American Federation Of Labor And Congress Of Industrial Organizations Research Articles

Anti-Communist Solidarity: US-Brazilian Labor Relations during the Dictatorship in Cold-War Brazil (1964–1985)

The last decade has witnessed a crusade by the Brazilian Right, losers of four consecutive presidential elections, to seize power through extralegal means. At the center of this was Operação Lava Jato, which used politicized corruption allegations to discredit the center-left Workers' Party and culminated in the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, the imprisonment of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and the election of the far-right Jair Bolsonaro. Although it has only gradually become clear, the United States played a key role through efforts to influence Brazilian prosecutors and judges via training programs and informal collaborations.Larissa Rosa Corrêa's monograph on US efforts to influence Brazilian trade unionism during the 1964–85 military dictatorship is thus remarkably timely. Anti-Communist Solidarity sheds light on the softer forms of power used by US empire. In the 2010s, US efforts to influence the Brazilian judiciary had little to do with eliminating corruption and everything to do with restoring US hegemony in an emerging oil-producing and diplomatic power. Similarly, as Corrêa conclusively demonstrates, efforts to bring collective bargaining to Brazil were less about empowering the Brazilian working class than weakening communists. These efforts were carried out by the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) and its American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), whose goals under George Meany were inextricably linked to those of US empire.Despite their history of mobilization against the military coups of the 1960s and the Central American wars of the 1980s, in recent decades US Latin Americanist scholars have de-emphasized explanations focused on empire. Thus, it is unsurprising that this vital book was written by a Brazilian, as Brazilian scholars have remained more attuned to the deleterious effects of US imperialism. This focus on US policy by a non-US historian is the book's greatest strength, not only in terms of theoretical orientation but also in terms of the sources consulted. As Alex Lichtenstein points out in his perceptive foreword, through her close examination of Portuguese sources produced by Brazilian trade unionists Corrêa complicates narratives that might assert a unidirectional flow of power from North to South. Despite AIFLD attempts to convince Brazilians of the superiority of the US model of collective bargaining, even some of the most conservative Brazilian trade unionists continued to assert the superiority of their own corporatist labor structure, particularly the labor courts.This final point emerges clearly over the course of the narrative, whose chapters unfold roughly across the administrations of four Brazilian presidents. Chapter 1 demonstrates how the AFL-CIO sought to promote a US trade union model as an antidote to the perceived communist sympathies of the labor movement during the turbulent years preceding the 1964 coup. Chapter 2 shows how US labor ideals were given their fullest expression under the pro-American government of Humberto Castelo Branco, the first military president. In chapter 3, we see how AIFLD began to clash with more nationalist currents in the Brazilian regime that questioned the assumption that a US model was directly applicable to Brazil. After a close analysis of Brazilian labor leaders' oft-critical reactions to the US labor model in chapter 4, chapter 5 shows how AFL-CIO influence in Brazil diminished in the 1970s, as the repression of the “years of lead” closed off opportunities for even capitalism-friendly, US-style labor mobilization.Despite the title, which indicates that Corrêa's book covers 1964–85, the narrative closes in 1974. This decision can be attributed to the fact that US influence over Brazilian unionism waned under more nationalist Brazilian governments. In addition, one set of sources vital to the book—the records of the US Department of State—had, as of the time of Corrêa's research, only been declassified until 1976. However, this means that the most obvious question—the relationship of North American “free and democratic unionism” to Brazil's “new unionism” that appeared in 1978—ultimately remains unanswered. How to explain the fact that Lula and a new generation of left-wing unionists advocated for direct collective bargaining and a weakening of corporatist labor relations—precisely the values AIFLD attempted to inculcate among Brazilian unionists? To what extent did the United States attempt to influence the new unionism led by Lula? These provocative questions will have to remain for future scholars.In addition, two issues may limit the book's impact on an Anglophone audience. First, while the original edition of the book is written in excellent academic Portuguese, the excessively literal translation results in awkward, clunky English that is not particularly readable. Second, the $97.99 price point may be prohibitive to all but the most dedicated specialists. This would be unfortunate because Anti-Communist Solidarity is a must-read not only for historians of Brazilian and Latin American labor history but also for those interested in US labor history, US–Latin American relations, and the strategies of modern-day empires to protect their interests.

