors over contaminated creeks during the mission.

Key allegations in Dr. Kroutil’s new declaration include:

– The QAPP document was created in response to a request from the EPA ASPECT Program Manager during a recorded Teams call on February 28, 2023, weeks after the incident.

– The QAPP lacks site-specific information crucial for the East Palestine mission, including details about vinyl chloride and other chemicals from the train manifest.

– Multiple technical inaccuracies and inconsistencies suggest the document was created after the fact.

– EPA staff allegedly instructed contractors to backdate procedures to make it appear they were in place before the derailment.

Government Accountability Senior Environmental Officer Lesley Pacey said,

“Our whistleblower, Dr. Kroutil was there in the room when the EPA ASPECT Project Manager requested a QAPP for the East Palestine mission three weeks after the ASPECT flew over East Palestine. A recording of this request was turned over to the EPA OIG. It is unreal to me that the EPA chose to provide this fraudulent document to the very organization that made the EPA OIG hotline complaint about the East Palestine ASPECT mission. I find it shocking that the EPA has produced in its FOIA response this QAPP, which is dated February 6, 2023, Dr. Kroutil stated in his declaration. As such, it appears on the face of the response that EPA has provided a Quality Assurance Project Plan that was NOT in effect during the East Palestine emergency response.”

Contact: press@whistleblower.org … See MoreSee Less

EPA Whistleblower Alleges Agency Provided Falsified Documents in East Palestine Investigation – Government Accountability Project

whistleblower.org

November 13, 2024 EPA Whistleblower Alleges Agency Provided Falsified Documents in East Palestine Investigation WASHINGTON – Dr. Robert Kroutil, a former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) contract…

Worker Solidarity Action Network

2 weeks ago

The White House Will Be Shedding Its Union Label
After gains by organized labor under President Biden, a second Trump administration is likely to change course on regulation and enforcement.
www.nytimes.com/2024/11/10/business/economy/trump-biden-labor-unions.html
Noam Scheiber.png
By Noam Scheiber
Noam Scheiber has covered the labor movement since 2015.

Nov. 10, 2024, 5:03 a.m. ET
Joseph R. Biden Jr. promised to be the most pro-labor president in history. He embraced unions more overtly than his predecessors in either party, and filled his administration with union supporters.

Labor seemed to respond accordingly. Filings for unionization elections spiked to their highest level in a decade, as did union victories. There were breakthroughs at companies like Starbucks and Amazon, and unions prevailed in organizing a major foreign auto plant in the South. A United Automobile Workers walkout yielded substantial contract gains — and images of Mr. Biden joining a picket line.

As Donald J. Trump prepares to retake the White House, labor experts expect the legal landscape for labor to turn sharply in another direction.

Based on Mr. Trump’s first term and his comments during the campaign — including his praise for Tesla’s chief executive, Elon Musk, for what he said was Mr. Musk’s willingness to fire striking workers — these experts say the new administration is likely to bring fewer challenges to employers who fight unions.

“There will be a concerted effort to repeal pro-worker N.L.R.B. precedents,” said Heidi Shierholz, a senior Labor Department official during the Obama administration, referring to the National Labor Relations Board.

Experts like Ms. Shierholz, who is now president of the liberal Economic Policy Institute, said they also expected the Trump administration to ease up on enforcing safety rules, to narrow eligibility for overtime pay and to make it harder for gig workers to gain status as employees.

A Trump transition spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

Labor unions generally backed Vice President Kamala Harris in the recent election, but a few prominent ones, like the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the International Association of Fire Fighters, stayed neutral after endorsing Democratic presidential candidates in the past. It is unclear whether that neutrality will yield more influence for these unions in the new administration.

The N.L.R.B. may be the agency that swings sharply most quickly. Its general counsel prosecutes labor law violations, and its five-member board decides questions of legal doctrine, a kind of high court for labor issues.

Mr. Biden fired the agency’s general counsel shortly after taking office and installed a replacement more in sync with his priorities. Mr. Trump is likely to do the same, which would mean ousting Jennifer Abruzzo, who has aggressively wielded the powers of her office on behalf of workers seeking to unionize.

Ms. Abruzzo has sought increased financial remedies for workers who were fired for organizing, and has taken action against companies for holding mandatory meetings that highlight the downsides of unionizing.

If Mr. Trump’s first term is a guide, his appointee as general counsel will probably adopt an approach that makes it harder for union campaigns to succeed. His appointees to the labor board will probably reverse Biden-era rulings on high-profile issues, including one allowing the board to order recognition of a union if the employer makes a fair election impossible, such as by firing workers who seek to unionize.

The Trump labor board will probably also undo a decision that largely struck down the use of gag rules in severance agreements, which generally prevent workers from describing unsafe working conditions or sexual harassment at their former workplace. And it could make it easier for large companies to avoid recognizing and bargaining with unions formed by employees of contractors or franchises — like Amazon and its delivery drivers, some of whom have recently unionized. All would be consistent with Mr. Trump's earlier approach as president.
Image
Jennifer Abruzzo holding open one of two glass doors that together have the etched seal of the National Labor Relations Board.
The National Labor Relations Board’s top prosecutor, Jennifer Abruzzo, has aggressively wielded the powers of her office on behalf of workers seeking to unionize.Credit…Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/Associated Press
Such changes may also come sooner than usual. Presidents have traditionally left labor board members to serve out their terms — which could mean effective Democratic control of the board until at least August 2026. But several experts predicted that Mr. Trump would move to install a Republican majority shortly after taking office, challenging a generally cited legal standard if necessary.

A new direction is also expected at the Department of Labor, which enforces minimum-wage, overtime and worker-safety rules. Under Mr. Biden, the department substantially increased the number of salaried workers who are eligible for overtime pay by raising the cutoff — to about $59,000 next year, from about $35,500 under Mr. Trump. It issued a rule making it likelier that gig workers would be classified as employees rather than independent contractors, entitling them to the federal minimum wage and overtime pay, and stepped up enforcement of child labor violations.

The new administration may rein in overtime eligibility and undo the Biden rule on independent contractors, reflecting Mr. Trump’s first-term approach. It is also likely to tamp down enforcement of child labor rules by the Labor Department, which last year instructed officials to seek large monetary penalties from violators.

“It’s hard to believe that a Trump D.O.L. would be pursuing child labor as aggressively as this administration has,” said Lee Schreter, a lawyer at the firm Littler Mendelson, which represents employers. She said the department had recently asked some of her clients to pay much larger penalties than employers had paid in the past, including during the first Trump administration.

Safety rules could also be affected. Under Mr. Biden, the department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration proposed requiring employers to protect workers from the health risks of heat exposure by providing drinking water, rest breaks and sufficient cooling indoors. It sought penalties against Amazon for exposing warehouse workers to “ergonomic hazards capable of causing serious physical harm.” (Amazon appealed the citations.)

Ann Rosenthal, a longtime OSHA lawyer in Democratic and Republican administrations, said she expected the Trump administration to delay the heat rule, which it can do with little consequence for years. She said she also expected the agency to curtail investigations of employers in cases where the law gives it discretion.

But experts say less sympathetic regulators won’t necessarily mean a large drop in labor activism, because organizing can develop a momentum of its own: Workers who have seen other workers successfully take on employers often follow suit.

“A big part of what’s been going on is a demonstration effect — that this is something you can do — and that is independent of the legal environment,” said Barry Eidlin, a sociologist who studies labor at McGill University in Montreal.

