Sitting in the office of the AFL-CIO president, Richard Trumka, one sees books on labor history, economics, corporate crimes and proposals for change piled up everywhere. Perhaps that helps explain why Mr. Trumka, a former coal miner who became a lawyer, presented his besieged organization’s quadrennial convention in Los Angeles last week with a fiery visionary “big tent” design to develop more alliances with citizen and worker organizations that are not trade unions (see http://www.aflcio.org/Multimedia/Videos/AFL-CIO-2013-Convention-President-Richard-Trumka-Keynote-Speech).
Citing common ground on some public policies, Mr. Trumka wants to strengthen ties with the likes of the NAACP, Working America, the Sierra Club, the Economic Policy Institute, Women’s groups, and the Taxi Drivers, the Domestic Workers Alliance and worker centers. He would like some of these organizations to be brought into the governing bodies of labor unions and the AFL-CIO’s executive council.
The latter was too much for some unions fearful of being diluted or “Trojan horsed,” such as the construction unions that want the XL pipeline to be built regardless of the Sierra Club’s contrary position. However, the resolution approved by the assemblage did endorse Trumka’s open door to advocacy on behalf of temporary workers or non-unionized poverty groups, on a more informal basis.
Eighty-eight percent of all workers are not unionized. Union membership has been declining for more than four decades. The AFL-CIO has known this, but cannot seem to push its member unions to greatly increase their organizing budgets at a time when global companies can easily leave America for China or elsewhere. On the other hand, there are tens of millions of low-income workers in the service sector whose jobs cannot be exported and who want opportunities for unionization.
Trumka has problems in implementing his vision. First, he is not in functional control of his largest member unions. Second, there is surplus labor and there are too few well-paying jobs. Third, he has allegiances to the Democratic Party leaders and President Obama who do not tolerate much public criticisms or rebellion by a weakened labor movement, which they know believes it has nowhere to go in a two-party duopoly.
The more aggressive members of the AFL-CIO are not well received by the larger more cautious counterparts. The fast growing California Nurses Association, and its national affiliate National Nurses United, want Obamacare replaced with single-payer, everybody in, nobody out, under public insurance and private delivery of health care. Single-payer or full Medicare for all, with free choice of physician and hospital, has been supported by a majority of the public, including doctors and nurses, for many years. It is more efficient and humane. Yet, because Trumka et al do not want single payer on the table, the Nurses stayed home and there was no single-payer exhibit permitted at the AFL-CIO Convention.
Yet, Obamacare has angered many established unions with Taft-Hartley healthcare plans. Mr. Trumka now has his hands full with Barack Obama over how these plans are jeopardized by a very complex Obamacare, which he and other labor leaders supported before the blowback occurred.
Will Trumka’s grand inclusiveness work? Paul Tobias, who founded the National Employment Lawyers Association in 1985 to help non-unionized workers with their legal problems, says such outreach can benefit these laborers but “the devil is in the details.” He has seen organized labor talk like this before. The question awaiting an answer is: How many resources/organizers will the Trumka camp put into the alliance and what is the specific agenda?
Clearly Trumka and the AFL-CIO could help many deprived workers. Underpaid workers are rallying in front of Walmarts and McDonalds demanding a living wage and union representation. Others are demanding that President Obama simply issue an executive order requiring federal contractors to pay a living wage to workers who are at the frozen federal minimum wage of $7.25.
The problems with the AFL-CIO and most unions were regularly described by the venerable labor activist, Harry Kelber, who passed away in late March just before his 99th birthday. As you can see by visiting his website www.laboreducator.org, Mr. Kelber wrote scores of articles about the bureaucratization of smug labor leaders and their failure to stand up to the big employers and the Democratic Party.
With eighty years in the labor movement, Mr. Kelber was running for the presidency of the AFL-CIO just to give one alternative, however symbolic, to the AFL-CIO delegates. Under AFL-CIO rules, losing candidates get 15 minutes to speak before the Convention. Harry Kelber undoubtedly would have called on them to recover their nerve, lead by example, be more democratic, fight for single-payer health insurance, work to repeal the notoriously anti-labor Taft-Hartley Act, and above all tap union treasuries to hire many more organizers to expand union protection for tens of millions of powerless workers who can’t pay for the necessities of life.
