As part of our anniversary special on the Palermo Protocols, we caught up with the international director of the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of unions in the United States, to discuss the labour movement’s engagement with trafficking, the questionable motives of philanthrocapitalism, and importance of being in the room where it happens.
Neil Howard (BTS): You’ve been a part of the American labour movement for a long time. If the goal is to improve workers’ lives, do you think we need to push for incremental changes on ‘the inside’ or to use the freedom of ‘the outside’ to fight for a new vision?
Cathy Feingold (International Director, AFL-CIO): I think you need both. The world is experiencing a crisis of multilateralism right now – our existing multilateral framework is not fit for purpose. It was built in a very different moment. So, as activists and as organised labour, we need to be working on the inside to renew this framework. We need to try to build out a global architecture that’s useful to us, so that we can then use it as a tool for our organising. At the same time, we absolutely have to be on the outside pushing for a new vision. What should the next iteration of a multilateral approach look like? What systems do we need to build?