Workers may simply alter their organizing strategies. For example, graduate students at private universities, who have been unionizing in large numbers over the past few years, might stop filing paperwork to hold union elections under Mr. Trump. They could fear that his labor board would rule that they lacked a federally protected right to unionize, as previous Republican labor boards did.

Instead, they might seek voluntary recognition from their universities, then protest and perhaps even strike until the universities grant it. “There are a lot more people who are going to be saying, ‘What do you mean you’re trying to prevent me from having a union?’” Dr. Eidlin said.

Something similar could happen at companies, said Michael Lotito of Littler Mendelson, an expert on labor relations. He said that unions often pivoted to targeting a company’s reputation when the legal landscape became less favorable, and that these campaigns could be effective.

“A lot of companies make the calculations that we can deal with a union — we can have a strike, negotiations — those are just costs,” Mr. Lotito said. “But reputational risk is what’s gotten their attention. Unions are very good at destroying their reputation.”

Mr. Trump could prompt activism in less direct ways, too. During his first term, his policies seemed to make protest a more mainstream activity, including for tens of thousands of teachers in states like West Virginia and Oklahoma who walked off the job in 2018.

“The Trump presidency increased a sense of the numbers of people on the street that has had knock-on effects for labor,” said Charmaine Chua, a political scientist who studies labor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “The red-state strikes felt like kind of a symptom of that.” … See MoreSee Less

Trump Is Expected to Upend Biden Labor Policies Favoring Unions

www.nytimes.com

After gains by organized labor under President Biden, a second Trump administration is likely to change course on regulation and enforcement.

Worker Solidarity Action Network

2 weeks ago

Trump With Projecct 2025 Is Proposing War On Federal Workers & Programs
www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/11/07/trump-dc-federal-workforce-cuts/

Federal workers prepare for cuts, forced relocations in Trump’s second term
Trump, in his formal campaign platform, called to redistribute workers out of the Washington area and implement large-scale cuts to the federal government.

President Donald Trump signs an executive order to transform the federal hiring process. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
By Emily Davies, Lisa Rein, Emma Uber and Aaron Wiener
November 7, 2024 at 2:50 p.m. EST
With Donald Trump now less than three months away from retaking the White House, an office he won in part by pointing to his record as a businessman, thousands of federal workers in the D.C. region and across the country this week once again adjusted to a new status — as his future employees. And he has signaled many of them could soon be on the chopping block.
Trump, in his formal campaign platform, called to redistribute workers out of the Washington area and implement large-scale cuts to the federal government, which he has long derided as harboring members of the “deep state.” Before leaving office in 2020, he issued an executive order that made tens of thousands of employees subject to firing with little due process if they were found to have resisted the administration’s policies — a move unwound by the Biden administration that Trump’s allies have vowed to restore. His calls for cuts have been amplified by surrogates such as billionaire Elon Musk, who insists such moves are necessary to cut down on waste and inefficiency.
play

“I think you can’t overstate the effect on the workforce,” Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), who presides over a district with tens of thousands of federal workers, said in an interview. “This is going to be the Trump administration we experienced before on steroids.”

The District, Maryland and Virginia are home to about 373,000 federal employees, accounting for roughly 15 percent of the region’s total workforce. It’s a group accustomed to the disruptions that transitions of power bring to the nation’s capital. But if Trump were to impose the cuts and geographic relocations he has promised, federal workers and others said, that could upend the economic and social fabric that has long shaped the D.C. region.

At least half of the country believes that the government is doing too much that should be left to individuals or the private sector, according to 2023 Gallup polling. On average, the percentage of Americans who saw the government as overreaching exceeded the percentage who saw it as not doing enough by 10 percentage points — 53 percent to 43 percent — during President Joe Biden’s first three years in office, continuing a longtime pattern of increased concerns about federal power under Democratic leadership.
The federal workforce grew under Trump during his first term after he added thousands of employees to the Defense Department, the Defense Health Agency and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

While Trump’s transition team did not answer questions about his plans for federal workers, he made clear while campaigning that he is prepared to build on controversial actions taken in his first term against the career employees who have for more than a century operated as the backbone of the federal government. Musk, one of Trump’s most vocal supporters, has proposed instituting a government efficiency commission to slash $2 trillion from the federal budget, a sum far largerthan the budgets of the Department of Defense, Education and Homeland Security combined.

“The mood is not good,” said one U.S. Environmental Protection Agency employee, one of several government workers who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation and because they were not authorized to speak with the media, said on a lunch break Wednesday. “But I would say the mood is better this time around than in 2016 because it’s less shocking. People are kind of resigned.”
The woman, 37, said she and her co-workers are focused on how to make sure the new administration does not walk back environmental regulations achieved under Biden — an effort that she expects will face pushback from a president-elect who has said he would end “frivolous litigation from the environmental extremists.”

The headquarters of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Washington in 2013. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
Federal employees are also preparing for changes outlined in Project 2025, a comprehensive plan for a Republican administration written by officials who served in Trump’s first administration. While Trump repeatedly disavowed the blueprint on the campaign trail, experts consider at least some of it likely to come to fruition. Pitched in part by supporters as a vehicle for increasing accountability, tenets of the controversial proposal involve infusing the nonpartisan civil service with Trump loyalists and eliminating the Education Department.

Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest union representing federal employees, with 800,000 members, on Wednesday sounded a defiant tone, vowing to “not stand by and let any political leader — regardless of their political affiliation — run roughshod over the Constitution and our laws.”
The policy known as “Schedule F,” which would strip job protections from many career federal employees in policy roles, is one of several plans by Trump or his Republican allies in Congress to target the workforce — from weakening union protections to requiring that employees return to the offices they largely vacated during the coronavirus pandemic.
D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) has called for President Joe Biden to mandate that federal workers return to their offices, a move she sees as critical to the vibrancy and economic health of downtown. The Biden White House has stopped short of a requirement but urged its federal employees to work in person.
Before Trump left office in 2020, only the White House budget office had time to scan its rolls to determine who would fit in the new job category known as Schedule F. But the results from just that office alarmed employees across the government: About 90 percent of the staff members at the Office of Management and Budget were eligible for reclassification.

President Joe Biden speaks to reporters after signing executive orders at the White House in 2021. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Biden killed Schedule F with his own executive order in his first days in office, and Democrats tried to pass legislation to block it permanently. But that effort failed in a divided Congress. Instead, the Biden administration this spring instituted a regulation that would make it more burdensome for Trump to reinstate the policy. But the president-elect is expected in a matter of months to roll back the Biden regulation. No one was ever terminated under the rule.

Paul Perez, president of the National Border Patrol Council, the union representing Border Patrol agents, said he is not concerned that Border Patrol agents could be listed under Schedule F. On the campaign trail last month, Trump suggested he would hire an additional 10,000 Border Patrol agents and give them $10,000 signing and retention bonuses. Perez welcomed those proposals, saying, “We’ve had a retention problem for years.”
“We’re excited about having someone we believe is a strong advocate for border security,” Perez said. “We believe that protecting this country has always been his primary mission.”

Border Patrol agents organize families near Jacumba Hot Springs, California, for a ride to a Customs and Border Protection facility in April. (Li Qiang for The Washington Post)
As part of the Trump coalition’s laser focus on immigration, an organization funded by the Heritage Foundation compiled an online “watch list” of federal employees it claims cannot be trusted to secure the U.S. border. The group unveiled the “DHS Bureaucrat Watch List”during the final weeks of the presidential campaign, threatening to fire 51 federal policy experts and high-ranking leaders, the majority of whom are career civil servants at the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies.

