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.
NATLFED entities keep a very low profile, operating with little public attention. Journalists who have discussed NATLFED entities have praised their social work, raised concerns about their lack of transparency, and condemned the organization's exploitative treatment of volunteers.
NATLFED's entities deny any political affiliation, but many former participants and outside observers say NATLFED is a front for the Provisional Communist Party, a communist party also founded by Gino Perente. 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, or simply the Formation. The CPUSA(PW) allegedly includes much of NATLFED's leadership.
The CPUSA(PW) is clandestine and has no party publications, conventions, or leadership elections. CPUSA(PW) members do not openly acknowledge its existence. Virtually all CPUSA(PW) members are full-time volunteers in NATLFED entities. Outside estimates cap membership at between 100 and 300 core members. CPUSA(PW) has virtually no identifiable offices or centers of operations.
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, through audiotapes of those speeches sent to members running the various NATLFED entities, and through rare printed manuals, such as Perente's 1973 mimeographed The Essential Organizer.
Ideology NATLFED literature asserts the principle that "every man, woman and child is entitled to adequate and appropriate food, clothing, shelter and medical care as basic human rights."
Carlotta Woolcock, an organizer for Northwest Seasonal Workers Association (NSWA), described its goal as providing "a voice for the poor and working people that is independent from the government", because what "most people vote for is the lesser of two evils offered them".
Critics claim that NATLFED's focus on the poor is just cover for more sinister activity. Jeff Whitnack told The Boston Globe, "They are like political Moonies. They use poor people as flypaper to attract members."
Practices NATLFED consists of several dozen mutual benefit associations and organizers who canvass working-class neighborhoods and coordinate assistance programs operated by members and volunteers of the associations. 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.
Secrecy It is difficult to get information about NATLFED and its entities because the organization is institutionally secretive. An internal memo quoted in the East Bay Express in 1984 gave the following instructions on withholding information from outsiders:
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."
Some entity operations managers have been directed not to give interviews to reporters; others have insisted that reporters volunteer with the organization to get a story on it; and volunteers have given reporters a runaround.
Strata organizing NATLFED entitites support "strata organizing", which focuses on "unrecognized workers" who are unable to organize due to the "dubious benefits of the National Labor Relations Act." Instead of conventional union organizing, NATLFED argues that "local community-based associations" must unite unrecognized workers with "current and former union workers, retired workers, local business leaders, professionals and others who share a common concern for the long-term future of our communities".
NATLFED entities are not themselves labor unions. The various entities identify themselves with the labor movement for the purpose of attracting volunteers and supporters, but when describing their organization make clear that they do not advocate the formation of trade unions per se, calling themselves "labor organizations of a new type".
Cadre recruitment NATLFED entities are managed by full-time volunteers, called cadre, many of whom have dedicated their lives to the movement.
NATLFED aggressively recruits new cadre from the ranks of volunteers who participate. NATLFED entities send speakers to churches, residential neighborhoods, shopping centers, university campuses, music festivals, and other venues to introduce themselves and solicit volunteers and resources. 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.
Former members claim that deception and psychological manipulation mix with the sensation some new recruits experience of an intellectual awakening as stories of past labor struggles explain the underside of U.S. history, and classes in dialectical materialism provide a coherent, if stilted, worldview. NATLFED converts' commitment is solidified by the emotional impact of working to exhaustion surrounded by others who constantly reinforce the group's message and beliefs.
For recruitment purposes, NATLFED entities keep extensive records of their contacts on index cards. Drawers of these cards contain detailed information about any sort of contact the group has with volunteers, members, donors, and other supporters. Whitnack has claimed that this elaborate paperwork is unnecessary, inefficient, and intended to exhaust the volunteers, in order to keep them in a suggestible state.
College campus recruitment NATLFED recruits many of its members and volunteers from college campuses, through voluntary service programs, and by appeal to the larger community through speaking engagements and direct contact. For example, Western Service Workers Association (WSWA) member Mark Levine spoke to the 2004 American Sociological Association Conference about poverty and social stratification.
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.
The entities establish a program that provides services to members free of charge and soon start door-to-door campaigns to recruit volunteers and recruit low-income workers. 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.
Critics and supporters of the organizations agree that the cadre consumes some of the food, clothing and other goods collected for the poor. Critics and some former members have claimed that the entities are highly inefficient—that the cadre consumes much of the cash, food and clothing they purport to collect for the poor.
Volunteers for the entities canvass poor residential areas to recruit low-income members, knocking on doors and delivering a pitch that includes a brief explanation of organization, promises benefits, and asks for participation. Poor members are asked to contribute $0.62 per month as membership dues, an amount said to be the average hourly pay for workers at I. M. Young in 1972. New members also sign an authorization form giving the association vague authority to bargain on the member's behalf. 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:
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.
Party membership and structure NATLFED is substantially larger than the Communist Party, United States of America (Provisional Wing) [CPUSA(PW)]. Membership in the Party is by invitation, and invitation comes to volunteers in NATLFED entities as a revelation of the existence of the party, an explanation of the party's goals and strategy, and a brief "history" of the party, called the "genesis". This "genesis" is reportedly a narrative that includes claims that the party was part of a secret International including the Communist Party of Cuba, the Sandinistas, and revolutionaries in Chile and El Salvador, and that members of the Weather Underground were among its founders.