Subject: AUT: Re: The AFL/CIO, a new friend of Immigrants?
Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2000 01:39:22 +1000


Neil,

Many thanks for sending this along.

Whilst I agree with most of what's written, I've a couple of questions and
remarks.

First, this para:

> Our rich rulers also want to use more new "legal" immigrant workers as
> cannon fodder to be dragooned and conscripted into the  bosses armed forces
> to defend and expand  US  capitalists markets ,  raw material monopolies
> and business enterprises  in other lands. Military enlistments are down
> now. But the AFL/CIO, a top recruiting sergeant that supports  the bosses
> militarism, is happy to be of service to indoctrinate workers into being
> loyal to the bosses "democratic" rule and have military  "service"
> performed for the State, i.e. the ruling class..

I confess I don't really understand what the author (is it you?) is trying to
say here, especially in the first sentence.    If this is simply an extension
of a position which sees any membership in the AFL-CIO as constituting the
"armed forces" of US capital, I can understand the sentiment, but I don't
really get a concrete sense of how this is being played out.   It might be my
own ignorance, but do you have examples of how this shift toward recruting
recent migrant workers is doing this?

In any case, I've been thinking about the AFL-CIO's embrace of migrant workers
for some time, though admittedly from a distance.     So, let me run them by
you for comment.

With the collapse in membership of the AFL-CIO has meant that they needed to
resort to organising in those sectors which are illegal, informal, etc in order
to halt their decline.   This is undoubtedly opportunistic, but I'm not sure
it's all bad, even though I doubt most of it is good.    Whatever the reasons,
however, an amnesty is better than nothing, especially inasmuch as I'm not
convinced that those who are illegalised are in a better position to resist and
organise.  Depending on the union, though, it seems that there are a lot of
differences in how such a shift is being played out:  at least one union, if I
recall right, was not content to repeat the AFL-CIO's adherence to the
distinction b/n legal and illegal workers.

The most pronounced limit, as far as I can tell, of the AFL-CIO's position is
the way in which migrant workers are decidedly NOT regarded as the basis upon
which to develop any kind of internationalist politics and organisation within
the AFL-CIO -- an obvious instance being the AFL-CIO's position on China and
its refusal to distance itself, or even oppose, the alliances b/n steelworkers
and buchanan.   What I am interested in is the ways in which the long-standing
strategies of the AFL-CIO are becoming obviously redundant post-NAFTA and, in
my more optimistic moments, I doubt that the AFL-CIO will be able to fully
circumscribe or control the effects of that.

Anyway, good news:  over 400 people have broken out of one of the refugee
detention centres here in Australia!   !!!!  :)   Let's hope they stay free for
as long as they can.  The biggest problem is that they are very far from any
major city that might allow them to disappear and get support, accomodation,
food.   I don't know for how long they can stay free without food or
accomodation, especially in a remote (and by night, freezing) place.   But it
is a joyous moment nonetheless, and one more so because it breaks with the form
of resistance that has been prevalent up to now and self-destructive
(hunger-strikes), as well as being invisible.

Angela
_________




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