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Kilusang Mayo Uno (logo).Wikicommons/ May First Labour Movement Centre. Some rights reserved.This article seeks to analyze the recent unpredicted – even mysterious - transformation of the Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU, the May First Movement Trade Union Confederation) in the Philippines, from a body proudly displaying its radical nationalism and anti-imperialism (at its thirty-first ‘International Solidarity Affair’, May 2015), to its joining of the Eurocentric, social-liberal, International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), based in Europe.
But it is, in the first place, a response to a report on that KMU International Solidarity Affair (ISA) made by my old friend and interlocutor, US labour academic/activist, Kim Scipes[1]. I have tried, over the decades, to warn or wean Kim from his KMU worship. Evidently without success. Let me hope that an up-front public confrontation will - finally - have the desired effect.
