Kim Scipes's AFL-CIO's Secret War http://www.swans.com/library/art17/pbuhle12.html

In a sometimes difficult but highly valuable work, Purdue sociologist Kim Scipes recuperates the evidence of intelligence activities among American labor's elite for the last half century or so, and offers some guidelines for understanding its deeper significance. The subject is not new, and this reviewer reluctantly mentions his own Taking Care of Business (1999), a study of the nation's labor boss-friendly, radical-hating bureaucracy. Scipes has also been studying the phenomenon for decades, asking the painfully obvious question: why have labor leaders been so eager to do the dirty work of intelligence agencies in supposed "democracy" and "solidarity" that, at close glance, are usually quite the opposite?

Scipes's discussion of the evidence is excellent and his update, if not nearly comprehensive, is at the least very useful. The vision of mainstream labor bosses, especially since the expulsion the left unions from the CIO in 1949, has been to build a global business unionism loyal to the interests of (American) business and to commands from AFL-CIO Central. In so doing, they have frequently choreographed "labor unrest" among such unwanted figures as Salvador Allende of Chile;

fingered local activists to be isolated, beaten, or even assassinated; taken part in arranging the success of pro-business candidates against populists, or overturning elections with undesirable results; and generally coordinated activities with the CIA field offices, sometimes from the same building. They have also invited thousands from abroad for weeks or longer. The so-called "training sessions" for foreign unionists from the Pacific and Asia to Africa, the Middle East and Latin America, have basically been induction and indoctrination, with a promised career (i.e., financial) payoff for those who carry the message back home.