Indictment of labor press for ignoring the lack of democracy in the AFL-CIO and Change to Win
It’s time for everyone who cares about the future of the working class to look carefully at the way in which the unions representing working class people in the United States operate. The information below should help.
An Eight-Count Indictment Of the Labor Media
Testimony by Harry Kelber At Labor Voices III Conference (April 26-28, 2007)
I am here to indict the American Labor Press on eight counts of consistently failing to speak out against the undemocratic policies and actions of leaders of the AFL-CIO and the Change to Win coalition; and ignoring gross violations of the rights of union members. These are serious charges worthy of your attention.
Charge #1: The labor press has refused to criticize the egregiously undemocratic convention voting rules of the AFL-CIO, under which John Sweeney and a group of international union presidents were elected and re-elected four times, by unanimous vote, without opposition, criticism or debate, despite their dismal record of organizing defeats and legislative failures, and at a time when unions were continuing to decline in numbers and bargaining power.
It found nothing wrong with a voting system in which a small union, like the Federation of Professional Athletes, was allotted 1,700 convention votes, nearly three times the total votes of all State Federations and Central Labor Councils, combined.
It refused to support a reform campaign for “One Delegate, One Vote,” a structure used by almost all organizations, that would restore democracy at conventions and end the monopoly of power exercised by a handful of national union leaders. Labor publications paid almost no attention to this important democratic reform.
Charge #2: The labor media failed to report how the Sweeney administration surreptitiously increased their term of office from two years to four years at the 1997 AFL-CIO convention by voice vote. in violation of the federation’s Constitution, which required a two-thirds majority vote for passage of any amendment.
The proposal for a four-year term for officers had never been mentioned publicly anywhere until it was sprung on the delegates on the first day of the convention, and then steamrolled its passage by sandwiching it in with several innocuous amendments. It was a raw, heavy-handed power play, but not a word of criticism appeared in labor publications.
Charge #3: When seven international unions broke away from the AFL-CIO to form Change to Win as a rival federation, there was a lot of debate whether or not it would lead to a resurgence of the labor movement. But as far as I know, no publication publicly asked why the millions of members of the seven unions were denied the right to vote on whether to remain or secede from the AFL-CIO.
Change to Win has one of the most undemocratic constitutions in the labor movement, which gives unlimited powers to the leaders of the seven unions, with no mention of the rights of members. It does not require holding elections, since the seven leaders apparently have tenure for life and act as though they own their unions. Yet the labor press, almost without exception, has refrained from exposing this blatant suppression of the rights of union members.
Charge #4: One of labor’s most embarrassing scandals involved 26 current or retired national union leaders, including AFL-CIO president John Sweeney, who participated in an insider stock-trading deal as directors of Union Labor Life Insurance Company (ULLICO), which enabled some of them to profit by a total of more than $6 million.
The labor press never called for an investigation of the ULLICO scandal by the AFL-CIO’s Ethical Practices Committee. While it fiercely condemned Enron, there was not a word of rebuke for the labor leaders involved in the ULLICO affair.
Charge #5: The Sweeney administration arbitrarily decided in late 2003 to suppress all information about the war in Iraq. In the 2004 presidential election, it limited the AFL-CIO’s campaign exclusively to domestic issues, even though the war in Iraq was the hottest issue for the voters and President Bush was particularly vulnerable for his conduct of the war.
Labor publications never questioned the AFL-CIO’s election policies. They raised no public outcry at the AFL-CIO’s suppression of news about Iraq as a violation of freedom of the press. In fact, almost all labor editors conformed to Sweeney’s edict and rarely mentioned Iraq. .
We should thank U.S. Labor Against the War for breaking through the censorship and allowing information and debate about the war in Iraq to circulate within the labor movement.
Charge #6: The American Center for International Labor Solidarity was established by the AFL-CIO in 1997 to replace its four regional institutes that had had close relations with the CIA in destabilizing elected governments abroad under former AFL-CIO president Lane Kirkland. The Solidarity Center has retained offices and staff in at least 26 countries around the globe that were part of Kirkland’s “world empire.”
Labor publications did not consider it newsworthy that: Solidarity Center, an AFL-CIO agency, was getting better than 90 percent of its income from the U.S. State Department and other federal agencies of the Bush administration. Nor did they mention a New York Times exposé that revealed that the Center had been implicated in a plot to overthrow the elected Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez
Why hasn’t the labor press investigated the relationship between the Solidarity Center and Bush’s State Department? What are the Center’s staffers doing in those 26 countries? Is the scandal of Venezuela being repeated elsewhere? Why have labor publications avoided putting the spotlight on Solidarity Center?
Charge #7: The AFL-CIO and Change to Win spend millions of dollars of our dues every year to pay for a wide range of activities. So do their affiliated international unions. But they won’t tell us how they spend our money. Don’t we have a right to know? Shouldn’t we have periodic financial reports on the Internet?
Yet the official labor press has consistently avoided raising this issue. It won’t turn the spotlight on charges of flagrant waste, extravagance and mishandling of union funds. Here again, it has defaulted on its obligation to defend the interests of union members.
At the AFL-CIO’s 2005 convention, there was only one candidate to challenge the leadership by seeking election as a member of the Executive Council. He was a lone CWA member, was not a delegate, had never held elective office in any union, had conducted his campaign without getting moral or financial support from a single group or individual, and to cap it all, he was 91 years old. And yet, he forced the leadership to give him time to address the convention where he criticized their undemocratic behavior, receiving applause and a standing ovation.
Speaking objectively as a journalist, was that worth a story? Or even a two-paragraph filler? Apparently not. To the best of my knowledge, not even one publication carried as much as a line about the unprecedented event. Will any labor editor step forward to explain the omission?
These eight charges prove that the labor press is not a free press. Its members refrain from investigating or publishing any news that might possibly be damaging or embarrassing to top union leaders. They offer cover for undemocratic and corrupt practices of a self-perpetuating oligarchy that now controls the AFL-CIO and Change to Win.
Are these charges inaccurate? Are they unfair? Are they too harsh? I am eager to hear the arguments of the defense. At this point, the prosecution rests. Thank you.