The group identified them largely using public social media comments, prior work experience and campaign finance records.
Doreen Greenwald, a former revenue officer at the Internal Revenue Service who is now president of the National Treasury Employees Union, on Wednesday denied claims by Trump and his allies that career employees have thwarted any presidential agenda, because their job is to help carry out the policies of the party in power.
“The deep state has never existed,” said Greenwald, whose union represents about 150,000 civil servants across about 35 agencies, including the IRS. “Federal employees want to be respected for the work they do and they are focused on what they were hired to do to accomplish a mission. They embrace any new administration.”
Part of Trump’s plan, as outlined in Agenda47, his campaign platform, has included moving up to 100,000 federal government positions “out of Washington to places filled with patriots who love America” — a move decried by local leaders who fear it would crater the regional economy.

The first Trump administration moved the Bureau of Land Management’s headquarters to Grand Junction, Colorado, and relocatedthe Economic Research Service and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture to the Kansas City region.

Virginia, Maryland and D.C. are among the top four jurisdictions in the country for federal civilian employees: The District has the largest number (160,692), followed by California (142,038), Virginia (140,397) and Maryland (138,942), according to a congressional Research Service reportreleased in September.
Changes to the federal government’s local footprint would create collateral damage, as direct employment or procurement spending account for a percentage of the region’s economy “somewhere in the high 30” range, said Terry Clower, director of the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University.

“It is a clarion call for us in this region to really embrace the notion of, how do we grow our economy with a base of federal employment but much less reliance on the federal sector for our economic success?” he said.
He warned that without swift and serious adjustments, the places most central to life in the region — Metro, schools, businesses — could suffer if cuts come.
Some people who have dedicated much of their careers to the federal government, and to the District, are for the first time seriously considering leaving.
One woman, whose work as a consultant for climate and education policy groups is funded by government grants, said she and her husband, a State Department employee, started talking about moving away from D.C. this spring, when Biden’s campaign was sputtering.
They stopped the conversation when Harris took over the ticket. They liked their life in the District, where they own a home, and they thought the vice president could win.

On Wednesday morning, after the couple dropped their children off at school, her husband turned to her and said, “Well, do we need to start talking about moving again?”
He said he was worried about Schedule F and being forced to take actions that would go against his morals.
“We just renovated our house,” she recalled replying, “but yes.”
They discussed relocating to a francophone part of Africa, because her husband speaks French. Then they spent the day searching online for new jobs. … See MoreSee Less

Federal workers prepare for cuts, forced relocations in Trump’s second term

www.washingtonpost.com

Trump, in his formal campaign platform, called to redistribute workers out of the Washington area and implement large-scale cuts to the federal government.

Worker Solidarity Action Network

2 weeks ago

Which billionaires are supporting Trump – or Harris – for president?
www.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2024/11/04/billionaires-backing-trump-harris-2024/75936100007/?fb…

George Petras
Ramon Padilla
USA TODAY

U.S. billionaires are playing a larger role than ever in the 2024 presidential election. Among them: Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has accounted for more than a third of the donations to former President Donald Trump and other Republican candidates.

While Musk has voiced his support for Trump in high-profile venues, including an appearance at a rally in Pennsylvania on Oct. 5, other billionaires are quietly donating to Vice President Kamala Harris's campaign.

Between January 2023 and Oct. 30 of this year, the Harris campaign raised a total of $998 million, reported Forbes. That includes cash raised during the Biden campaign. In the same time period, the Trump campaign raised $392 million, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

Three centibillionaires are backing candidates…

At least 83 billionaires – two of them centibillionaires with a net worth of more than $100 billion each – are supporting Harris, while 52 billionaires, one a centibillionaire, back Trump.

Of the three centibillionaires, Musk supports Trump. Bill Gates of Microsoft and businessman and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg back Kamala Harris.

Centibillionaires and their estimated wealth:

Musk has donated an estimated $132 million to Trump and other Republicans in the 2024 election, according to Fortune.

Gates has donated $50 million to Future Forward USA Action, a nonprofit organization that supports Harris, the New York Times reported. Bloomberg has donated about $100 million to Future Forward, Forbes said.

… but Harris leads in support from other billionaires

Billionaires are favoring Harris over Trump by a wide margin, according to an ongoing analysis by Forbes.

Who are the billionaires supporting the candidates?

Support includes endorsements and/or financial contributions.

Harris supporters include film director Steven Spielberg; Eric Schmidt of Google; Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs; and Melinda French Gates, former wife of Bill Gates, Forbes says.

Trump backers include Steve Wynn of Wynn Resorts; Miriam Adelson of the Las Vegas Sands Corp.; and Ray Davis, co-owner and co-chairman of the Texas Rangers, Forbes says. … See MoreSee Less

Which billionaires are supporting Trump – or Harris – for president?

www.usatoday.com

Elon Musk is a high-profile billionaire promoting Trump – but Harris has more wealthy supporters in her corner.

Worker Solidarity Action Network

2 weeks ago

TRAINWRECK IN ‘TRUMP COUNTRY’: PARTISAN POLITICS HASN’T HELPED EAST PALESTINE, OH (DOCUMENTARY)
After a catastrophic train derailment changed residents’ lives forever, politicians used East Palestine, OH, to help themselves, but they have done nothing to help East Palestine.
therealnews.com/trainwreck-in-trump-country-partisan-politics-hasnt-helped-east-palestine-oh-docu…

BY MAXIMILLIAN ALVAREZ, STEVE MELLON AND MIKE BALONEK NOVEMBER 4, 2024

Still image from TRNN's documentary report "Trainwreck in 'Trump Country,'" featuring Christina Siceloff, a resident of Beaver County, PA, standing in a creek in East Palestine, OH, with a pink gas mask on her face. Image courtesy of Mike Balonek.
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From the moment a Norfolk Southern ‘bomb train’ derailed in East Palestine, OH, on February 3, 2023, traumatized and chemically exposed residents became another political football to be kicked around by Republicans, Democrats, and the media. Nearly two years since the avoidable catastrophe that changed their lives forever, residents in and around East Palestine and their families have been left to live in a toxic “sacrifice zone.” Like in 2020, the majority of voters in this part of Ohio and Pennsylvania will likely vote for Donald Trump in 2024, though plenty have given up on the whole system. In this on-the-ground documentary report, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez and Steve Mellon from the Pittsburgh Union Progress go to East Palestine to speak with residents face to face, deep in the heart of so-called “Trump Country,” and what they find is a stark reminder that working-class communities have way more in common than corporate media and corporate politicians want us to believe.

Filmed and directed by: Mike Balonek
Pre-Production: Maximillian Alvarez, Mike Balonek, Steve Mellon
Post-Production: Maximillian Alvarez, Mike Balonek, Jocelyn Dombroski, David Hebden, Kayla Rivara

TRANSCRIPT

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Speaker 1:

Tonight, a town meeting in East Palestine, Ohio where worried residents are getting a chance to express their concerns after a freight train, derailment caused evacuations in a fiery toxic mess.

Krystal Ball:

Joy Behar knew exactly who to blame for this toxic catastrophe sparked by years of political corruption and corporate greed. The residents of the town themselves. Why? No, because they were part of the deplorable group who voted for Donald Trump. Take a listen.

