How Our Inept Leaders Bungled Campaign
To Stop NLRB's Attack on Worker Rights

Three months before the National Labor Relations Board decision to permit employers to disqualify their employees from joining unions by classifying them as "supervisors," AFL-CIO President Sweeney spread the alarm that as many as eight million current and future workers could be lost to the labor movement.

With so much at stake, it was expected that the AFL-CIO would launch a full-press, sustained campaign to involve not only its own members, but would reach out through the national media to millions of unorganized workers who would be adversely affected by an unfavorable NLRB decision. What better way to demonstrate that organized labor is the champion of all workers!

But the AFL-CIO's Week of Action" on July 10-17 in 20 cities attracted a total of hardly more than 10,000 people nationwide, and received almost no attention from the mass media and the Washington establishment. The Federation made no attempt to draw countless thousands of unorganized workers into the anti-NLRB campaign.

What made AFL-CIO leaders and their allies look foolish was their "civil disobedience" act (blocking the entrance to the NLRB headquarters for 15 minutes and failing in their effort to get arrested).

As for the leaders of the Change to Win coalition, they did nothing to mobilize their four million members to forestall an anti-union Labor Board decision in the three critical "Kentucky River" cases that dealt with the "supervisor" issue.

Bold Action Was Needed, Not Rhetoric

But after July 17, the AFL-CIO abandoned the anti- NLRB campaign. The issue disappeared from its web site, through the rest of July, all of August and a good part of September. Its leaders apparently figured that it could do no more about the supervisor issue and that there were other problems to claim their attention.

Is it any wonder that the Labor Board felt it could safely ignore labor's puny response and go ahead with its plan to inflict serious damage on the labor movement and darken its future?

But supposing that labor had played hardball with the NLRB issue. What if 20 union men and women had staged a sit-down in the Washington headquarters of the NLRB and vowed to stay there until the Board agreed to a public hearing on the three cases. What if in each of five major cities, there were also 20 unionists staging sit-ins at NLRB regional offices. Would the media take notice? Would Washington listen? Might there be changes in the NLRB's attitude?

Our labor leaders are still relying on e-mails to win political battles in Washington and they can't achieve anything for working people. Washington regards organized labor as a toothless tiger that can easily be ignored.

Since 2003, hourly wages, adjusted to inflation, have declined two percent while productivity and profits have continued their steady rise. Those slogans, like "Make Work Pay" and "America Needs a Raise," haven't added a dime to a worker's paycheck.

There are more than 13 million men and women in the labor movement that, potentially, represent a massive economic and political force. What we need are leaders who can win our respect, trust and cooperation. There are, as yet, no candidates that have come forward with these qualifications. But until that happens, we will have to endure a spineless, inept and unimaginative leadership.

Our two weekly columns (LaborTalk and The World of Labor) can be seen and downloaded at our Web site: www.laboreducator.org.

Harry Kelber's e-mail address is: hkelber@igc.org.