Beyond the Cold War: American Labor, Algeria’s Independence Struggle, and the Rise of the Third World (1954–62)

Abstract During the late 1950s, trade unions came to be vital actors in the solidarity movements of the Global South, especially in pan-African initiatives. The case of the Union générale des travailleurs algériens (UGTA) is particularly illustrative of this development. Algeria’s long and brutal independence struggle was championed throughout the Afro-Asian bloc, and the UGTA became an important auxiliary in the bloc’s campaigns to secure that end. In this essay, the case of Algeria and the UGTA serves as a prism through which to study how some of the most powerful Western trade union federations of the day—especially the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO)—responded to the “subaltern” internationalisms engendered by decolonization and the “spirit of Bandung,” whether in the guise of positive neutrality or the project for pan-African unity. In this way, this essay sheds new light on the nature and role of labor internationalism in the context of the global Cold War. The case of Algeria is emblematic of the ways in which decolonization and the “spirit of Bandung” came to challenge traditional understandings of labor internationalism, whether as an identity or a practice. What is more, the case of Algeria allows us to reconceptualize AFL-CIO attitudes and designs vis-à-vis the decolonizing world. In highlighting American weakness when confronted by non-Western agency, this essay argues that the polarized view of the federation as an anticommunist crusader with an imperialist agenda is flawed.

Possibility and Peril: Trade Unionism, African Cold War, and the Global Strands of Kenyan Decolonization

Abstract Trade unionism was at the leading edge of African freedom struggle in the 1940s and 1950s. It was an incubator where different visions of decolonized futures vied for ascendency after WWII. This article analyzes international labor networks and trade union activism in Kenya to explore the entanglements of decolonization and Cold War from Africa in the 1940s to 1960s, an era when competing modes of anticolonial internationalism laid paths to independence. This story is told in two phases. Through Makhan Singh, the article assesses the influence of Indo-African connection, Marxism and the radical left on labor organization over the 1940s. Then, through Tom Mboya, the article charts Kenyan affiliation to the anticommunist International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) and American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) from the early 1950s. It shows how this internationalist volte-face transformed Kenya’s trade union landscape, propelled anticolonial agitation and, by the late 1950s, wrought irreparable fractures in fledgling pan-African institutions over the very nature of postcolonialism. The article argues that mobile African labor leaders coproduced, domesticated, and molded Cold War networks—that the conduits of early global Cold War agency ran both ways. Singh and Mboya were interlocutors in pluripotent world conversations marshaled for African decolonization. They also helped delineate the terms of global dialogue at a moment of neocolonial peril and decolonizing opportunity. This calls on historians to define alternative chronologies of globalist possibility masked by the tighter constraints placed on African states in the later twentieth century.

From colony to oil producer: US oil companies and the reshaping of labor relations in Libya during the Cold War

ABSTRACTThis article analyzes the labor relations the US government and American oil companies introduced in Libya between the Suez Crisis of 1956 and the rise of Muammar Qaddafi’s regime in 1969. It argues that labor policies played a crucial role in American Cold War efforts to place Libya in the Western bloc and assure access to its oil resources. Like in other contexts, the American government relied on anti-Communist trade unions, in particular the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), to oppose radical forms of labor organizing. Bini examines the ways in which Libyan oil workers resisted the forms of segregation and discrimination introduced in oil camps and company towns, by demanding the right to redefine labor relations through trade unions, and establishing ties with other trade unions in Egypt, Tunisia, and Algeria. This article shows that despite American efforts to repress Libyan trade unions, in the second half of the 1960s oil workers were a crucial force in redefining international oil politics. During the Six Day War of 1967, they constituted one of the main forces behind Libya’s support of oil nationalism and set the stage for the emergence of Qaddafi’s regime in 1969.

Focus: Failure by design: Did the US choose to lose the Guatemala labour dispute?