Joy Behar:

I don’t know why they would ever vote for him because of somebody, who by the way, he placed someone with deep ties to the chemical industry in charge of the EPA’s Chemical Safety Office. That’s who you voted for in that district.

Speaker 4:

[inaudible 00:00:39] talk about the political finger pointing because you hear Buttigieg critical of former President Trump for going, and many would say, “Hey, Buttigieg, we’d like to see you in East Palestine, Ohio right now addressing this.”

Chris Albright:

Join thousands of others who rely on our journalism to navigate complex issues, uncover hidden truths, and challenge the status quo with our free newsletter, delivered straight to your inbox three times a week:

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It was a catastrophe that happened, that changed our lives and we’re never going to get back to normal. Since the derailment happened, I was a gas pipeline worker. I developed congestive heart failure, which ended up spiraling into severe heart failure. I’ve been unable to work since April of last year, unable to provide for my family. I’ve lost my health benefits, in that time. I can’t afford my medications [inaudible 00:01:19] out because of this, because of something that could have been and should have been prevented by the railroad, by Norfolk Southern.

Laurie Harmon:

I live about three blocks from the train derailment as diagnosed with systemic contact dermatitis due to chemical exposure. I have now lesions in my spine. I have cysts on my kidneys. I am losing everything. I’m losing my home. I lost my relationship. I’m a foster parent, I lost my kids. This is more than one person can take.

Maximillian Alvarez:

It’s just like really, really sad and infuriating because from the moment that the Norfolk Southern train derailed here in East Palestine on February 3rd, 2023, the people of this town were turned into just another political football to be kicked around by Democrats and Republicans in the media. The conversation was all about, who’s more to blame for this? Democrats or Republicans? Who’s going to get to town first? Trump or Biden? Senators like Sherrod Brown and JD Vance, Democrats, Republicans made a lot of political hay about this situation and saying they were going to fix it.

These people are still going through hell and now we’re here in 2024 talking about an election season. We’re talking about places like this as Trump country. We’re talking about people, regular people like you and me who live in places like this, as if they’re not people. So if we have to talk about the elections and we do because elections are still important, the outcome of elections still shape the ground upon which we live, work, and organize. So we got to talk about them, but if we have to talk about elections, let’s talk about them from the bottom up, not from the top down.

Steve Mellon:

I was talking to East Palestine resident, Ashley McCollum on the phone the other day about politics and about the differences in the political differences that exist in the world today and that everything is boiled down to who are you going to vote for in the presidential election? She said, “Steve, if you came upon a car wreck and the car was on fire and you rushed up to help people, would you ask them who they voted for?” “Like, of course not. You’d pull them out” what’s different between this situation and that situation?

Maximillian Alvarez:

This is Steve Mellon. Steve’s a journalist and a photographer, and over the past year, he’s done more consistent, thorough, on-the-ground reporting on the East Palestine disaster than practically anyone in the country. Steve has also been on strike at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that whole time, and he’s been doing all that reporting without pay for the Pittsburgh Union Progress. The alternative newspaper that workers have been producing on their own while they’ve been on strike for the last two years.

Steve Mellon:

We went out on strike in October 18th, 2022, and for the first couple months we had difficulty learning how to strike. We had to figure out how to take care of each other’s needs, figure out different actions, how to coordinate with other organizations, supportive organizations and unions. We were still figuring out how to publish a strike paper. Bob was editing, he was figuring things out, and then this derailment happens 30 miles from my house.

And there was this yearning to go cover it, but quite honestly, we saw the cloud. We saw that mushroom cloud for the burn-off, and I thought, holy shit, this is happening to people who are living in this community. I mean, I know communities like this. Covering a story like this, in my experience, in doing this for 40 years, if you want to cover this story accurately, you have to build relationships with people.

And I’ve been able to do that with that on strike simply because if we think this is important enough and I need to come up here once a week and sit and talk to people for three hours at their kitchen table about what they’re dealing with and not go home and write a story because the story’s not done yet, we can do that.

If the Post-Gazette or any other news organization that’s paying me, they’re going to want a story they can’t afford to have somebody out working on a story that’s not going to have an immediate payoff and fill that space and generate audience and revenue for the publication. I lament the demise of those local media organizations because I do think they’re incredibly valuable just on a daily basis. But when something like this happens, when a catastrophic event occurs in the community, I think a local newspaper is like one of the places people can go to feel bound to each other. We’re all dealing with this together.

Laurie Harmon:

Hi everybody. Thank you for being here. I live about three blocks from the train derailment. We were evacuated, came back on about the 10th when they said it was all clear. On the 12th, I had a doctor’s appointment already scheduled. I started getting rashes. So May 1st … No, this is about the time where they started digging up the pits, cleaning up. I started getting second, third, and fourth degree chemical burns. I have the burns over 80% of my body. They burrow deep down in, it’s horrible.

Maximillian Alvarez:

On March 23rd, dozens of people from around East Palestine and around the country gathered in the East Palestine Country Club for a conference that was called by the newly formed Justice for East Palestine Residents and Workers Coalition. Attendees included residents of East Palestine and the surrounding area, but also residents of other so-called sacrifice zones.

People living near other rail lines, railroad workers, labor union representatives, environmental justice organizations, journalists, socialists, Trump voters, and so many more. The coalition discussed how to pressure the Biden-Harris administration to issue a disaster declaration for East Palestine and secure immediate government-funded healthcare for residents whose ailments and medical bills continue to pile up.

Christina Siceloff:

So I’ve had pressure in my ears, itchy skin, migraines, headaches, brain fog, dizziness, confusion, tiredness, low-grade fever, congestion, runny nose, burning in my nose, eyes and throat, strange smells, strange tastes, polyps in my nose, pain around my eyes, itchy eyes, extra mucus, sore and blistered throat hoarseness, a feeling in my esophagus and lungs, throat, nose, and abdomen like someone was burning me with acid and lighting me on fire from the inside.

Coughing, sore lungs, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea sometimes at the same time. Body aches, excessive thirst, loss of appetite at times, stomach pain, abnormal menstruation, cramping and tingling in my feet, twitches, tremors, anxiety and panic attacks. These are most of the symptoms I can recall. I’ve had these since the train derailment and the event and burn that happened last year.

Since then, I’ve been diagnosed with an ear infection, an upper respiratory infection, exposure to toxins that were non-occupational and even had one doctor tell me they didn’t know what to do for us yet, including for my four-year-old son. I’ve had blood tests and urine tests only to be told everything was fine. In January, I was diagnosed with PTSD. One of the most recent doctor visits was to have a screening done for cancer that came back as benign, but they wanted to continue monitoring every three months, but the insurance won’t pay for that.

Daren Gamble:

Obviously, steps like this are very important to get this ball rolling, to bring awareness not only to us, but the other thousands of communities in the country that are being poisoned. It’s just so eye-opening. So I lived here my whole life. Before this happened, there was no such thing as environmentalists to me. I mean, that all happened somewhere else. These things happen somewhere else.

Chris Albright:

One of the biggest takeaways about this is what happened here can happen to anybody out there. They have done nothing, nothing to fix the safety issues, the maintenance problems, anything like that. This can happen at anybody’s place, anywhere in this country right now because they won’t do anything about it until they hear from us. Once they hear from us and we start letting them know that we’re done, we’re not taking this anymore. We got to stand up. We got to unite. We got to get together and we got to make this right.

