thumb |right |Storefront of the Eastern Service Workers Association (ESWA), a NATLFED entity in the [[Roxbury, Massachusetts|Roxbury neighborhood of Boston in July 2007.]]

The National Labor Federation (NATLFED) is a network of community associations, called "entities", that claim to organize workers who are excluded from collective bargaining protections by U.S. labor law. Gino Perente founded NATLFED in 1972. raised concerns about their lack of transparency, and condemned the organization's exploitative treatment of volunteers.

NATLFED's entities deny any political affiliation, Perente's party is officially named the Communist Party, United States of America (Provisional Wing) [CPUSA(PW)] and is also known as the Communist Party, United States of America (Provisional) [CPUSA(P)], Provisional Party, Provisional Party of Communists, Order of Lenin,

During Perente's lifetime he exercised full control over the party, communicating directly with members through long orations held at his office in Brooklyn, New York, According to the groups' literature, these benefit programs provide members with basic emergency food, clothing, medical and dental care, legal advice, child care, and job referrals.

Since Perente's death in 1995 and the raid on its headquarters in 1996, there has been little information about how NATLFED is run, though Margaret Ribar is reported to have assumed leadership.

<blockquote>We regard outside inquiry from a position of distrust. [...] Never ask to know more than you need to know if you agree with the goals and strategy of the group. It's unfair to burden a comrade with unneeded information, and also unprofessional. The standard answer to any question you have not been instructed to answer is "It's not my department."</blockquote>

Some entity operations managers have been directed not to give interviews to reporters;

NATLFED entities are not themselves labor unions. At these events, organizers read a brief introduction to the organization to new volunteers and try to schedule visits to their office and participation in volunteer-run activities.

NATLFED also has an elaborate system for persuading volunteers to further the organization's goals by assuming roles of authority themselves, and the social pressure they apply convinces some volunteers to de-emphasize goals of their own. Regular volunteers are periodically interviewed and asked to increase their commitment to the organization.

The Eastern Service Workers Association (ESWA) operates on numerous college and university campuses in the Northeast, quietly recruiting student volunteers through the service-learning offices available to all students. The ESWA is thriving in Boston, Massachusetts, and Rochester, New York, with assistance from several local churches and businesses that may not be aware of its practices or connection to NATLFED.

Mutual benefit associations

Recruiters from the cadre start new entities armed with lists of contacts. The recruiters approach community and business leaders with their mission statement and ask for help with founding the entity. An organizing committee is created that includes community leaders willing to at least lend their names to the new effort, and the recruiters solicit donated office space until they can purchase an office. Available resources and the scope of the program vary, but usually include food, clothing, and holiday events for children. Some entities provide more involved services for members, such as medical, legal, and dental services for volunteers and low-income members. Critics of the organizations contend that the 11-point benefit program promises far more than the entities can deliver. Supporters use criticisms of the paucity of resources to motivate volunteers to take action to expand these resources. The groups also solicit resources (funds, food, clothing, medical services and legal aid) from professionals, business owners, and volunteers willing to contribute to the cause.

Governance and financial structure

NATLFED entities describe themselves as independent, locally chartered membership associations that accept only private donations that come "with no strings attached", and thus claim to be answerable only to their organizing committee and to their membership. For example, the Coalition of Concerned Legal Professionals (CCLP) writes:

<blockquote>CCLP is not subject to the whims of constantly changing Congressional and Presidential administrations. Because CCLP does not receive federal funds, it can organize without being subject to arbitrary restrictions on representation, audits of client files, unpredictable fluctuations in income, and general harassment from LSC and OIG bureaucrats, all of which are the plight of an LSC-funded attorney in the 21st century. Unfortunately, the over 30-year history of the LSC shows that these conditions are likely to continue for the foreseeable future. CCLP does not focus merely on individual representation or the issue-oriented litigation which others rely on to gain backing.</blockquote>

Party membership and structure

NATLFED is substantially larger than the Communist Party, United States of America (Provisional Wing) [CPUSA(PW)]. After Perente's death in 1995, leadership of the CPUSA (PW) was assumed by Margaret Ribar, who is reported to have relaxed some of those restrictions.

Cult allegations

NATLFED and its entities are often labeled a cult, are listed on cult watch websites, and have been described as a cult by various journalists.

Origins

In 1971 or 1972, Perente worked in the New York office of the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee and, according to Dolores Huerta, "created a lot of problems for the union, attacking us in the press. Then he went off and formed his own group." This was the first union of agricultural workers on the East Coast, but the Department of Labor determined that EFWA was not a labor organization as defined by federal law.

The 1972 strike against I.M. Young remains a central part of the volunteer training process.

In 1973, the NATLFED manuscript The Essential Organizer described the techniques of "systemic organizing", which purport to allow unrecognized workers to obtain needed benefits and learn how to build their own organizations.

In the 1970s, Perente and NATLFED briefly worked with alleged cult leader Lyndon LaRouche's National Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC). During at least 1976 and 1977, Perente and NATLFED worked and considered merging with alleged cult leader Fred Newman's International Workers Party (IWP), but did not.

In 2004, members of the Western Farm Workers Association (WFWS) working in state-run migrant camps recovered illegal rent increases from the California Office of Migrant Services. The workers brought suit in 1996 and 1997 under the legal guidance and practical organizing participation of the Coalition of Concerned Legal Professionals (CCLP). WFWS member José Rodríguez said, "without organization, we could never have gotten money back". In 2006, the California State Legislature allocated $610,000 to settle Vega v. Mallory, which alleged that migrant camp workers were overcharged for rent.