‘This decision drives home the fact that US trade deals do not protect workers’1. That assessment – from Celeste Drake, Trade Policy Specialist at the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) – is timely indeed. Discussions about the future of labour provisions in free trade agreements (FTAs) are currently intensifying on both sides on the Atlantic. The decision in question is the long awaited Final Report of the arbitral Panel in the dispute concerning Guatemala’s breach of the labour clause in the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR)2. It is the only attempt to date to enforce an FTA labour clause through dispute settlement – the only case to ever proceed to beyond consultation to dispute settlement, and now the only decision ever issued by an arbitral panel. Published in June – more than nine years after Guatemalan unions and the AFL-CIO first submitted their complaint to the US Trade Representative (USTR) – the Report’s 288 pages are likely to prove significant. In short, the Panel found Guatemala’s conduct not to have breached its obligations under Article 16.2.1(a) of CAFTA-DR. Following the experience of this onerous labour provision, it might be fair to assume that the Article will never be invoked again. According to Drake, ‘this failure is by design — labor chapters were not meant to work efficiently or effectively’. Indeed, Article 16.2.1(a) seems drafted to confound application. In order to constitute a breach of the Article, Guatemala’s failure to effectively enforce labour laws must have been (i) through a sustained or recurring course of action or inaction and (ii) in a manner affecting trade between the Parties. Satisfying these qualifying provisions of Article 16.2.1(a) – deemed by the Panel to be ‘cumulative in nature’ – proved insurmountable. However the failure of the case cannot be blamed purely on critical flaws in the architecture of the labour provision. Arguably, a breach of the Article might have been found had the US simply deigned to mention in its complaint the widespread violence perpetrated against trade unionists in Guatemala. Its failure to do so is perplexing. The US complaint In its Initial Written Submission to the Panel in November 2014, the US argued that Guatemala had failed to effectively enforce its labour laws in three main respects. The Panel made short shrift of two of these claims. On the issue of Guatemala’s failure to register unions, the US cited three cases, only one of which had occurred before the US submitted its initial request for the establishment of the arbitral Panel in 2011. Therefore the claim was deemed to be outside the scope of the terms of reference and beyond the Panel’s jurisdiction. The other US claims regarding labour inspections did not fare much better. The Panel found only one case in which Guatemala had failed to effectively enforce its labour laws – and this was deemed a ‘discrete instance’. So the Panel’s decision focuses largely on the US’ claim that Guatemala failed ‘to secure compliance with court orders requiring employers to reinstate and compensate workers wrongfully dismissed for union activities, and to pay a fine for their retaliatory action’. And the Panel did find with respect to 74 workers at eight worksites that Guatemala had indeed neglected the enforcement of its labour laws. But it was unable to find that this failure amounted to a breach of the Article. Four shipping companies, three garment manufacturers and a rubber plantation With reference to ILO principles, the Panel recognised the importance of protecting workers from reprisals for exercising their trade union rights on the basis ‘that retaliatory dismissals are serious violations that can be expected to thwart freedom of association and the rights to organize and bargain collectively’3. The cases at the eight worksites cited were likely sufficient to constitute ‘sustained or recurring course of action or inaction’. The Panel found that the ‘precise, mandatory nature of the actions required to be taken’ (in respect of enforcement) under the Labour Code suggested a ‘pattern of significant shortfall between the labor courts’ mandate and performance’. However the Panel also noted that the number...