Maximillian Alvarez:

I’m the socialist weirdo that Fox News keeps telling you is the enemy, right? You’re the white working class, Trump country guy, that MSNBC keeps telling me is the enemy and your neighbors are the enemy, but we’re here sitting on your porch. I don’t know what that says about how we should vote in the election, but what do you think that says about the disconnect between the way we talk about this country as if we’re all just so divided by party? What do you think people can learn from why we’re here right now?

Chris Albright:

Well, a couple things I’d say about that is number one is, don’t listen to all the mainstream media and all. Go talk to your neighbors. Go talk to your friends. Go talk to people in your community. You’ll find out that the differences that MSM is pushing down our throats and the political parties are pushing down our throats and then trying to get us to believe, to divide us, are not true. That we’re not defined and we’re not separated by those things that they’re telling us that we shouldn’t be. You just said you’re on the left side. I’m on the right side. So what? So what? It doesn’t matter. I think what it comes down to above all and anything else, is be a good person. Be a good human.

Maximillian Alvarez:

What was most powerful about the gathering in East Palestine was seeing this diverse working class coalition of capitalism’s forgotten victims standing together in solidarity. There were no blue state people or red state people. There were just people fighting off different tentacles of the same corporate monsters, corporate politicians, and Wall Street vampires.

Jami Wallace:

This isn’t just a fight for East Palestine. This is a fight for all of the laborers across the country. We built this country with our blood, sweat, and tears. Our ancestors built this country, and now our country is in the hands of these corporations that have created a country that I don’t want to live in. We let this country get so far gone, we are the only ones that are going to be able to take this country back and we need national action.

Christina Siceloff:

The government should not be let off the hook either. They had the funding to do more research on the chemicals before they even put them on the tracks. They had the power to not lift the evacuation, and some of us were never even told to leave or to stay inside. There should have been more done to protect people, and even to this day, they have done next to nothing to make changes or even monitor the changes that were made.

Maximillian Alvarez:

I first met Chris Albright and his wife Jess when Professor John Hanson and his law students brought us all out to Harvard in September of 2023 to do a live interview about the East Palestine derailment and the never ending nightmare that residents have been living through ever since.

Steve Mellon and I went to East Palestine to sit down with Chris and to talk frankly about how different our conversations about politics and the elections look when we actually have them face to face. And when we talk as fellow workers and human beings first, not as Democrats or Republicans or anything else.

What do you want folks to know out there who are only looking at you as a Trump voter in Ohio?

Chris Albright:

Well, I’m not just a Trump voter in Ohio. When it comes to the core of everything is the fact that we want safety. We want healthcare. We want safe railways. We want to be able to get over a lot of stuff that our country is telling us because you’re on this side of the fence or that side of the fence, you have to be this person or that person, and that’s not right. We want the basic human rights that anybody else wants.

And I don’t care whether you’re a Democrat or Republican, Independent, it doesn’t matter to me. We have to be able to come together and work on everything that we need as a country, as people to get past this. And yes, I’m a Republican, I’m a Conservative. I have my views, I have my thoughts. You’re not, you have your views and your thoughts. But we can sit here and then talk like this because it doesn’t matter.

Hilary Flint:

What we’ve learned is talking to our elected officials doesn’t get … I sat down with the President of the United States last month. It didn’t get me anywhere. It’s another promise for another day, for another meeting, for another … No. Now the way that we show them is that we come with more people. And every meeting gets more people and more power, and that’s how we move the needle. It’s not a conversation with an elected official. It’s an elected official seeing you bring the power to them.

George Waksmunski:

We need a movement, a rank-of-file, militant movement. Aggressive struggle also, it’s going to join a coalition and fight back.

Chris Silvera:

But if we want to change things, then we have to create that change. It ain’t going to be the Democrats and it ain’t going to be the Republicans. Don’t worry about some third guy running for president. You have to start at the town council, at the city council, at the school board. When they see that change coming up the hill, that they will understand that you have changed and that’s going to make the society change. So we need to start to demand from these railroads, from people that’s in Washington, pass the Safety … What do you call it?

Speaker 1:

Rail Safety Act.

Chris Silvera:

Pass the Rail Safety Act. Is it the best thing? No, but it’s better than what you got right now. So you got to move step-by-step in one direction, right? So everybody here got to make that commitment. Call your senator, call your congressperson, call one of them crooked people down in Washington DC and say, pass this because they’re still subject to the vote at the end of the day, right?

Speaker 1:

Right.

Chris Silvera:

Still subject to one person, one vote. We have to stand out.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Yes, Norfolk Southern has agreed to pay a $600 million class action settlement with residents and businesses in and around East Palestine. With payouts varying depending on one’s proximity to the crash site, their household size and other factors. But the company is not admitting liability or wrongdoing, and that settlement frankly doesn’t begin to cover all that Norfolk Southern has stolen from this community. And residents who desperately need the money, still worry about the health costs they will continue to accrue from the chemicals they and their families have been exposed to.

And yes, like in 2020, the majority of voters in Columbiana County are still going to vote for Trump in 2024, though plenty have given up on the whole system. After experiencing such a devastating tragedy and after being lied to by government agencies and abandoned by elected officials in both parties, the mere fact that Trump visited East Palestine a full year before President Biden did was frankly enough to convince many residents of who supposedly cares more about them.

But what I saw and felt in East Palestine was what I’ve seen in other sacrifice zones around the country, working people who need help after more than 40 years of corporate dominance, deregulation, disinvestment, and the systematic devaluing of labor and life itself. People who yearn for something better than empty promises and partisan gimmicks, but who feel like nothing better is ever really on offer.

Maximillian Alvarez:

I mean, the common wisdom is that our country is more politically divided now than ever before. I mean, granted, you got to put an asterisk next to that because, keep in mind, this is a country that fought a civil war against itself. But the point stands that it feels like we have nothing in common, nothing to talk about, nothing to struggle together over.

Chris Albright:

Max, me and you have talked how many times before I even knew that you were on the left side. I’m not, but it doesn’t matter. You’re great human being. Steve, you’re a great human being. I don’t care what side of the fence you’re on. It doesn’t matter to me if you’re a Democrat, a Republican, a Conservative, a Leftist, I don’t care. Be a good person. If you’re a good person, that stuff doesn’t matter.

Steve Mellon:

I think it’s proof that what divides us is a very surface level item, and we can all probably disagree here on who we should vote for, who we personally are going to vote for, but that’s not how defined any of you two, because we have not had that conversation. We have gathered in East Palestine, what draws us all here are issues that affect us all. They affect you personally now, Chris, on a very visceral and real level.

They could happen to me. It could happen to you Max. And that’s what’s drawn us together is the understanding that we’re all vulnerable. We all lack power as individuals, but if we coalesce around issues, around the things that are important to us, the safety of your family, the safety of your community, how we should treat each other as human beings, not as Trump voters or Biden voters, but as human beings who want the same things out of life. We want a healthy family, we want a life that we feel proud of. We want to be able to live lives that give something to the community that we can feel proud of.

Maximillian Alvarez:

I mean, these are just real nuts and bolts things that it feels like it had to get to a point where we’ve lost so much of that, that what binds us is more apparent now than ever. But I do genuinely feel that whatever path forward we have, it’s got to start there. … See MoreSee Less

Trainwreck in ‘Trump Country’: Partisan politics hasn’t helped East Palestine, OH (DOCUMENTARY)

therealnews.com

After a catastrophic train derailment changed residents’ lives forever, politicians used East Palestine, OH, to help themselves, but they have done nothing to help East Palestine.

