On July 1, 2013, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka wrote a letter to two Egyptian union leaders expressing solidarity with them in their struggle to win concessions from the democratically elected Morsi government, which had on that day been in power for exactly a year.
Two days later the Morsi government was overthrown in a military coup. The struggles of Egyptian workers have in no way diminished. This week the Egyptian army stepped in to serve as scab bus-drivers to keep public transit moving in the face of wide-spread work stoppages.
There is no sympathetic expression of solidarity forthcoming from the AFL-CIO President as Egyptian workers confront their US-backed military rulers.
Nor were there any such expressions of solidarity offered in the decades of US-backed military rule pre-Morsi.
As public awareness rises about the AFL-CIOs complicity with the National Endowment for Democracy's various campaigns to destabilize governments the US doesn't like, Richard Trumka and the AFL-CIO leadership need to re-evaluate their role.
If "Big Labour" is to regain any credibility among the young and not-so-young workers who are agitating for worker's rights in America with more enthusiasm and more success than we have seen in many years, the AFL-CIO needs to cut its ties to the NED absolutely.
No comments:
Post a Comment