Police Unions and Race

8 | International Union Rights | 24/2 FOCUS | UNITED STATES Police Unions and Race Over the past several years, public outrage over accounts of black men, women and children dying in encounters with police has increased. This mounting outrage has given rise to calls for reforms in policing and the criminal justice system as a whole. Community and street protesters call for ‘justice’, and few American institutions have been spared from at least condemning the deadly acts. Religious organisations, educational organisations as well as local, state and government bodies have entered the fray of discussion. These discussions invariably are forced to take into account the challenges of America’s race and racial disparities. On 14 August 2014, in Ferguson, Missouri, white police officer Darren Wilson fires 12 rounds and kills Michael Brown an unarmed 18-year old black man. This killing with its images and details widely carried in national media, sparked outrage that simply would not go away. The killing of Michael Brown came at a time when there was an uptick in the notoriety of such encounters since the highly publicised death of Trayvon Martin. Responding to public outcry from within its membership, in February of 2015, the AFL-CIO (the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations), a federation of 55 national and international labour unions representing 12.5 million organised workers, launched its Labor Commission on Racial and Economic Justice, stating: ‘America’s legacy of racism and racial injustice has been and continues to be a fundamental obstacle to workers’ efforts to act together to build better lives for all of us. Racism has always been a key tactic of employers seeking to divide us. But we also have an ugly history of racism in our own movement…. The demand for racial justice cannot be divorced from the fight for economic justice’1. Ensuing discussions witnessed some union members offering expressions of solidarity with Michael Brown’s grieving mother, a member of the United Food and Commercial Workers union (UFCW), while others called for equal or greater solidarity with the International Union of Police Associations (IUPA). Some of these discussions have raised the question of whether police unions should exist and whether they should be in the AFL-CIO. To the extent that police officers organise themselves to fight for better wages, hours and working conditions, they should form unions and join with other workers who are fighting for similar advances in their employment situations. This is equally true for the millions of other workers who are employed in America’s correctional and security systems. From Overseers to Officers The current discussions about police, policing, police reform and criminal justice reform in general flow from the egregious and callous acts of brutality and life ending situations carried out by police and inflicted upon primarily people of colour and African Americans in particular. Such actions are increasingly captured on camera, challenging the viewer to authenticate what they saw. Given the racial character of such brutality, and where the perpetrators are often white and the sufferer is black, again calls into question the lingering racist practices to be found in United States society. Both racist practices and policies have their origins and continuance in slavery and have not been formally acknowledged as being wrong by government, or other major institutions. The union movement has not acknowledged or stated unequivocally that slavery was wrong! Such lack of acknowledgement lends itself to safe haven for those who do not fully accept the equality of all workers, and manifest it in their institutional structures and practices. To varying degrees, unions carry the ideological and practical weight of 246 years (1619–1865) of slavery’s history, when Africans in America were not seen as part of the human family in the body politic. An additional 77 years of Jim Crow [a body of segregationist law] did little to counter murderous ideas, nurtured in the American psych over decades. Thus it was easier to accept police as workers than it was to accept housekeepers and farm hands as workers, the majority of whom were people of colour. Police and police organisations are not creations of workers, brought about by workers’ struggles. They...

Roots and Reflections: South Asians in the Pacific Northwest by Amy Bhatt Nalini Iyer Deepa Banerjee

659 Reviews of union loggers looked at Spotted Owl protection legislation in the 1980s as an attack on their way of life as jobs were lost and towns deserted. Oregon and Washington’s forests became a veritable battleground between logging companies and their employees and groups pushing for environmental protectionism. In a region where union workers like the Wobblies once concerned themselves with issues of environmental and socio-economic justice, American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL/CIO)–dominated union workers in the latter twentieth century rallied around issues of job preservation and anti-environmentalism. Loomis’s research utilizes an impressive amount of archival sources, including newspapers , journals, trial notes, military reports, magazines, correspondence, and corporate papers, among others. Unlike some other well-researched historical narratives, Empire of Timber gives commentary on contemporary social and ecological problems from a historical perspective, as well as a possible means to help solve some of those problems. Empire of Timber is well-written and arduously researched and should be on the reading list of anyone interested in the history of labor, environment, nationalism, or social causes. Robert M. Lambeth University of Montana ROOTS AND REFLECTIONS: SOUTH ASIANS IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST by Amy Bhatt and Nalini Iyer foreward by Deepa Banerjee University of Washington Press, in association with the South Asian Oral History Project and the University of Washington Libraries, Seattle and London, 2014. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. 299 pages. $20.00, paper. What characterized the migration experiences of South Asian immigrants in the Pacific Northwest ? How did self-identified Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, Zoroastrians, Jains, Christians, and others, often with deep national affiliations to their homelands, navigate their new lives, careers, and communities? Amy Bhatt and Nalini Iyer address these and other significant questions in Roots and Reflections. While their attention is fixed on the Seattle metro area, Bhatt and Iyer analyze immigrant experiences and community formation alongside broader geopolitical and transnational histories, effectively decentering historical scholarship on South Asian immigrants that has too often focused on major urban locations such as Chicago, New York City, and in California. The result is an impressive study that demonstrates the value and relevance of oral history and communitybased academic scholarship. Drawing on thirty oral histories collected since 2005 by the South Asian Oral History Project (SAOHP) at the University of Washington Libraries, the authors incorporate a rather impressive array of historical methodologies. They highlight the extent to which migration , settlement, education, and employment informed South Asians’ experiences in and perceptions of the Northwest and, conversely, the impact these immigrants had on the growth and distinctiveness of the region. Bhatt and Iyer emphasize the explanatory power of oral history as “a form of storytelling” that “provides insight into the everyday . . . matters that give texture to lives.” The result, they contend, is “a more nuanced understanding of how communities are formed and how individuals situate themselves within larger cultural phenomena” (p. 9). The book opens with a discussion of the earliest South Asian immigrants to the Northwest : migrant workers and students from the Punjab region between modern-day India and Pakistan who settled in Bellingham, Everett, Seattle, and Astoria during the decades prior to World War II. Subsequent chapters rely heavily on the SAOHP collection, as narrators reflect on migration networks and discuss their experiences in the Seattle-area through the prism of generational and gender differences, family formation, employment challenges, and the transmission of culture and traditions to younger South Asians. Push and pull factors ranged from the painful legacies of British colonialism; economic downturns in South Asian countries during decolonization; opportunities at U.S. universities; and chain migrations of the Indian Subcontinent’s professional classes, who were marshaled into medical, military, scientific, and technological industries during the Cold War. Changes to fed- 660 OHQ vol. 117, no. 4 eral laws had a profound impact on migration, as the Hart-Celler Act of 1965 (misspelled “Cellar” in the book) removed barriers to immigration throughout South Asia by eliminating the quota system based on national origins (a holdover from the Immigration Restriction Act of 1921) and establishing preference visa categories that emphasized immigrants’ employment skills as well as family reunification. Changes in national...