Worker Solidarity Action Network

3 weeks ago

2024
Review Essay–Blue Collar Empire: The Untold Story of US Labor's
Review Essay–Blue Collar Empire: The Untold Story of US Labor's
Global Anticommunist Crusade by Jeff Schuhrke
Global Anticommunist Crusade by Jeff Schuhrke
Kim Scipes
Purdue University Northwest, kscipes@pnw.edu
Follow this and additional works at: digitalcommons.fiu.edu/classracecorporatepower
Part of the African Studies Commons, Asian Studies Commons, Development Studies Commons,
International Relations Commons, Latin American Studies Commons, Politics and Social Change
Commons, and the Social Justice Commons
Recommended Citation Recommended Citation
Scipes, Kim (2024) "Review Essay–Blue Collar Empire: The Untold Story of US Labor's Global
Anticommunist Crusade by Jeff Schuhrke," Class, Race and Corporate Power: Vol. 12: Iss. 2, Article 2.
Available at: digitalcommons.fiu.edu/classracecorporatepower/vol12/iss2/2
This work is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Arts, Sciences & Education at FIU Digital
Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Class, Race and Corporate Power by an authorized administrator
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Review Essay–Blue Collar Empire: The Untold Story of US Labor's Global
Review Essay–Blue Collar Empire: The Untold Story of US Labor's Global
Anticommunist Crusade by Jeff Schuhrke
Anticommunist Crusade by Jeff Schuhrke
Abstract Abstract
This is a very detailed examination of AFL and AFL-CIO foreign policy program between 1940s and 1990s,
showing not only their efforts but the process by which they carried out this work. Focuses on
anticommunism to rationalize its repressive work against workers around the world, with especially
strong focus on the work of the American Institute of Free Labor Development (AIFLD) in Latin America.
Keywords
Keywords
AFL-CIO, AFL-CIO Foriegn Policy Program, Anticommunism, labor repression
Creative Commons License
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Cover Page Footnote
Cover Page Footnote
Kim Scipes, PhD, is a long-time labor and political activist who has been publishing on AFL-CIO foreign
operations since 1989; his path-breaking book is "AFL-CIO's Secret War against Developing Country
Workers: Solidarity or Sabotage?" (Lexington Books, 2010, 2011 paperback). He is a co-founder of
LEPAIO, the Labor Education Project on AFL-CIO International Operations whose web site is aflcio-
int.education . For a list of Dr. Scipes' writings, many with links to original article–go to
www.pnw.edu/personal-faculty-pages/kim-scipes-ph-d/publications.
This politics of culture is available in Class, Race and Corporate Power: digitalcommons.fiu.edu/
classracecorporatepower/vol12/iss2/2
Jeff Schuhrke begins his new book, Blue Collar Empire, with a powerful story: how the CIA, operating
through the offices of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), a
US-based international union, helped sustain a bitter three-month strike against the government in the
British colony of Guiana during 1984, effecting the post-colonial period after decolonization. (Today,
this South American country is known as Guyana.) While targeting the CIA connection in this case and
using it to dramatize US efforts to intervene in other countries’ internal affairs, it is ultimately a powerful
indictment of how upper echelon people in the AFL-CIO have worked to attack progressive workers’ and
their political allies in struggles around the world.
Professor Schuhrke writes, emphasizing the contradiction at the heart of his book: “… the same
twentieth-century labor movement that brought a measure of economic security and personal dignity to
millions of working people also participated in some of the most shameful and destructive episodes in this
history of US imperialism” (p. 3). It is the latter part, what I have long termed as “labor imperialism” (my
term; Schuhrke does not use it), that Schuhrke documents so well in this book:
This book tells the story of US labor officialdom’s quest to control the workers’ movements
in Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia between the 1940s and 1990s—and the bitter
conflicts exacerbated along the way. When thinking about labor’s role in the Cold War, it
is important to understand that ‘the Cold War was not only an East-West struggle between
rival superpowers, but also a series of imperial, often grotesquely violent intrusions by the
Global North into the Global South. Like a roving picket line marching from country to
country, the AFL-CIO’s international agents carried out their own imperial intrusions,
expending incredible energy and resources to block revolutionary ideologies and militant
class consciousness from taking hold in foreign labor movements.
In practice, this means meddling in the internal processes of other countries’ unions,
stoking internecine rivalries, creating and financing splinter labor organizations,
grooming cadres of conservative unionists, and occasionally using the power of the strike
to sabotage left-wing governments. American labor officials usually carried out such
activities without the full knowledge or approval of the rank-and-file union members they
purported to represent (p.5).
He also points out while early researchers saw the labor movement as little more than “a puppet for the
US Government,” later researchers “demonstrated how the CIA was only the most notorious government
entity that organized labor partnered with. In reality, the AFL-CIO became closely allied with almost the
entire US foreign policy apparatus—not only the CIA, but also the State Department, Agency for
International Development, and National Endowment for Democracy.” He follows with a damning
conclusion: “Scholars in the early twentieth-century rightly contend that American labor leaders were not
just dupes of the government, but were instead aggressive cold warriors in their own right” (emphasis
added, p. 6). [Although uncredited here, I made this argument in a 1989 article, “Labor’s Foreign Policy:
Its Origins with Samuel Gompers and the AFL,” that was published in The Newsletter of International
Labor Studies, and updated in Scipes, 2010.]
But, interestingly, Schuhrke also makes a powerful damning connection: “When we examine top labor
officials’ actions in the realm of foreign policy, it becomes clearer how the global Cold War directly
contributed to US labor’s decline in the latter half of the twentieth century” (p. 6), noting that in 1947,
approximately 35 percent of private sector, non-agricultural workers were in unions, but in 1991 (the end
of the Cold War), only 11 percent were in unions.1
To me, this is the heart of Schuhrke’s book: that the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and later, after
1955, the combined AFL-CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations) have operated globally to subjugate
workers and their allies who sought goals different and in opposition to US labor’s goals; that this “labor
imperialism” came from within the labor movement and was not imposed by outside entities such as the
US government, the State Department or the CIA; that these efforts were all-but-unknown by the
overwhelmingly large numbers of the affiliated unions’ members and the large majority of their
leadership (i.e., knowledge of these foreign policies and operations was confined to a very small group of
people at the very top of the AFL-CIO directly involved with “international affairs”); and that these
operations were responsible for at least some of the disintegration and declawing of the US labor
movement.
How does Schuhrke establish these points? By a very detailed discussion of the process of AFL-CIO
interventions, particularly in Latin America and to a lesser extent also in Africa and Asia. After his
excellent introduction, he divides the book into three sections: Free Trade Unionism between 1945-1960,
Free Labor Development between 1960-1975, and the Free Market Revolution between 1973-1995.
The first section is an examination of the key activists—particularly George Meany, Jay Lovestone, and
Irving Brown, who were to “lead” AFL-CIO foreign operations over these years and into the 1970s. This
not only talks about the AFL’s efforts to undermine the post-World War II World Federation of Trade
Unions (WFTU), but also focuses on Brown’s leading role in splitting the French labor center, the CGT
through creating Force Ouvriere, a rival trade union center. From there, Schuhrke discusses AFL
operations in Latin America. Then he jumps back to Europe to undermine the Communists by supporting
the 1947 Marshall Plan. He concludes that the US created an “informal” empire after the war, and that it
has been working to enhance or maintain it ever since, and he talks about how the AFL and right-wing
leaders of the CIO, along with the British and Dutch, joined together with a number of labor centers to
create the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions in 1949 to challenge the WFTU. What you
see here is that these US labor leaders have been involved at least since the end of World War II in
advancing the US Empire.
Schuhrke then details US labor’s involvement with the CIA, primarily in Europe but also in places like
Indonesia and China, and how labor was a “partner” with the CIA, but not a subordinate one: CIA
funding was cut off in 1958, yet US labor kept operating around the world with money from other US
government agencies, such as the US Agency for International Development. He returns to events in
Latin America.
The second section focuses on the “Institutes” period, where the AFL-CIO established regional
organizations in Latin America (1962), Africa (1964), and Asia (1967). This was after the AFL supported
the coup against the democratically elected government in Guatemala (1954), and in this following
period, the AFL-CIO was intimately involved in overthrowing the democratically elected governments in
Brazil (1964) and in Chile (1973), using its regional organization AIFLD, the American Institute for Free
Labor Development. What we see in both Brazil and Chile is that AIFLD helped overthrow two labor-
friendly regimes and replaced each with a dictatorship that was focused on labor repression. And
thousands of workers and their supporters were arrested, tortured and many subsequently killed by the
1 Note: in 2023, only six percent of these private sector workers were unionized—KS.
newly-installed dictatorships, and previously established labor centers and unions were destroyed. Also
described herein are the strikes in Guyana, mentioned above, and intervention in the Dominican Republic
in 1965.
Schuhrke shifts his focus in Chapter 9, he concentrates on Africa, and briefly discusses operations across
that continent, and then moves on to Vietnam in Chapter 10. The latter is a particularly rich chapter, and
not only shows the AFL-CIO leadership supporting the war, but the emerging cracks by union leaders
against the war. And then, in 1967, the magazine Ramparts exposed CIA activities around the world,
including with labor, and opens up further opposition to the war and the US Empire.
The third section (1973-1995) focuses on “Free Market Revolution.” Beginning with the Chilean coup on
September 11, 1973—the first “9-11”—Schuhrke focuses on the economic “solutions” due to the failure
of capitalism with the development of “neoliberalism,” which is based on privatization, liberalization, and
deregulation. Advanced by economists from the University of Chicago, who were advising the dictator
Pinochet after the Chilian coup, it was ultimately advanced throughout the “developing world” (also
referred to as the “third world”) as the way forward, and then, in 1981, by US President Ronald Reagan
and subsequent administrations, both Republican and Democratic, in the United States. These were
attacks on the social safety network established by President Roosevelt’s administration in the 1930s that
had helped Americans survive the Great Depression. This included selling off public services and assets,
such as bridges and airports, as well as reducing restraints on businesses.2
Schuhrke then talks about Lane Kirkland replacing George Meany in 1979, and Kirkland’s efforts to stay
