After standing on the sidelines last year when anti-globalization protesters filled Washington’s streets, the AFL-CIO has had a change of heart.
The umbrella group of the nation’s major labor unions is helping to plan a weeklong series of demonstrations in Washington during the World Bank and International Monetary Fund meetings at the end of the month.
The effort reflects “a new level of commitment for us,” said Thea Lee, the AFL-CIO’s chief international economist.
“You start with U.S. trade policy, and you see the direct impact on Americans’ jobs and then it is not a big leap to see the global economic institutions putting forward similar policies and having similar impacts,” she said.
But labor experts suggest there are other reasons why the giant union group decided to join the protests. One of these, they say, was the desire to find new allies at home and aboard.
“It is the smart thing for unions to get involved in,” said Lowell Turner, a labor expert at Cornell University. “The reason that labor declined was because it didn’t reach out and broaden its involvement.”
As unions narrowed their focuses to members’ primary concerns and curtailed the dynamism that had once infused them, they lost the appeal they had held as the voice of American workers, according to Turner.
And as their support shrunk, they found fewer allies to come to their rescue as they faced more challenges, said Turner and other labor experts.
The solution, these experts said, is for unions to speak out more broadly and more aggressively on issues that do not just affect their members.
But they have to be careful about not alienating their mostly mainstream rank and file, and violent street demonstrations raise that kind of risk, Turner said.
That’s one reason union leaders have vowed repeatedly that they would work to try to avoid the violence that has plagued past anti-globalization protests in Seattle; Goteborg, Sweden; and Genoa, Italy.
“We are working very, very hard to be as crystal clear as possible that we are planning a totally non-violent march and rally,” Lee added.
Some of the demonstrators’ goals are at odds with some union stances. Environmentalists, for example, want to block oil drilling in the Arctic, a step opposed by some U.S. unions, which expect to see more jobs from oil exploration there.
But other goals, such as rejecting plans for the U.S. to extend free-trade provisions to Central and South America, are backed by unions.
“We think the presence of the AFL-CIO will create much pressure on the IMF and World Bank and it will spur our efforts in Congress,” said Robert Weissman, an official with the small Washington-based group Mobilization for Global Justice, which is coordinating the demonstrations.
The National Association of Manufacturers, a supporter of free-trade agreements, doesn’t expect the rally or the AFL-CIO’s expanded role in anti-globalization efforts to make much of a difference.
“I don’t see it having any impact on U.S. business or on U.S. policy,” said Pat Cleary, a spokesman for the association.
Aware of the violence wrought at previous meetings around the world, the IMF and World Bank trimmed their conference in Washington from one week to two days.
