The American Labor Reform Movement - Feburary 2, 2013 Why Have No Candidates for Exec. Council Announced They Would Seek Re-Election? Answer: Trumka has ensured them the job. By locking up a majority of the convention votes for top positions IN ADVANCE, the Trumka Group can’t lose at the convention.
Why Have No Candidates for Exec. Council Announced They Would Seek Re-Election? Answer: Trumka has ensured them the job. By locking up a majority of the convention votes for top positions IN ADVANCE, the Trumka Group can’t lose at the convention.
By locking up a majority of the convention votes for top positions IN ADVANCE, the Trumka Group can’t lose at the convention.
It may seem puzzling to union members, but with the AFL-CIO’s 2013 Convention in Los Angeles only eight months away, no top officer and member of the Executive Council has announced that he or she plans to run for re-election. Don’t be fooled. They are hungry for re-election. Read this story
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LaborTalk - December 30, 2012 Campaign to Elect a New AFL-CIO President To Replace 'Rich' Trumka Begins in January
Campaign to Elect a New AFL-CIO President To Replace 'Rich' Trumka Begins in January
With only nine months before the start of the AFL-CIO’s 27th convention, unions are beginning to elect delegates and prepare resolutions to describe how they feel about Richard Trumka and his group of sell-serving, self-perpetuating bureaucrats, who have had a hammerlock on the organization’s policies and activities. Read this story in LaborTalk
# # # World of Labor – January 12, 2013
World of Labor – January 12, 2013
ILO Urges Better Pay and Conditions for 53 Million Domestic Workers Mass Sick-Out Staged by Staff at College of the Bahamas Doctors’ Strike in Mozambique Enters Fifth Day Bangladeshi Ship Breakers Let Out to Sea Kenyan Nurses Demand Return to work Formula January 12, 2013 — Read Column
Today, on my 98th Birthday (June 20, 2012), I, Harry Kelber, editor of The Labor Educator, am announcing that I am a candidate for the position of President of the AFL-CIO. This is not a frivolous decision.
This is not a frivolous decision.
Read Harry Kelber's announcement
October 5, 2012
Harry Kelber, editor of The Labor Educator, received the prestigious George J. Kourpias Award for Excellence in Labor Journalism. at the Machinists union's 38th convention in Los Angeles on Sept. 9-14.
Mr. Kourpias, who was I.A.M. president from 1989 to 1997, began his career as a young machinist in Sioux City, Iowa in 1952. He is especially noted for his leadership as President of the Alliance for Retired Americans, representing more than three million members, with a mission to "support public policy that protects the health and economic security of the country's senior citizens." Read this story
July 30, 2012
"On his 98th birthday, professional rabble-rouser and Brooklyn Heights resident Harry Kelber announced he will run for president of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations. No, not the local chapter of the nation’s largest labor group — the activist born during the Wilson administration wants to be in charge of the entire 11-million worker organization, better known as the AFL-CIO. The Brooklyn Paper’s Danielle Furfaro visited Kelber and talked about his campaign, his life, his views on labor, and the era when a pony ride cost about the same as a haircut." Read this story Read this story in The Brooklyn Paper
July 20, 2012
When Harry Kelber announced his intention to run for president next year of the nation’s largest labor organization, he carefully planned his campaign message. But he also had something else to plan — his 98th birthday party. Read this story from The Washington Times
April/May 2012
Nearing 98, Harry Kelber is still pushing the labor movement to do better and fulfill its potential. Read this story from National Nurse Magazine
April 30, 2012
Over eight decades in the labor movement, Harry Kelber has been a rank-and-file union leader, an author and an academic. At 25, he edited two weekly labor newspapers. At 57, he helped found a labor college at Empire State College. At 81, he ran for AFL-CIO vice president. Now 97, he writes three columns a week for his website, The Labor Educator. The Nation talked to Kelber about his experience of the labor movement’s past, his critique of its present and what he sees in its future. What follows is a condensed and edited transcript of our conversation. Read this story from The Nation
Union Activist Going Strong at 97 By Matthew Rothschild, April 7, 2012, The Progressive
I’d like you to meet a great labor activist.
His name is Harry Kelber. He’s 97. “I’ll be 98 in June,” he tells me.
Read the article.
