Spinless Labor Leaders
LaborTalk (December 1, 2004)
AFL-CIO Leaders Have Lost Their Spine,Very Little Action, but Plenty of Whine
By Harry Kelber
We've got a labor leadership that is long and strong on rhetoric, but weak and meek when it comes to fighting for the needs of working people.Let's take the overtime pay issue as an example. The AFL-CIO had 17 months to prepare for a winning strategy, from March 2003 when the Bush administration first announced its new overtime rules, until August 2004, when the new rules went into effect.Surely, with six million workers as potential victims, the AFL-CIO should have mobilized a full-scale campaign to block the Bush administration's plan to take away the overtime pay rights that American workers have enjoyed since 1938.We're talking about billions of dollars annually that workers would lose under the Labor Department¹s changed regulations. Overtime pay makes up about one-fourth of the weekly earnings of workers who earn overtime, an average of $161 per week, according to an AFL-CIO study.So what kind of a campaign did the AFL-CIO and its affiliated unions conduct? By their own account, they boasted that workers have sent more than 1.6 million e-mail, mail and fax messages to the White House, Congress and the Department of Labor protesting the assault on the wages and hours laws. Even when it became clear that the electronic and paper barrage to lawmakers was not having the desired effect, Sweeney and the Executive Council still clung to this one strategic option. They also held rallies of union members in several cities, far from the eyes and ears of the nation's lawmakers.This was essentially the sum and substance of the AFL-CIO campaign to save overtime pay for the nation's workers.What was obviously wrong about the campaign is that it lacked a human face. It did not show the hardship and pain that workers would suffer if they were deprived of their right to receive overtime pay for their overtime labor.Why didn't the AFL-CIO, during these critical months,issue a call for 50,000 or more union members and unorganized workers to come to Washington and angrily confront every member of the House and Senate and demand that they vote to save the right to overtime pay? Why didn¹t they organize a tremendous demonstration and a continuous picket line and candle-light vigil in front of the White House to ask to see President Bush and have him explain why he is so adamantly opposed to giving millions of workers their overtime pay rights, that he is willing to use his veto power of a major appropriations bill to get his way?While Senator Tom Harkins (D.-Iowa) was valiantly trying several times to restore overtime pay protections by a rider to the $388 billion omnibus spending bill, what was the AFL-CIO doing? It was continuing to urge union members to keep sending e-mails and faxes to Congress and the White House, no matter how many times they had already sent their messages of protest.Who is to blame for the overtime pay fiasco? Not our labor leaders in Washington. A headline on their Web site says it all: Bush, Congressional Republicans Kill Overtime Pay Protections. That's the argument they use for every legislative defeat--and they haven't won a single victory in Congress in years.They also have an answer for the continuing decline of union membership and economic power. It's because employers have many intimidating ways to make their workers fearful of joining a union.The one thing that Sweeney and the 51-member Executive Council are adept at is getting re-elected. They've won every election since 1995 when they first took office. They confidently expect to get another four-year term at the July 2005 convention.Don't you think they deserve it?
Our weekly "LaborTalk" column is posted every Wednesday and can be viewed at www.laboreducator.org.
My e-mail address is: hkelber@igc.org.
Union members who want information about the AFL CIO rank-and-file reform movement should visit.
AFL-CIO Leaders Have Lost Their Spine,Very Little Action, but Plenty of Whine
By Harry Kelber
We've got a labor leadership that is long and strong on rhetoric, but weak and meek when it comes to fighting for the needs of working people.Let's take the overtime pay issue as an example. The AFL-CIO had 17 months to prepare for a winning strategy, from March 2003 when the Bush administration first announced its new overtime rules, until August 2004, when the new rules went into effect.Surely, with six million workers as potential victims, the AFL-CIO should have mobilized a full-scale campaign to block the Bush administration's plan to take away the overtime pay rights that American workers have enjoyed since 1938.We're talking about billions of dollars annually that workers would lose under the Labor Department¹s changed regulations. Overtime pay makes up about one-fourth of the weekly earnings of workers who earn overtime, an average of $161 per week, according to an AFL-CIO study.So what kind of a campaign did the AFL-CIO and its affiliated unions conduct? By their own account, they boasted that workers have sent more than 1.6 million e-mail, mail and fax messages to the White House, Congress and the Department of Labor protesting the assault on the wages and hours laws. Even when it became clear that the electronic and paper barrage to lawmakers was not having the desired effect, Sweeney and the Executive Council still clung to this one strategic option. They also held rallies of union members in several cities, far from the eyes and ears of the nation's lawmakers.This was essentially the sum and substance of the AFL-CIO campaign to save overtime pay for the nation's workers.What was obviously wrong about the campaign is that it lacked a human face. It did not show the hardship and pain that workers would suffer if they were deprived of their right to receive overtime pay for their overtime labor.Why didn't the AFL-CIO, during these critical months,issue a call for 50,000 or more union members and unorganized workers to come to Washington and angrily confront every member of the House and Senate and demand that they vote to save the right to overtime pay? Why didn¹t they organize a tremendous demonstration and a continuous picket line and candle-light vigil in front of the White House to ask to see President Bush and have him explain why he is so adamantly opposed to giving millions of workers their overtime pay rights, that he is willing to use his veto power of a major appropriations bill to get his way?While Senator Tom Harkins (D.-Iowa) was valiantly trying several times to restore overtime pay protections by a rider to the $388 billion omnibus spending bill, what was the AFL-CIO doing? It was continuing to urge union members to keep sending e-mails and faxes to Congress and the White House, no matter how many times they had already sent their messages of protest.Who is to blame for the overtime pay fiasco? Not our labor leaders in Washington. A headline on their Web site says it all: Bush, Congressional Republicans Kill Overtime Pay Protections. That's the argument they use for every legislative defeat--and they haven't won a single victory in Congress in years.They also have an answer for the continuing decline of union membership and economic power. It's because employers have many intimidating ways to make their workers fearful of joining a union.The one thing that Sweeney and the 51-member Executive Council are adept at is getting re-elected. They've won every election since 1995 when they first took office. They confidently expect to get another four-year term at the July 2005 convention.Don't you think they deserve it?
Our weekly "LaborTalk" column is posted every Wednesday and can be viewed at www.laboreducator.org.
My e-mail address is: hkelber@igc.org.
Union members who want information about the AFL CIO rank-and-file reform movement should visit
posted by T. Scott Brineman at 9:47 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home