Revitalizing the AFL-CIO by Ralph Nader: Note to Moderator - This is not copyrighted material.

[Better Believe It]

The following article by Ralph Nader is not copyrighted material. I have posted entire articles written by Ralph Nader from his website before on DU. They have been permitted because they are not copyrighted. Check with Administrators on this. BBI

Revitalizing the AFL-CIO
By Ralph Nader
May 24, 2011

When Harry Kelber, the 96 year old relentless labor advocate and editor of The Labor Educator speaks, the leadership of the AFL-CIO should listen. A vigorous champion for the rights of rank-and-file workers vis-a-vis their corporate employers and their labor union leaders, Kelber has recently completed a series of five articles titled
The reaction: Silence from union leaders, their union publications and at union gatherings.

Kelber, operating out of a tiny New York City office, knows more firsthand about unions, their historical triumphs, their contemporary deficiencies and their potential for tens of millions of working families than almost anyone in the country. Over the decades, no one has written more widely distributed pamphlets that cogently and concisely explain unions, the labor movement and anti-worker restrictive laws like the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, than this honest, sensitive worker campaigner.

At a perilous period for both working and unemployed Americans, facing deep recession, corporate abandonment to China and other repressive regimes, and the Republicans' virulent assault on livelihoods and labor rights, Kelber believes that AFL-CIO should be on the ramparts. Instead, he sees it as moribund, hunkering down, with control of the power and purse concentrated in the hands of the silent and Sphinx-like Federation officers and the tiny clique of bureaucrats who run the show.

"In the AFL-CIO, the rank-and-file have no voice in electing their officials, because only the candidates of the Old Guard can be on the ballot," he writes.

Certainly, the AFL-CIO is not reflecting the old adage that when "the going gets tough, the tough get going." They recoil from any public criticism of Barack Obama, who disregards or and humiliates them by his actions.

Mr. Obama promised labor in 2008 to press for a $9.50 federal minimum wage by 2011, and the Employee Free Choice Act, especially "card check," and then forgot about both commitments. He has not spoken out and vigorously fought for an adequate OSHA inspection and enforcement budget to diminish the tens of thousands of workplace related fatalities every year. He's been too busy managing drones, Kandahar and outlying regions of the quagmire of our undeclared wars.

Nothing Obama does seems to publically rile the AFL-CIO. In February, he crossed Lafayette Square from the White House with great fanfare to visit his pro-Republican opponents at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce yet declined to go around the corner and visit the AFL-CIO headquarters. Where was the public objection from the House of Labor?

He prevents his vice-president from responding to the Wisconsin state federation of Labor's invitation to address the biggest rally in Madison, Wisconsin protesting labor's arch enemy, Republican Governor Scott Walker. Biden, a self-styled "union guy", wanted to go but the political operatives in the White House said NO. Still no public objection from Labor's leaders.

Kelber describes the lack of a strong, funded national and international strategy to deal with the growing gap between rich and poor and the expanding shipment of both blue and white collar jobs abroad. He laments AFL-CIO's failure to develop a "working relation with the new global unions that are challenging transnational corporations and winning some agreements." He also notes that the AFL's top leaders "have minimal influence at world labor conferences. They rarely attend them, even when they are invited."

Pushing for higher wages and worker rights in the poorer developing countries, including the adoption of International Labor Organization (ILO) standards has great merit and is also a constructive way to also protect American workers.

Kelber believes it is obvious "that U.S. cooperation with labor unions from other countries with the same employer is the best way to organize giant multinationals, but the AFL-CIO has spent little time, money and resources in building close working relations with unions from abroad."

What is restraining AFL-CIO's President Richard Trumka? A former coal miner, then a coal miners' lawyer, and president of the United Mine Workers, Mr. Trumka has been at the Federation for over a decade. He knows the politics of the AFL-CIO, makes great speeches about callous corporatism around the country, and has a useful website detailing corporate greed.

Unfortunately, words aside, he is not putting real, bold muscle behind the needs of America's desperate workers.

He can start by shaking up his bureaucracy and put forth an emancipation manifesto of democratic reforms internal to the unions themselves and external to the government and the corporate giants. They all go together.

When I asked Harry Kelber whether there were any unions he admires, he named the fast-growing California Nurses Association (CNA) and the United Electrical Workers.

CNA's executive director Rose Ann DeMoro is on the AFL-CIO Board and has urged Mr. Trumka to be more aggressive. She has secured his stepped-up support for a Wall Street financial speculation tax that could bring in over $300 billion a year. He may even join her and the nurses in a symbolic picketing of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce headquarters next month.