Estimating the Effect of “Change to Win” on Union Organizing

In a 2005 effort to reinvigorate new-member organizing efforts, seven unions split from the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) to form a new union federation, Change to Win. Using ten years of data from the National Labor Relations Board and the National Mediation Board and a difference-in-difference estimator, the author estimates the effect of Change to Win policies on whether a union won its certification election and the number and percentage of workers successfully organized. The results indicate no statistically significant difference in organizing success following Change to Win’s implementation of new organizing strategies and practices, relative to the AFL-CIO.

Costs of occupational musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) in the United States

BackgroundFor the years 1992–2010 musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) accounted for 29–35% of all occupational injuries and illnesses involving days away from work in the United States (US) (AFL-CIO, 2012). According to the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) 2012 report ‘Death on the Job’, for the years 1992 through 2010 the percent of cases involving MSDs in private industry were highest in 2000 (35%) and lowest in 2007 (29%). In 2010, the median number of days away from work for MSDs was 11 compared to 8 for all occupational injury cases involving days away from work; the median number of days away from work for Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS) was 25, more than three times as high as for all other BLS injuries involving days away from work (BLS, 2011). This study estimated the costs of work related MSDs, and given that the number of days lost due to CTS is very high, it also estimated the costs of CTS separately in the United States (US) for the years 2003 through 2007. MethodsThe costs of work related MSDs and CTS in the US were estimated using the cost-of-illness, human capital method (Leigh et al., 2000), using some of the costs from the literature. This method decomposes costs into direct and indirect categories. Estimates of total cost of MSDs and CTS were obtained from the product of average costs of MSDs and CTS and the number of MSDs and CTS. The number of MSDs and CTS were obtained from BLS data. ResultsThe number of reported work-related MSDs declined from 435,180 in 2003 to 335,390 in 2007 and the reported number of CTS also declined from 22,110 in 2003 to 11,920 in 2007. The direct costs of MSDs and CTS were respectively $1.5 billion and $0.1 billion for the year 2007. The indirect costs were $1.1 billion and $0.1 billion for MSDs and CTS respectively for the year 2007. DiscussionThis study found that the total costs of work-related MSDs and CTS declined during the period 2003 through 2007 but the average costs per case went up signifying that medical costs and other associated costs increased during this period. Relevance to industryThe costs of MSDs are important to the industries too as a significant part of these costs are borne by the employers. Industries with higher prevalence of MSDs are affected more in terms of lost productivities due to the employees' days away from work because of MSDs. In cases of MSDs causing permanent disabilities, new hiring and training costs are also a part of the losses experienced by the employers.

Reviving the American Labour Movement: Institutions and Mobilization

The current revitalization of the American labour movement is driven primarily by two forces: from above, new strategic leadership in some unions and at the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), ready to offer institutional support for local efforts to organize, build coalitions and expand the scope of grass-roots politics; from below, renewed interest in rank-and-file activism and participation. We call these two forces institutional support and network mobilization, and we find indications of their overriding importance in all six union strategies on which our case-study research focuses: organizing, political action, coalition building, labour-management partnership, organizational change and international solidarity.

