April 16, 2025
LEPAIO Press Release
AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center Warns of Coming Forced Bankruptcy in Wake of DOGE Cuts;
Reveals Previously Undisclosed Foreign Operations Funding in Court Filing
Statement Of Labor Education Project on AFL-CIO International Operations LEPAIO
The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), bankrolled by the US Congress since its creation by Ronald Reagan in 1983, is bankrolled no more. Elon Musk, with President Trump’s blessing, cut off funding for the NED in February 2025.
One of its key founders, Alan Weinstein, who helped write the enabling legislation, admitted to the Washington Post in 1991 about the NED that, “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”
The AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center is one of the four international operations comprising the Endowment; the others are the Center for International Private Enterprise, the International Republican Institute, and the National Democratic Institute. The Solidarity Center’s function is to oversee the AFL-CIO’s foreign policy program, allegedly representing the interests of its 12 million members. However, no information has been provided to union members about the NED over the past 40+ years, including what this means, or what the Solidarity Center is doing in this institutional position, that can be verified by independent researchers.
That is, until now. The NED filed a suit in the Washington, DC District Court on March 6th (2025), claiming that its defunding by the Trump administration is illegal. The Solidarity Center is taking part in that suit, filing its own legal brief titled, Exhibit-C In Exhibit C, Executive Director Shawna Bader-Blau lays out information that has never been shared with AFL-CIO affiliated union members.
She claims, “Since the 1890s, US labor leaders have collaborated with global workers to improve rights and working conditions,” and that the AFL-CIO “launched international programs in the 1960s and 70s, supporting workers’ rights across the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Europe.” She provides no evidence to support these claims which have been eviscerated by independent researchers.
Bader-Blau continues: “By 2024, the Solidarity Center had partnered with unions in over 70 countries. with offices in 32, to help build stronger, fairer democracies worldwide.” However, there is no explanation of which 70 countries, who they are working with in these countries and why, nor any information on how this is strengthening the global labor movement.
“The SC,” she writes, “estimates approximately 52 percent of the organization’s fiscal year 2025 would come from NED, or about $39.5 million.” About 40 percent comes from other US agencies, such as the US Agency for International Development (US-AID). “Typically, the Solidarity Center would expect to have received approximately $3.3 million per month from NED.” Combined with other sources, it’s estimated that the Solidarity Center’s annual budget is in the area of $78 million. The NED cuts alone have threatened the closure of 26 Field Offices around the world.
From information included by Bader-Blau in her legal brief, the US Government’s subsidies to the Solidarity Center approximate $1 billion since 1983, something that she and her allies in the leadership of the AFL-CIO have not previously reported to AFL-CIO members. Union members have a right to know what the AFL-CIO has given to the government in exchange for all this money!
LEPAIO calls on the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center to provide a full and complete report to the rank and file and affiliated organizations about the $1 billion it has received and where and on what these funds have been expended on. In the face of the SC’s likely closure, US trade unionists will have to grapple with the challenge, and are presented with the opportunity, of building international labor solidarity not funded and controlled by the US. Government.
LEPAIO, the Labor Education Project on AFL-CIO International Operations, is an organization of trade unionists and their allies across the country who are members of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the Communications Workers of America (CWA), the National Writers Union (NWU), and the United Auto Workers (UAW).
For More Information:
Steve Zeltzer, labormedia1@gmail.com
Kim Scipes (773) 615-5019
info@aflcio-int.education
English