Richard Trumka dismissed Harry Kelber and others who have criticized him from the progressive Left. Too bad he doesn’t apply his book learning to fearlessly advance the labor agenda, starting with abolitionist Frederick Douglass’ famous phrase “power concedes nothing without a demand.” That approach, in its specifics, must be directed to Barack Obama, the Democratic leaders of the House and Senate and the corporate barons who are paid $10,000 per hour and have been bringing workers to their knees while pouring campaign money into the indentured Democratic Party’s coffers.
Workers understand the difference between their unions’ political rhetoric and independent political action for their future.
Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer and author of Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us! He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, published by AK Press. Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition.
Nader is opposed to big insurance companies, "corporate welfare," and the "dangerous convergence of corporate and government power." While consumer advocate/environmentalist Ralph Nader has virtually no chance of winning the White House, he has been taken quite seriously on the campaign trail.Indeed, he poses the greatest threat to Sen. John Kerry. Democrats fear that Nader will be a spoiler, as he was in the 2000 election, when he took more than 97,000 votes in Florida. Bush won Florida by just 537 votes. The win gave Bush the election. Nader, an independent candidate, who also ran in 1992 and 1996, is on the ballot in 33 states, including Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin, and New Mexico—tough battleground states. Kerry stands a chance of losing those vital states if Nader siphons away the votes of Democrats. President Bush and Kerry have been in a statistical dead heat in nationwide polls, and votes for Nader could well tip the balance in favor of Bush.Many Kerry supporters contend that a vote for Nader is in reality a vote for Bush and have made concerted efforts to persuade Nader to throw his support behind the Democratic candidate. Nader, however, has held fast to his convictions that the two candidates are nearly indistinguishable and are pawns of big business.Designing Cars for Everything but SafetyNader was born in Winsted, Connecticut, on Feb. 27, 1934 to Lebanese immigrants Nathra and Rose Nader. Nathra ran a bakery and restaurant. As a child, Ralph played with David Halberstam, who\'s now a highly regarded journalist.Nader with Democratic nominee Jimmy Carter outside of Jimmy Carter\'s home on August 7, 1976, discussing Consumer Protection. (Source/AP) Nader graduated magna cum laude from Princeton in 1955 and from Harvard Law School in 1958. As a student at Harvard, Nader first researched the design of automobiles. In an article titled "The Safe Car You Can\'t Buy," which appeared in the Nation in 1959, he concluded, "It is clear Detroit today is designing automobiles for style, cost, performance, and calculated obsolescence, but not—despite the 5,000,000 reported accidents, nearly 40,000 fatalities, 110,000 permanent disabilities, and 1,500,000 injuries yearly—for safety."Early Years as a Consumer AdvocateAfter a stint working as a lawyer in Hartford, Connecticut, Nader headed for Washington, where he began his career as a consumer advocate. He worked for Daniel Patrick Moynihan in the Department of Labor and volunteered as an adviser to a Senate subcommittee that was studying automobile safety.In 1965, he published Unsafe at Any Speed, a best-selling indictment of the auto industry and its poor safety standards. He specifically targeted General Motors\' Corvair. Largely because of his influence, Congress passed the 1966 National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act. Nader was also influential in the passage of 1967\'s Wholesome Meat Act, which called for federal inspections of beef and poultry and imposed standards on slaughterhouses, as well as the Clean Air Act and the Freedom of Information Act."Nader\'s Raiders" and Modern Consumer MovementNader\'s crusade caught on, and swarms of activists, called "Nader\'s Raiders," joined his modern consumer movement. They pressed for protections for workers, taxpayers, and the environment and fought to stem the power of large corporations.In 1969 Nader established the Center for the Study of Responsive Law, which exposed corporate irresponsibility and the federal government\'s failure to enforce regulation of business. He founded Public Citizen and U.S. Public Interest Research Group in 1971, an umbrella for many other such groups.A prolific writer, Nader\'s books include Corporate Power in America (1973), Who\'s Poisoning America (1981), and Winning the Insurance Game (1990).
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