Should psychologists unionize? A colloquy with labor and management experts.

Finkelstein, Bruckman, Wohl, Most, & RothmanJim MillerNew \brk State School of Industrial and Labor RelationsHaydee MontenegroNew York State Public Employees FederationMarcia MoodyUniversity of Wisconsin—MadisonIn this article, experts in labor and management address the question of whether unionizing is anappropriate vehicle through which psychologists can protect professional autonomy, standards, andquality of care. One threshold issue is the degree to which health care professionals have controlover their incomes and working conditions in the current marketplace and their willingness to perceivethemselves as workers. Examples of successful labor-management collaboration on behalf ofpatients and union representation on behalf of psychologists are provided. Some legal and strategicconsiderations about forming or joining unions are also discussed.As corporate downsizing has been eliminating job securityfor millions of American workers, the prevailing conditions inthe health care marketplace have been threatening the economicsecurity of thousands of health care professionals, includingpsychologists. Health care providers have begun to use the lever-age of forming large group practices as a means of acquiringmore bargaining power with large managed care organizations.However, only a minority of health care professionals have ex-plored another possible alternative that could potentially benefitthem: forming labor unions to deal with corporate management(Sullivan, LaOana, Wiggins, & DeLeon, 1997).This article addresses some of the advantages and disadvan-tages of union representation of psychologists. It is excerptedfrom a symposium that took place at the 103rd Annual Conven-tion of the American Psychological Association, New York City.The symposium, held on August 13, 1995, was titled LaborRepresentation in Psychology—If You're Employed, You'llNeed It. The impetus for that program came from Bill Safarjan,who has been involved in union representation issues for public-sector psychologists in California (Safarjan, 1997). The panelof labor and management experts addressed the question ofwhether unionizing is an appropriate option by which profes-JOEL A. DVOSKIN is the former acting commissioner of the New YorkState Office of Mental Health, where he served as the chief executiveofficer of the largest mental health organization of the United States, aheavily unionized agency with more than 23,000 employees and anannual budget of more than 2.3 billion dollars. Prior to that, he servedfor 10 years as the agency's associate commissioner for forensic services.He is currently a full-time consultant and expert witness in forensicpsychology in Tucson, Arizona, and teaches on the faculty of the Univer-sity of Arizona's College of Law and Medicine.LEONARD DAVIDMAN is chief psychologist in the Division of Child andAdolescent Psychiatry at Metropolitan Hospital in New fork City andis assistant professor of psychiatry at New York Medical College. Hehas served as a delegate, the vice president, and, currently, the presidentof Local 1189 of District Council 37, which represents New York Citypsychologists who work in municipal hospitals, police departments, fam-ily court, and prison health. His local is affiliated with the AmericanFederation of State, County, and Municipal Employees of the Ameri-can Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations(AFL-CIO).BERNARD FERSTER is an attorney specializing in labor relations and em-ployment law and is a partner in the firm of Finkelstein, Bruckman,Wohl, Most, & Rothman in New Mirk City. He advises and representsmanagement in all aspects of employment, labor organization, negotia-tions, and administration of collective bargaining agreements.JIM MILLER is a senior labor associate at the New fork State School ofIndustrial and Labor Relations, a division of Cornell University. Heteaches courses on labor history, conflict resolution, and labor practice,and he has provided educational, technical, and consulting services forapproximately 1,500 unions.HAYDEE MONTENEGRO is a staff psychologist at Rockland PsychiatricCenter a facility of the New York State Office of Mental Health. She isa trustee of the New York State Public Employees Federation, whichrepresents 57,000 professional sector employees.MARCIA MOODY is a doctoral student in psychology at the Universityof Wisconsin—Madison and is chair of the American PsychologicalAssociation (APA) Graduate Students Advocacy Coordinating Team.She transcribed the proceedings of the APA convention symposium fromwhich this article was excerpted.CORRESPONDENCE CONCERNING THIS ARTICLE should be addressed to JoelA. Dvoskin, 5174 North Via de la Lanza, Tucson, Arizona 85750-7077.425

A new type of soviet resistance?