involved in foreign affairs. He provides a major overview of the AFL-CIO’s support for Solidarnosc, a
Polish labor center, right after the AFL-CIO stood by and allowed Reagan to destroy PATCO, the
Professional Air Traffic Controllers union, in 1981. Yet he also discusses the formation of the National
Endowment for Democracy (NED) in 1983, established by that “democrat,” Ronald Reagan, which
combined the international wing of the Democratic Party, the international wing of the Republican Party,
the international wing of the AFL-CIO’s domestic arch enemy, the US Chamber of Commerce, with the
international wing of the AFL-CIO, at that time, the Free Trade Union Institute. (The AFL-CIO, through
its “Solidarity Center” still works with the imperialist NED today. See Scipes, 2010: 96-105.) In this
period, Schuhrke also discusses briefly some of their work in the Philippines in the late 1980s, as well as
more fully, South Africa across the 1980s.
He also discusses AFL-CIO operations in the 1970s and ‘80s in El Salvador and Guatemala, each torn by
guerrilla uprisings, which AIFLD sought to undermine, as well as their projects in Grenada and
Nicaragua. This allows him to discuss the emergence and development of the National Labor Committee
in Support of Demcracy and Human Rights in El Salvador (NLC), where a few progressive union
presidents worked to support these struggles, and also rank and file union members’ and their allies’
efforts to support the struggles. And eventually this takes us up to the collapse of the Soviet Union in
1991, then the fateful 1995 election of John Sweeney to the presidency of the AFL-CIO.
2 If you want an excellent visual representation of this, go back and watch Michael Moore’s 1989 movie, “Roger and
Me.” He vividly illustrates the impact of deindustrialization on Flint, Michigan during the late 1970s and
throughout the ‘80s, showing the social devastation on one city by these policies, although this devastation spread
extensively across what became known as the “Rust Belt” because of these policies, as well as in California, neither
of which Moore unfortunately does not mention.
Evaluation: Data and Analysis
First and foremost, Schuhrke has done a truly remarkable job simply telling us in detail about the AFL
and the AFL-CIO operations around the world during these years. He has weaved together a sprawling,
extremely complicated chain of events that extend around the world, and over roughly a 50 year period: I
think this is a tour de force, and that this book should be read by every trade unionist and people studying
US global operations over these years; labor’s contributions simply cannot be ignored in the development
of the US Empire across these years. More importantly than merely detailing these developments,
Schuhrke explicates the processes by how these developed; this is first class work! So, data provided in
this book will almost certainly never be surpassed overall, although there might be arguments about
specific situation. (For any scholar thinking about initiating new research on the AFL-CIO’s operations
across these years, I’d suggest not: we need much research on the post-1995 period, and that’s where I’d
encourage you to engage.)
Schuhrke provides an in-depth account of labor politics on US politics and operations on a global level, as
well as at national ones as well, especially in Latin America. For the specialist, this is valuable
information. For trade unionists, who want the focus to be on unions, I would begin by trying to
understand the situation in particular countries and/or regions, and expand from there, rather than trying
to understand everything at the beginning.
Now, as complimentary as I have been—and this is genuine—I have some complaints about Schuhrke’s
analysis of his data. Somewhere along my career, however, I came to a very important understanding
about reporting research: you never want to claim more than your empirical evidence supports, but you
want to claim everything your evidence supports. In my opinion, Schuhrke’s evidence is much stronger
than his analysis; his argument is much stronger than he claims.
His focus, bluntly, is on the AFL’s and then AFL-CIO’s war against “communism.” (And by the way, I
think some publicist got carried away in the subtitle to his book: this is not the “untold story” about
labor’s global anticommunist crusade, and Schuhrke knows this, but it is the most detailed story.) While
he delves into the earlier history of the AFL’s fight against the left (i.e., including communists, but also
including anarchists, Trotskyists, black and Latino nationalists, militant rank and file trade unionists of all
colors, ethnicities, etc.) in the Introduction, his book really zooms in on the perceived war against
communism. I say “perceived war” because he accepts this “battle” as presented by the US labor
protagonists; his scholarly detachment, to me, privileges one side against the other; while extremely
critical, nonetheless, he acts as though US labor’s positions are “normal” and a place to start from.
Where you can see this is that there is almost no discussion in this book—certainly not for a long time—
about rank and file union members in the United States in regard to these issues. They are basically not
considered in the bulk of the book although they are truly the “meat” of the labor movement. So, this
book is not about the US labor movement; it really is about the upper echelons of the AFL/AFL-CIO
foreign policy leadership, who has done almost everything to consciously keep rank and file members
(and most of their leaders across the country) from knowing what they are doing in the members’ names,
but behind their backs, in countries around the world. In fact, my research has shown that involvement in
these foreign politics began in the late 1890s, not the mid-to-late 1940s (i.e., long before the Bolshevik
Revolution in 1917), and in over 100 years, the AFL-CIO leadership has never given an honest report to
the rank and file that can be verified by independent researchers. And Schuhrke suggests but does not
explicitly make this point; I think it’s important.
It is important because the labor movement claims to be a democratic institution and yet by leaders
consciously hiding overseas operations—again, done behind the backs and in the name of American
workers, without honestly reporting these efforts to their members about these operations—guts the very
concept of “labor democracy.”
Accompanying this, Schuhrke doesn’t challenge what is meant by “communism.” To domestic rank and
file activists, when discussing it, “communism” is at least somewhat conflated with “workers’ control” or
at least “workers’ democracy”; i.e., one person, one vote, get to discuss everything that might affect a
particular group of workers. That’s very different from these AFL-CIO foreign policy actors, who see
anything that challenges their control to be a project of the Soviet Union; in other words, many activists
get labeled as “communists” not as an explicit label but as a general label to denigrate their unwillingness
to simply stand in line and do as their told by their “leaders” no matter how unacceptable their leaders’
actions might be seen. (This is often referred to as “red baiting.”) Note that any discussion of
“communism” is not based on specific analysis of this policy or that but is a general denigration of
anyone who might think in a progressive, life-enhancing manner.
This means, of course, that in the case of any workers’ struggles in other countries, anyone who thinks
“outside of the box” or differently from their leaders, is automatically a communist. That means they
should be killed, and their organizations destroyed, and doing so is “legitimate” and desirable.
And should any government in the so-called developing world have the temerity to question the US
Empire, or even US foreign policy, or to try to make life better for workers by limiting capitalist
exploitation and accumulation, then they should be overthrown, their leaders arrested, killed or exiled,
and being replaced with a dictatorship that puts an iron straitjacket on workers’ and allies’ organizations.
Without questioning these basic positions, then people who bought into US propaganda—in Schuhrke’s
time period, served almost daily in the mainstream media and utilized mercilessly by US government
officials and corporate executives—can see that “fighting communism” is a good thing. We have to
preclude this option, whenever possible.
Ironically, even if “communism” equals Soviet Union, as our so-called “leaders” project, then—if being
honest—they would recognize that the position of the Soviet government in regard to labor varied over
time. Before 1935, they wanted to create revolutionary labor organizations in countries around the world
to overthrow the capitalist system. In 1935, in response to the failure to stop the Nazis from taking power
in Germany, they renounced their revolutionary aspirations, at least in the imperial countries, and were
willing to work with any labor organizations willing to fight fascism. In 1939, after the Nazi-Soviet pact,
they switched to trying to keep the US out of the European War, but in 1941—after the Nazi invasion of
the Soviet Union in June—they fought for the US to join the war on the side of the Soviet Union and for
increased production in US factories to support the war effort (acting to constrain class conflict on the
shopfloors in expense of enhancing it, as previously). After the war, the Soviets were willing to unite
with the CIO and the British Trades Union Congress to work against the restoration of fascism through
the creation of the World Federation of Trade Unions, but after mid-1947, they realized no matter what
they did or said, the US and Britian would oppose them, and this realization led to their sole focus on
their national interests. (In this quick sketch, I’m not saying they were necessarily “good” or “desirable,”
but to point out that their position changed over time.)
Why recognizing this is important is that the AFL in particular did not care: “communism,” as they saw
it was evil and everything they did or said must be removed from human consideration. But this quickly
demonstrates that the AFL’s position was based only on ideology and not on any rational analysis.
And what accepting the AFL’s position—including after the 1955 merger with the CIO right-wing, after
throwing out most of the left wing of the CIO in 1949-50—cannot explain is why the AFL fought the left
both before the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and continues to fight the left today, over 30 years
after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the ensuing “death” of Soviet-style communism. The
so-called “war against communism” by AFL/AFL-CIO foreign policy leaders was (and continues to be)
an on-going effort to support the US Empire’s effort to dominate all of the other countries of the world,
which it has specifically done since at least 1945. This has not been an “informal” empire, but rather is
simply another form of empire, albeit differing from the Romans.
And the politics and policies of the AFL-CIO international operations today are intended to advance such
domination around the world. Even as domestically, the AFL-CIO leadership continues to fail the
American public, and especially working people.
I go into this long explanation here because I think Schuhrke would have been better served by focusing
on their ideological war against “communism” as a tool to dominate the world (and the US labor
movement) during a certain period of world history and not as an end in and of itself. In my opinion, this
is what he shows, and his book is an important intervention in the struggle against AFL-CIO labor
imperialism.
Together with my 2010 book, Jeff Schuhrke provides an unassailable account of US labor operations
around the world between the 1940s and the 1990s.I think US trade unionists must consider Schuhrke’s
arguments, and decide whether to ignore AFL-CIO international operations, or whether to eradicate these
under current leadership and rebuild US unions to fight for working people at home and abroad. … See MoreSee Less

