The global organizing efforts of the AFL-CIO provide many interesting examples of international solidarity. In order to adapt to a changing economic environment, affiliates have adopted transnational organizing strategies that help workers from different countries realize their shared interests in achieving better social and economic outcomes. Additionally, the AFL-CIO’s efforts to influence global economic and political policy provide an environment that is conducive to transformative organizing at the ground level.
Case Description
Throughout most of the 20th century, the AFL-CIO’s international strategy focused on an anti-communist agenda motivated by U.S. foreign policy and the influence of business unionism. Starting in the mid-90s, in the wake of globalization and declining union density, the AFL-CIO began to reorient its strategy toward global organizing to protect workers’ rights. In November 1996, Richard Trumka, then president of the AFL-CIO, announced that the International Department would shift from dispensing ideology and knowledge to spreading the “far more precious and relevant commodity” of international solidarity (Zweig 2014, p. 266). In this new global environment, the AFL-CIO restructured its international programs to reflect this new strategy toward global organizing. In 1995, President John Sweeney merged the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), the Asian American Free Labor Institute, and the African-American Labor Center and established The Solidarity Center in 1997. Today, the Solidarity Center works in over 60 countries to provide training and technical expertise on a wide range of activities, including assisting unions with the collective bargaining process.
The International Department’s current priority areas and organizing strategies reflect the AFL-CIO’s goal to increase workers’ rights in a global context in which governments and corporations pursue aggressive anti-union policies. These priority areas include Global Economic Policy, Global Organizing, Worker Rights and Trade, Corporate Accountability, and Advocacy Campaigns. The International Department also engages with the various international bodies that shape global economic policy, such as the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), the Trade Union Advisory Council to the OECD, the ILO, and other global union federations like UNI Global Union and IndustriALL.
Analysis of Power Resources
The AFL-CIO’s associational power can be seen from the way that it has leveraged local leadership to increase participation and engagement in its transnational campaigns. Cross border partnerships with NGOs and grassroots organizations enable unions to increase the participation and visibility of workers who occupy the most vulnerable positions in society. For example, the USW formally established a partnership with Los Mineros, a Mexican mining union in 2005. The various transnational campaigns pursued during this partnership have appealed to the interests and rights of agrarian communities as well as women and members of the LGBT community. The success of this approach comes from linking the interests of laborers to broader social issues affecting the community by leveraging the knowledge of local NGOs that are familiar with the environmental and cultural landscape. For example, USW and Los Mineros partnered with ProDESC, an NGO that advocates for the land rights of agrarian communities in Mexico, to organize community members in participating in blocking an entrance to a Goldcorp Mine in Carrizalillo that had committed labor violations (Feingold, 2013). The support of community groups like ProDesc and the Mexican-based Border Workers’ Committee was also essential to building associational power during the unions’ organizing campaign at an auto parts plant owned by a subsidiary of PKC, a Finland multinational firm. Women and members of the LGBT community hold prominent and visible roles in many parts of the campaign, which helps establish the union and the labor movement as democratic institutions. The alliance also shows the two-way influence of societal and associational power—as unions advocated for the broader social good related to issues outside of the workplace, they were able to increase the union’s vitality and visibility as a democratic organization to an audience of vulnerable workers.
The AFL-CIO’s work as it relates to enforcement mechanisms that hold corporations accountable for violating workers’ rights is a key area in which the AFL-CIO could do more to effectively deploy its institutional power. Examples from the AFL-CIO’s work on trade policy demonstrates how they have leveraged their institutional power to create stronger protections for workers around the world. For example, the movement’s campaigning resulted in the elimination of NAFTA’s investor-state dispute settlement system (ISDS) in all industries except oil & gas, telecommunications, and transportation (Grandoni, 2018). While this change to NAFTA is an important win for the movement, stronger enforcement tools, such as those recently introduced by Senators Sherrod Brown and Ron Wyden, would represent an important institutional advantage for workers in North America. The spread of binding corporate accountability models like the Bangladesh Accords is evidence of not only the global labor movement’s institutional power, but also their ability to effectively use societal power to obtain buy-in from employers.
Finally, the formation of USLAW (U.S. Labor Against the War) exemplifies the ways in which international solidarity expressed at the local level allowed for the use of societal and disruptive structural power. Michael Zweig (2014) describes how the AFL-CIO national convention opposed the Iraq war after receiving eighteen resolutions from local councils and state federations. In this example, participatory engagement at the ground level resulted in important structural changes that shifted the U.S. labor movement’s official stance on foreign policy.
Current trade policy provides an example of where there are opportunities for growth. In its proposals for changes to NAFTA, the AFL-CIO advocates for the elimination of investor-state dispute settlement systems (ISDS) that lacks any enforceability mechanisms that can provide justice to workers. Examples from the AFL-CIO’s work on trade policy demonstrates how they have leveraged their institutional power to achieve sustainable protections for all workers.
Lessons Learned
- The strategies used in this case study demonstrate the importance of engaging leaders from all parts of society. As shown in the partnership between the USW and Los Mineros, the visibility of women and LGBT leaders within the movement served as a powerful counter-image to the traditional, male-dominated leadership structures of trade unions in Mexico and the United States.
- Legally binding agreements that provide strong enforcement mechanisms and resources to hold employers accountable are extremely important for making sure that workers across the global supply chain are protected in meaningful, real ways.
References
Feingold, C. (2013). Building Global Worker Power in a Time of Crisis. New Labor Forum, 22(2), 45–50.
Fichter, M., Ludwig, C., Schmalz, S., Schulz, B., Steinfeldt, H. (2018) The Transformation of Organised Labour: Mobilising Power Resources to Confront 21st Century capitalism. Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, & Referat Globale Politik und Entwicklung.
Grandoni, D. (2018, October 3). Big Oil and Gas Companies Are Winners in Trump’s New Trade Deal. The Washington Post.
Zweig, M. (2014). Working for Global Justice in the New Labor Movement. WorkingUSA, 17(2), 261–281.
Solidarity and Campaigns 