The World - News from May 30, 1988

The West’s largest trade union coalition accused more than 1,200 firms worldwide of “investing in apartheid” through subsidiaries in South Africa. The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, which favors tighter economic sanctions against Pretoria, attacked the argument that companies with investment in South Africa could help push for reform. “These companies should stop trying to delude themselves. . . . Cheap labor is what brings them to South Africa, not a desire to restore social justice,” the confederation’s general secretary, John Vanderveken, said in Belgium. Of 1,267 companies with investments in South Africa, 374 are from Britain and 164 were from the United States, he said.