In 2006, the Jackson County Fuel Committee (JCFC) or Jackson County Workers Benefit Council (JCWBC) petitioned the Ashland City Council to halt utility cutoffs. This entity distributes 30-40 cords of firewood each year to people in Jackson County, Oregon. As many as 50 NATLFED entities were listed among about 200 service organizations in the catalog during the 1980s and 1990s. The number has since slowly declined; fewer than ten NATLFED entities were listed in the 2004 edition.

The political investigative magazine The Public Eye published two articles about NATLFED. The first, by Harvey Kahn in 1977, alleged an obscure but friendly relationship between NATLFED and Lyndon LaRouche's National Caucus of Labor Committees. Tourish and Wohlforth report a similarly tenuous but longer-lived alliance between NATLFED and Fred Newman's new International Workers Party in the mid-1970s. Perente became head of the IWP-organized Nationwide Unemployment League, and soon dissolved it.

The Public Eye published a longer exposé by former volunteer Jeff Whitnack in 1984 in which Whitnack identified Perente as Doeden and interviewed some of Doeden's friends in California. Whitnack concluded that the whole operation was a scam punctuated with drama and hints of violence.

Police raids

On February 17, 1984, the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided a law office and the National Office Central (NOC) headquarters at 1107 Carroll Street in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, on tips that it "had planned a series of violent acts". Kit Decious, Kathleen Paolo, and Daniel P. Foster, three lawyers among the organization's cadre, were convicted of felony larceny and possession of forged documents relating to the 1984 departure of Mia Prior, a member of ten years; they were disbarred in New York following their convictions in the 1980s. Paolo's conviction was overturned on appeal.

On November 11, 1996, the New York City Police Department raided the NOC again on an anonymous complaint that children were being abused in the office. Newspapers around the country ran columns about the group. Two of the organizers, Susan Angus and Diane Garrett, were initially convicted of misdemeanor possession of weapons, but the appeals court overturned the convictions because the search was conducted without a warrant. No evidence of child abuse was ever produced, and press coverage died down rapidly.

Shortly after the 1996 raid, an anonymous website appeared created by "an informal network of people" who were "frightened for the current members who are our children, siblings, former friends, and coworkers." The site condemned NATLFED and archived many news articles and other stories about it. The site disappeared from its original host in 2004 and is mirrored on the Wayback machine at http://users.rcn.com/xnatlfed/.

Entities

NATLFED operates about 30 offices called "entities" around the U.S., concentrated in California and the Northeast. The Eastern Farm Workers Association (now in Bellport, New York and Syracuse, New York) and California Homemakers Association (in Sacramento, California) were founded in the early 1970s, and were followed by the Eastern Service Workers Association, Western Service Workers Association, the Commemoration Committee for the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California, Western Massachusetts Labor Action in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, Western Farm Workers Association in Stockton, California, Yuba City, California, and Hillsboro, Oregon, Friends of Seasonal and Service Workers in Portland, Oregon, and Northwest Seasonal Workers Association in Medford, Oregon.

Since Perente's death, several new entities have opened, including Midwest Workers Association in Chicago, Illinois, Alaska Workers Association in Anchorage, Alaska, in Pittsfield, Massachusetts

  • California Committee of Friends and Relatives of Prisoners (CCFRP) in California
  • California Homemakers Association (CHA)
  • Commission on Voluntary Service and Action (CVSA) in New York City, which publishes Invest Yourself: The Catalog of Volunteer Opportunities
  • Committee for South African Solidarity (CSAS)(Bellport, Lyons, Riverhead, Sodus, Syracuse, New York)
  • Eastern Service Workers Association (ESWA) in Boston; Roxbury, Massachusetts; Atlantic City, New Jersey; New Brunswick, New Jersey; South Amboy, New Jersey; Pleasantville, New Jersey; Somerset, New Jersey; Trenton, New Jersey; Philadelphia; and Rochester, New York
  • Friends of Seasonal and Service Workers (FSSW) in South Brooklyn, New York, which publishes Collective Endeavor and should not be confused with the Women's Press Collective of Oakland, California
  • Workers Community Service Center (WCSC)
  • Ashland Community Service Center (Riverhead, NY)
  • Long Island Alternative Press

<blockquote>There is also a hidden, for want of a better description, evil, side of NATLFED. When I was there, and from what I've heard continues to be the case, there were manipulative people in powerful positions. Full-timers were subjected to an increasingly severe mental abuse and subjugation. ... They felt the only way to help poor people was through Natlfed, that there was no possible success for them after leaving, and/or they were subject to physical threats if they did.</blockquote>

Other entity members share a more positive experience, such as Western Service Workers Association (WSWA) entity member Shari Beck:

<blockquote>Shari Beck, a retired school teacher, has been volunteering at WSWA for the past three years. "Everybody who helps out can make things better," Beck said. "I feel like I'm doing something for the community." Beck, who volunteers alongside her husband, believes that by volunteering at WSWA, she has become more aware of things going on in her community. "We wanted to spend time in the community," Beck said.</blockquote>

See also

  • On the Edge: Political Cults Right and Left
  • Gino Perente
  • Lyndon LaRouche
  • Fred Newman

References

  • Anti-NATLFED websites:
  • Archive of 1996 anti-NATLFED site: The Truth about NATLFED
  • Archive of 2006 anti-NATLFED site (in blog format): Political Cults
  • FBI file 100-486-889 on NATLFED/EFWA/ESWA/Provisional Communist Party
  • NATLFED websites:
  • Website of Eastern Service Workers Association (ESWA) in Boston
  • Website of California Homemakers Association (CHA) in Santa Rosa