In South Africa DC 37 focused on aiding the South labor movement and its civil disobedience campaign The Public Employee Press reported that tens of thousands of workers in 1980 defied state laws against organizing African workers. Workers had successfully organized “unofficial all-black trade unions and even managed to carry out strikes in the face of the most brutal repression.” The growing political and trade union consciousness of black laborers in the 1980s represented the greatest hope of ending apartheid and subsequent economic exploitation of blacks in South Africa.
By 1985 Unionist also demanded the elimination of U. S. funding and support for the El Salvadorian Government’s air war directed against its citizens and “called on all countries in the region to respect trade union rights as basic human rights.” Similarly, some unionist in Nicaragua criticized and opposed the Sandinista government. The situation in Central America led DC 37 and other U. S. based labor unions to act and oppose U. S. military support for Central American dictators in El Salvador and Guatemala and denounce the funding of Contra forces seeking to undermine the FSLN government in Nicaragua. Unions took a similar stance toward the repressive regime in South Africa. Union leaders framed the struggle of working class people in both regions as a continuation of the civil rights movement and as an international labor movement.