Kelber to Challenge Trumka for AFL Top Spot 26 Corporate Crime Reporter 26, June 20, 2012
"Harry Kelber will challenge Richard Trumka for the presidency of the AFL-CIO at the labor union’s convention September 8-12, 2013 in Los Angeles. Remember Harry Kelber? He’s a labor activist and writer who runs The Labor Educator. Every week, Kelber evicerates the leaders of the AFL-CIO for not actively challenging the corrupt corporate establishment in Washington, for paying 131 of its executives more than $100,000 a year, and for censoring any criticism of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"In an interview with Corporate Crime Reporter last year [see below], Kelber said that Trumka was all talk, no action. 'Trumka makes speeches to please the membership,' Kelber told Corporate Crime Reporter last year. 'But there is no action to do anything. He comes out as an advocate of change, and he ends up without change. He had all kinds of possible opportunity for non violent action to express the discontent of American workers.' ”
Read the full interview The site of Corporate Crime Reporter, edited by Russell Mokhiber
An Interview: Harry Kelber on the Failure of the AFL, the Decline of Unions and How to Turn It Around
In June 2011, Corporate Crime Reporter (CCR) interviewed Labor Educator Harry Kelber. Here is a link to CCR's website and the interview.
"At one time, Harry Kelber – who just turned 97 last week – was a conservative.
"But that was in high school."
By Ralph Nader August 30, 2012 Commondreams
“Why should I listen to anything Harry Kelber says?” exclaimed a visibly indignant Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO.
Maybe because Kelber, 98 years young, has been honestly fighting for labor rights as a worker, union organizer, pamphleteer, author, professor and overall hairshirt of the moribund organized labor movement for 78 years–or 15 years before Trumka, the former coal miner and United Mine Workers’ president, was born. Read the article
By Ralph Nader May 23, 2011, Commondreams
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-à-vis their corporate employers and their labor union leaders, Kelber has recently completed a series of five articles titled “Reasons Why the AFL-CIO Is Broken; Let Us Start a Debate on How to Fix It.” Read the article
Tools for Union Organizing and Political Action
Video, "AFL-CIO Tops Rig 2009 Election Rules To Stop Candidate Harry Kelber From Running"
Click here or above to watch video.
'My Seventy Years in the Labor Movement'
10 Highlights of Harry Kelber's Unique Career
1. During the Great Depression, Harry led a four-month strike at a major food market in Brooklyn, N.Y, that ended with a good union contract.
2. At age 25, Harry was editor of two independent weekly labor newspapers that covered CIO organizing campaigns, as well as the activities of teamster and construction unions.
3. At age 50, Harry earned a B.A. from Brooklyn College and an M.A. and PhD. from New York University - all within 5-1/2 years.
4. In the 1962-63 printers' strike that shut down New York City's daily newspapers for 114 days, Harry was editor of the Daily Strike Bulletin.
5. As the legislative director of the Physicians Forum, Harry played a key role in winning social security for the nation's doctors.
6. In 1968, Harry created and became the first director of Cornell University's Two-Year Labor/Liberal Arts Program.
7. In recognition of his distinguished teaching career, Empire State College created the Dr. Harry Kelber Endowment in Labor Studies.
8. At age 70, Harry became the Educational and Cultural Director of Electrical Workers Local 3, I.B.E.W., a position he held for nearly six years.
9. In 1992, Harry led a week-long seminar in Moscow for 145 labor leaders of the former Soviet Union on the theme, "Democratic Unions in a Market Economy."
10. In 1995, at age 81, Harry ran for a vice president seat on the AFL-CIO Executive Council to force the first election ever, in which a rank-and-filer challenged incumbent officers.
You will be fascinated by the stories surrounding each of Kelber's accomplishments $25 per copy (includes mailing) 370 pages - 8 pages of photographs Click here to purchase 'My Seventy Years in the Labor Movement.
Click here to purchase 'My Seventy Years in the Labor Movement.
Daily News, "Spotlight on Great People: His [Harry Kelber] 70-year battle for the rights of workers," by Clem Richardson, October 10, 2008 Read the article on Harry Kelber
A Woman Is Not a Yes-Man Words & Music by Harry Kelber Read the song Listen to the music Harry Kelber's poetic commentary on "CEO Lust," delivered at Labor Notes conference May 2006. You can see and hear Harry reciting his poem by clicking below.You can read Harry's poem by clicking here. There have been There have been visits to this website Since October 4, 2004.
A Woman Is Not a Yes-Man Words & Music by Harry Kelber Read the song Listen to the music
Harry Kelber's poetic commentary on "CEO Lust," delivered at Labor Notes conference May 2006. You can see and hear Harry reciting his poem by clicking below.You can read Harry's poem by clicking here.