AFL-CIO Support for Solidarity: Moral, Political, Financial

Abstract

In response to the most important worker uprising of the twentieth century—the rise of the Solidarity trade union movement in Poland—America’s labor movement, the AFL-CIO, carried out an unparalleled and comprehensive campaign of international solidarity and assistance that was essential to Solidarity’s survival and ultimate victory over communism. This is not a controversial thesis. Many Solidarity leaders, including Lech Walesa, have said the same thing: Without the AFL-CIO and its president, Lane Kirkland, Solidarity would not have survived martial law.¹ Others can make a similar claim on a more global scale about the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), which coordinated key help to the union. But the ICFTU’s campaign relied heavily on the AFL-CIO and certainly no effort by any other national trade union federation compares in scale to its campaign.² Even today, the AFL-CIO’s leadership, which otherwise shies from the Federation’s previous internationalism, cites Poland as a positive example of past AFL-CIO international activity.