AFL-CIO Council Meeting Says Nothing
About Issues of Concern to All Workers

After holding its first and only meeting since last March, the AFL-CIO’s policy-making Executive Council, at its Aug. 7-9 meeting in Chicago, maintained a blanket of silence on a number of critical issues that are causing great anxiety among working people.

Instead, the Council focused on the Democratic Presidential Candidates Forum, an AFL-CIO- sponsored event, held at Soldier Field that had attracted an attendance of 17,000 union members, in addition to a large TV audience. Sweeney and the 44-member Council were full of self-congratulation at this display of labor’s political muscle. They spent almost the entire three days on presidential politics, finally deciding not to endorse any candidate at this session.

Meanwhile, in the real world, working people were taking a beating on a variety of fronts and looking for help from a labor leadership that was occupied elsewhere. Consider:

• There was a mortgage crisis that was hurting the economy. Tens of thousands of workers, including union members, were losing their homes, under the new conditions. Countless others were worried about how they could meet rising mortgage payments. Not a word from the Council of any plan to soften the blow on small homeowners. Not even a comment to indicate it was a problem.

• The collapse of the bridge in Minnesota has dramatized the necessity to repair our ageing, crumbling infrastructure. There are 73,000 bridges in the United States, a large portion of them needing repair and better maintenance. Shouldn’t our iron workers, steel workers, bridge painters and other crafts get involved in what decisions our government makes about the infrastructure mess, including where the money is coming from to pay for the repairs and how it is spent? Still not a word from the AFL-CIO leadership.

• The federal government is waging a tough war against undocumented workers, with the object of denying them work within the economy. But these immigrants represent a significant portion of the construction, agriculture and hotel and restaurant industries. If employers in these three industries are forced to fire immigrant workers who do not have acceptable Social Security cards, their operations will be disrupted and can lead to economic chaos. If unions abandon undocumented immigrants in the workplace, they are going to face enormous difficulties in their organizing efforts. So what, concretely, do AFL-CIO leaders propose to do with this problem? They are not talking.

• AFL-CIO leaders have said little, if anything, about how and when to bring our troops home from Iraq, since they passed a resolution at their 2005 convention about bringing our soldiers home “as rapidly as possible.” The Council no longer has anything to say about what’s going on in Iraq. Neither Sweeney nor the 44 members of the Council have felt the need to express their personal opinion on how and when our soldiers should be returned home‹a subject that is being hotly debated across the country.

• Multinational corporations are continuing to export American jobs to countries where labor costs are lower and both the government and workforce are submissive. It’s not only manufacturing jobs that are disappearing, but also “white collar” jobs, especially in the computerized service and information sectors. What is the AFL-CIO doing about it? Sweeney has issued statements of complaint‹not much solace for workers who have seen their jobs disappear.

• While productivity and corporate profits keep rising, workers are not sharing the wealth they largely created by their labor. Not only are their wages stagnant, but far too many of them are losing benefits in health-care and pensions. Should employers alone have the right to decide how profits should be shared? When workers are fired for pro-union activity, why don’t unions wage an all-out effort to reinstate them, instead of just making it a political “issue”? Why are labor leaders afraid to discuss these problems openly?

• What about union organizing? Is the issue dead until Congress approves the Employee Free Choice Act, which, under the best of circumstances, can’t happen for another two years? The Executive Council has not clarified its views on what it proposes to do about recruiting new members. Nor are we getting any satisfying answers from individual Council members.

• And finally, should it be disconcerting that the United States, “the greatest nation on earth,” ranks 42nd in life expectancy (77.9 years), down from 11th place 20 years ago? Remember, one of the main missions of the labor movement is to improve the quality of life for American workers. Why is it that labor leaders have nothing to say on this subject?

The Executive Council adjourned on Aug. 9 and won’t meet again for another six months, unless it is convened for a special emergency session in late September.

So who is “minding the store,” while those voiceless Council members return home? What are they doing, without telling us?

It should be clear that our national labor leaders will continue treating us with contempt for as long as we let them.

Our weekly column, “The World of Labor,” reports the struggles and victories of unions in countries around the globe. Check our web site: www.LaborEducator.org.