Review Essay–Blue Collar Empire: The Untold Story of US Labor's Global Anticommunist Crusade by Jeff Schuhrke

digitalcommons.fiu.edu

This is a very detailed examination of AFL and AFL-CIO foreign policy program between 1940s and 1990s, showing not only their efforts but the process by which they carried out this work. Focuses on an…

Worker Solidarity Action Network

4 weeks ago

Kern County Rally Of SEIU 521 Union Members To Demand That The Union Defends The Members
youtu.be/HIuEUwgekZc
SEIU 521 union members held a rally on October 13, 2024 in Kern County to demand that the union defend members who have faced sexual harassment, bullying and union busting tactics by management at government agencies in the area.
Union members Karen Bussard and Gil Garcia who is a Region 5 Trustee talked about the issues they are facing and the the failure of the SEIU union director in Region 5 to properly represent them.
The union represents 50,000 members in California. They also discussed the corporatization with the local and the difficulty of members contacting the union to follow up grievances and to defend the union members under attack on the job by a call system that separates members from direct contact with union staff and leadership.
This interview took place on 10/23/24
Additional Media:
SEIU 521 Members Picket Against Their Leadership
southkernsol.org/…/kern-county-workers-with…/
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Senator Laphonza Butler & SEIU 2015: The Ex-Union Bureaucrat Helping UBER & The Union Busters
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Top SEIU Official Butler to Leave at End of Month
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Another Former SEIU Official Is on Uber’s Payroll
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"Stealth Election" Issues Facing Dave Regan's SEIU UHW in The Rigging Of The 2014 Election
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SEIU Mergers, Labor Power, Union Democracy & the Future of The SEIU
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CA SEIU Tops Pushing Union Busting Two Tier"Non-Profits" Like HealthRight 360 Harming Public Workers
youtu.be/OfiDKxRdn84
Racism, Workplace Bullying & Corruption At CCSF DPH ARF With SEIU 1021 Senior Steward W.D. Flient
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SEIU CA Workers Speak Out On Crisis In SEIU: Part 1
youtu.be/r0DIa2eNF6A
Production of Labor Video Project
www.labormedia.net … See MoreSee Less

Labor Media – Labor Media

www.labormedia.net

The Fight To Protect Public Educaiton & CCSF With AFT 2121 Lecturer Rick Baum youtu.be/cYPbj4tGLfE Public Education is under attack and one of the targets is the community college system and C…