International union coordination at every level is vital to the well-being of working families in the United States, Canada, and all over the globe, GCIU Secy.-Treas. Gerald H. Deneau told delegates the Canadian National Conference.

Unions working solely within their home countries cannot solve the problems that are prevalent today, Deneau said. "With capital having the free ability to move from country to country and play each group against the other, we have to find ways to deal with that."

"Politically, what happens in one country greatly affects other ones. When I think about politics in the United States, it makes me want to cry, and you may want to cry, too. Because it affects you, too. It affects the world," Deneau said.

"We've watched over the years how the [International Monetary Fund] and the World Bank have been projected to be helpful to some of the underdeveloped countries," Deneau said. But the reality is "like the old loan shark in some of the old neighborhoods where I grew up in Detroit. They'd lend you money at 25 percent interest with the profit in their pockets, but you can't make the payments." The IMF and the World Bank practices "are a fancier version of that," he said.

"It's an international problem," Deneau said. "And it's an immediate problem to all of us, because that is where all the work is going–where they can exploit people."

Deneau said another concern for unions and other human rights groups in the United States is the potential abuse of such laws as the Patriot Act that were passed in the wake of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The Patriot Act allowed the federal government to incarcerate immigrants and citizens alike without warrants or other due process procedures and to expand its electronic and other surveillance operations. According to Amnesty International, some 1,147 people were counted as detained before the Justice Department quit reporting the number.

Deneau noted that the history of abusing civil liberties in the name of fighting terrorism is not new in the United States.

He cited the example of the "Palmer Raids." In April 1919, a series of bombings targeting banking and industrial magnates and political figures in the United States ended with an explosion at the Washington, D.C., home of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer.

Blaming anarchists and Socialists for the bombings, Palmer invoked the 1917 Espionage Act and the 1918 Sedition Act to create an Alien Radical division in the Justice Department, led by a young J. Edgar Hoover. The Justice Department proceeded to raid union offices, schools, and other organizations in more than 30 cities nationwide and rounded up some 5,000 resident aliens. An estimated 500 people were deported, including writer Emma Goldman.

Using the Espionage Act, the government in June 1918 arrested U.S.-born Eugene V. Debs after he made an anti-war speech. The union leader and organizer and Socialist Party candidate was convicted, stripped of his citizenship and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Deneau said, "hopefully, the enforcement of [the new laws] will not go any further. Unfortunately, they have a history of once the laws are in place pretty soon you see that kind of law–like the RICO law–applied to unions."

RICO, the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, originally targeted mafia organizations but has been used against union leaders during strikes.

Deneau said the greatest hope in changing the current political and economic situation lies in political action by working families. "You see the polls changing. People are questioning the efforts that the government is taking," he said.

Graphic Communicator photo by Susan Zachem

From left are Winnipeg 900M Secy.-Treas. Del Phillips; Fergus 691S Secy.-Treas. Randy Booker; GCIU Secy.-Treas. Gerald H. Deneau; and Ottawa 588M Vice Pres. Dan Brunke.