A prominent labor activist is questioning why the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center, which has set up offices in 26 countries with the mission of “promoting democracy and freedom and respect for workers’ rights in global trade,” receives 95 percent of its budget from federal grants. 

The information about the Solidarity Center’s funding came from its 2008 annual report.

“Union members were not told that the Bush Administration had been financing the Solidarity Center for years through large grants from the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S. Labor Department, while the AFL-CIO contributed only a minimal amount to the Center,” labor activist Harry Kelber wrote in a Jan. 29 column for the Labor Educator.

Kelber notes that the Bush administration did not otherwise show interest in promoting international labor solidarity and that most, if not all, of the countries where the Solidarity Center is active have not had relations with American unions.