i n the tradition of my ancestors, a Zaporozhian cossack personified all the virtues that a man can possess. Ukrainian folklore is rich with tales about the cossack Mamai, a mythical figure who always appeared from nowhere to save the day. He is said to have been a fearless defender of faith and virtue and a protector of the frail and the sick. He could be either gentle or tough, but always he fought against evil, for he lived in a world in which distinctions between good and evil were not yet blurred. For a while and at a distance, Solzhenitsyn appeared to many of us as that legendary Mamai. It was shocking to discover that he was an ordinary mortal. As the legend of the man began to recede, we were at least happy to discover that he had cossack qualities. As the proverb says, a cossack is one who swims against the current: Solzhenitsyn is the epitome of such a swimmer. One would still like to think that what appears to be character flaws, as revealed in his speech to the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), are due mainly to haste, harassment, inadequate time to ponder a statement, the need to drive home a point to a mass audience or possibly a poor translation. Henry Adams's observation that "no one means all he says, and yet few say all they mean" seems to be singularly apt in the present situation. However, much of what Solzhenitsyn says about dissent in the Soviet Union is directly relevant to the nature of legitimation of the Soviet regime and its acceptance or rejection by the governed. When we look at the history of the Soviet Union from the standpoint of the legitimation of its regime, or, in other words, the legitimation of the Communist party as its ruling body, we find that most of the official dates are not very appropriate to the task. Legitimate authority cannot even be said to have been established on December 30, 1922, the date for the establishment of the Soviet Union. The regime encountered a prolonged armed resistance at least until about 1928 and that entire period, beginning with the October Revolution, may be more properly considered the period of formation. Since 1928, three distinct phases in the legitimation process can be discerned, with the first two running a cycle of twenty years: 1. The Period of Opposition (1928-1948) 2. The Period of Dissent (1948-1968) 3. The Period of Noncompliance (1968) Considerable literature has now accumulated dealing with the Period of Opposition; the best known is Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago. We also have learned much from reading the memoirs of Nadezhda Mandelstam, Zhores Medvedev's The Rise and Fall of T.D. Lysenko, Roy Medvedev's Let History Judge, David Joravsky's The Lysenko Affair, Robert Conquest's The Great Terror and Borys Levytsky's The Uses of Terror. In addition to these wellknown works, we have vast documentation of the period by World War II emigrrs whose stories have been largely ignored in the West, even at the height of the cold war. The regime's opponents during this phase differed significantly from the resistance of the two later periods. Members of the early opposition believed that they were confronting the stupidity and intolerance of brazen and ruthless people, rather than "ev i l . " They did not seek martyrdom and would have been happy to avoid it if they could. They were modest but proud people doing their job and endeavoring to retain their integrity. They would have considered it unmitigated gall to expect people from other countries to make sacrifices for the sake of liberating them. They fervently believed that fighters against other tyrannies, including non-Communist tyrannies, were engaged in an equally valid struggle. The idea that some torturers are better (less "ev i l " ) than others would have been quite repugnant to them.

Black Workers Inside the House of Labor

While both construction and industrial unions have made some efforts to remedy racial discrimination in employment, their failure to come to grips with systematic practices of discrimination has made the federal judiciary the main forum for the resolution of such disputes. Institutional practices that can have a discriminatory impact upon black workers and racial minorities remain in effect. Contrary to public belief about rank and file and local union resistance to national union policies that promote civil rights, it is the official policy of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) not to alter such procedures which are negotiated in the collective bargaining process—and which screen out blacks disproportionately to whites. Even unions with a substantial black membership continue to have lily-white executive boards at the national level. More blacks are moving into leadership positions—especially in the United Auto Workers (UAW) and some of the public employee unions. However, in the interim the phenomenon of black workers in white-led unions is bound to produce discontent, black worker organizations, and, in some instances, industrial strife.

Structure and Government of the AFL-CIO

Discusses the structure and government of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). Local unions within the AFL-CIO; Members of the Executive Council; Departments of the AFL-CIO. (Abstract copyright EBSCO.)

Independent Unions and the Merger

Examines the independent unions in the U.S., or the unions unaffiliated with the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). Types of independent unions; Effect of AFL-CIO merger on railroad unions; Role of the United Mine Workers and John L. Lewis in the expansion of the labor movement. (Abstract copyright EBSCO.)

The New Federation and Political Action

Discusses the political issues associated with the merger between the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) in the U.S. Objectives of the AFL-CIO; Political activity of organized labor; Factors affecting the increasing labor's interest in political action. (Abstract copyright EBSCO.)