Open Letter To Labor Notes About Relationship To US NED Funded AFL-CIO "Solidarity Center" In Mexico & US 6/16/22
I’m sending you links to a zoom presentation I made last Saturday that coincided with the AFL-CIO Convention in Pa. In it, I address my concerns over the role of the U.S.-financed AFL-CIO Solidarity Center in Mexico, and the apparent ties between the SC and Labor Notes. The Solidarity Center just last year received $75 million from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) - a US government-funded, private non-profit.Open Letter To Labor Notes About Relationship To US NED Funded AFL-CIO “Solidarity Center” In Mexico & US
6/16/22
Dear Al Bradbury, Editor, Labor Notes
I’m sending you links to a zoom presentation I made last Saturday that coincided with the AFL-CIO Convention in Pa. In it, I address my concerns over the role of the U.S.-financed AFL-CIO Solidarity Center in Mexico, and the apparent ties between the SC and Labor Notes. The Solidarity Center just last year received $75 million from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) – a US government-funded, private non-profit.
The zoom/live event was sponsored by the Labor Education Project on AFL-CIO International Operations – LEPAIO – of which I am a member.
I’m happy for the unprecedented victory won by the new GM workers’ union, SINTTIA, in Silao, Mexico, and that Labor Notes will feature their heroic fight at the conference this weekend.
As I explain in my presentation, I’ve been active with the U.S. solidarity efforts since 2019 with organizers associated with the Latino Workers Leadership Institute and the Autoworker Caravan and, more recently, with Labor Notes and the Mexico Solidarity Project. It’s as part of the latter engagement (with some great trade unionists), that I became aware that the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center was playing a pivotal role. While workers can be grateful for any support in their struggles against the transnationals, the SC’s involvement brings into question its role in the international working-class movement against U.S. world domination.
You will see that I refer to the new book, El Golpe, US Labor, the CIA and the Coup at Ford in Mexico, authored by fellow UAW retiree Rob McKenzie (UAW 879), about the Ford workers in Cuautitlan, Mexico. His research illuminates the anti-working-class role played in 1990 by the forerunner to the SC, the AF-CIO’s American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD). I’ve worked many years to research, analyze, speak and write about AIFLD, for which my brother Mike Hammer gave his life when he was assassinated in San Salvador, El Salvador in 1981. (Brother McKenzie devotes an entire chapter to this episode). I bring all that background to bear on the current moment. I include a summary of the ongoing 11-year protest tent encampment by fired GM workers in Bogota, Colombia.
I will miss the upcoming LN Conference – the first I’ve ever not attended – as I will be participating in the March on Washington with the Poor People’s Campaign. I welcome a response and dialogue.
Long live SINTTIA!
Frank Hammer
Former President and Chairman, UAW-GM Local 909, Warren, MI
UAW-GM International Representative, retired
Cc: Rob McKenzie, Julio Guerrero, Meizhu Lui, LEPAIO, SINTTIA
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