The ever fundamental Kelber, however, sees a plan B if the AFL-CIO does not change. "Union members should be thinking about creating a new bottoms-up labor federation," he urges, reminding them that in the nineteen thirties, the Committee of Industrial Organizations (CIO) seceded from the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and went on "to organize millions of workers in such major corporations as General Motors, General Electric, U.S. Steel, Westinghouse, Hormel and others."

The new labor federation, he envisions, for today's times would be controlled by the membership and led by local unions and central labor councils that are impatient with the sluggish leadership of their international union presidents.

Harry Kelber, you epitomize the saying that "the only true aging is the erosion of one's ideals."

(Visit Harry Kelber's website http://www.laboreducator.org www.laboreducator.org for more of his insights.)

END

http://nader.org/index.php?/archives/2278-Revitalizing-the-AFL-CIO.html#extended

[Brickbat]

1. An article about unions by a union buster?

Now I've seen everything.

[Better Believe It]

3. What do you disagree with in the article, if anything?

Oh .... on your claim that Nader is a right-wing union buster .... what union representatives and unions have endorsed your claim?

If memory serves me right that was one of the many false charges made by blue dog, centrist and conservative "democrats" as part of their "swift-boat" like character assassination campaign against Ralph Nader some 7 years ago. Isn't that right?

[Brickbat]

6. I didn't say "right wing." I said union buster.

It's not a false charge. His employees tried to organize, he fired them. That's busting.

Blue dogs, centrists and conservative "democrats" may have picked up the news, but that doesn't mean it's false. Just like what he says in this article isn't necessarily false even though he's a union buster.

The AFL-CIO is getting a wake-up call from its individual unions, and many CLCs and regional councils are also hearing that same call. It's not going to come from the top down, and it's certainly not going to happen because Ralph Nader says so.

[Better Believe It]

9. What union did Ralph Nader bust? Does it have a name?

Is that union recognized by the AFL-CIO or any other labor federation?

[Brickbat]

10. The people involved had filed required papers with the NLRB notifying of intent to organize.

He fired them before they had a chance to certify.

[Better Believe It]

13. So they were not affiliated with, being organized by or represented by any existing labor union!

Now that sounds more and more like a bogus labor union that existed only in someones fantasy.

But, do you still want to claim that Nader busted a labor union that didn't exist?

And you wrote: "The people involved had filed required papers with the NLRB notifying of intent to organize."

There is no such law requiring workers to file papers with the NLRB notifying them of their intent to organize a labor union.

Now workers may sign union authorization cards indicating they want a labor union to represent them and requesting a NLRB union recognition vote.

And firing workers for attempting to organize a labor union is a violation of NLRB law.

Why didn't didn't these workers appeal that wrongful discharge to the NLRB?

I suppose you could argue that the were fired before they tried to organize a labor union .... but if that's the case you can't claim Nader fired them for trying to organize a union or busted their union!

You so far have failed to provide any evidence that Ralph Nader broke a labor union and you won't find a single union representative in the entire nation that will back up your claim!

[Brickbat]

18. Companies, organizations and people that try to prevent people from organizing are routinely called

union busters. Maybe you've never heard that.

The workers did file a complaint with the NLRB.

They were fired after trying to organize. That's busting. I don't know why you're trying to defend that.

[LoZoccolo]

2. Look closely, he's talking about splitting the union.

That sounds familiar.

[Better Believe It]

7. Which union? The AFL-CIO is already divided into many different international unions.

Plus we have several independent unions and two of the largest labor unions split away from the AFL-CIO labor federation years ago, the SEIU and Teamsters.

More conservative union officials frequently claim that more militant union members and officers who dare to challenge their ineffective policies are just "malcontents" and "rebel rousers" who are splitting the labor movement.

It appears your knowledge of the labor movement is very limited in light of your misunderstanding of the article.

[Gman]

4. Nader, STFU!

This is all your fault.

[Better Believe It]

8. You're being sarcastic .... right?

Of was Nader really responsible for 9/11 and Wall Street derivatives?

[Gman]

12. He sure is. Had he not taken votes from Gore

9/11 would likely been stopped as we knew OBL was planning something involving planes. The derivatives... history speaks for itself. Again Nader should never have run in 2000.

[Forkboy]

16. What about the thousands of Dems in Florida that voted for Bush?

Didn't they also take votes from Gore?

And if we're going to use this logic, shouldn't we just go all the way back to the primordial slime and blame the first organisms for everything that came after it. After all, had they not existed, 9/11 would never have happened. :crazy:

[provis99]

11. let me guess. You owned a Corvair.

[sudopod]

14. lol. nt

[mmonk]

5. Interesting they changed the rules on Harry in 2009 when he tried

to run as a candidate for the Executive Board.

[leftstreet]

15. K&R

[Luminous Animal]

17. Fuck Nader

Oops. I forgot to log in as LoZocolo.