Obama’s 2-Year Pay Freeze is Aimed
At Pleasing G.O.P. Budget-Slashers

Suppose your employer announced that he was freezing your pay for the next two years, in direct violation of your union agreement. What would be your reaction? Would you have anything to say?

How would you break the news to your spouse when you got home? And how would you respond to complaints that food prices, transportation and medical costs have been rising steadily, and how is the family going to manage on your present salary?

How would you react when you learned that the bankers and corporate executives on Wall Street are getting extra bonuses on top of their multi-million-dollar paychecks?

We’re talking reality. Some two million federal employees, including 600,000 members of the American Federation of Government Employees, are facing the strong possibility that they will be the first victims under President Obama’s proposal to freeze their pay for two years, as their “shared contribution” to reducing the federal budget deficit.

One would expect that AFGE members would be angry and bitter that they have been singled out by the President as a pre-emptive bargaining chip in the negotiations with Republicans on reducing the country’s deficit by four trillion dollars. But they have not advertised their unhappiness with public protests in Washington and elsewhere.

Fortunately, AFGE members could turn to their union, whose president, John Gage, could call upon the White House to modify or withdraw Obama’s pay freeze proposal. At the very least, they expected the union to issue strong denunciations of the freeze, with protest meetings across the country.

Obama’s Pay Freeze Drew No Outraged Reply or Mass Protests

Gage called the wage freeze decision “a slap at working people. . .To symbolically hit at federal employees, I think, is wrong,” Gage said. adding that the two-year freeze barely makes a dent in the federal budget deficit. But is that the level of protest that would influence Congress to reject President Obama’s proposal?

The AFGE web site contains only one explicit reference to the wage freeze: a press release, dated Dec. 2, whose headline states: “AFGE Urges Lawmakers to Oppose Pay Freeze Proposal.” There is no mention about mobilizing the union membership to fight the pay freeze

There is not a single letter from any of the AFGE’s 600,000 members about the pay freeze on the union’s web site or any discussion of how the President’s surprise action endangers the union’s collective bargaining power.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has denounced the Obama proposal, but there hasn’t been any statement from the 43 members of the Executive Council or letters from union members on the AFL-CIO web site. Trumka has not called for any membership action.

Since the AFGE and the labor movement have not pressed the panic button over the Obama proposal, Democratic lawmakers may feel there is no loss of their political capital to approve the two-year freeze.

By not backing the AFGE, unions may be reaffirming a precedent allowing a U.S. president to legislate wages and working conditions. (Remember how President Reagan fired the nation’s 11,000 striking air controllers in 1981.)

Tough decisions are being made right now, and Organized Labor should have a voice in these decisions. It should mobilize its millions of members to block President Obama’s pay freeze proposal from getting Congress approval.

The AFL-CIO, with its 12.2 million members, has been called a “Sleeping Giant.” It has been slumbering and snoring in recent years because of a lack of inspiring leadership, while America has been going through difficult economic times.

Isn’t it time for a wakeup call?—Harry Kelber

LaborTalk will be posted here on December 7, 2010 and on our two web sites: (www.laboreducator.org) and (www.laborsvoiceforchange.org).