Brother Trumka,  What Do You  Do for  Members,
Besides Making Your Anti-Wall Street Speeches?

By Harry Kelber

Since March, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has been making speeches in cities and counties across the country, including one on Wall Street itself,  with a double-barreled message: “Make Wall Street Pay!” and “Decent Jobs Now!”

Despite his excellent speeches, Brother Trumka has not gotten a dime from the banks and Wall Street tycoons. The reason is obvious. He hasn’t asked them for money, or even suggested a “ball park” price tag as compensation for the innocent people who lost their jobs, their homes and a part of their retirement income because of Wall Street’s reckless and greedy behavior.

There is no public evidence that Brother Trumka has ever spoken to the banks’ CEOs or  that he even knows them or has made an effort to meet them.  So how can he make them pay? The furthest he has gone is to ask the Wall Streeters to “pay their "fair share” of the cost of creating the jobs they destroyed. And  who decides what’s a “fair share”?

If Brother Trumka and the AFL-CIO Executive Council were really interested in making Wall Street pay,  here is a scenario that could have a good chance of accomplishing it.

Let’s suppose that Brother Trumka decided to go into a Washington branch of the Bank of America with a committee of union members, instead of speechifying on the outside. He could demand to see the bank’s CEO and  senior officers. The bank’s officials would have to meet him, because he had excellent leverage: he could threaten to withdraw the deposits of  the AFL-CIO and its affiliates, as well as the savings of  union members, if the bank refused to negotiate or discuss an  opening offer. Union members would be pleased at the AFL-CIO’s initiative.

But that’s not Brother Trumka’s game. He wants to keep  the Wall Street issue alive  by attacking it by remote control. He also diverts attention from AFL-CIO’s loss of membership, its lack of an organizing plan and its legislative failures.

Trumka’s  Perpetual Silence Toward Members Is Harmful

Brother Trumka insists that “the labor movement has a plan for creating millions of jobs NOW!” So who is going to provide the tens of billions to pay for those jobs? Not Congress or the Obama administration. Their focus is on cutting the federal budget and the national debt. So who will make Wall Street pay?

Brother Trumka concluded his Wall Street speech by declaring”: “We’re here today. We’ll be here tomorrow. And we’re not going to stop until we create the 11 million good jobs we need and rebuild the middle class.”  Will Trumka tell us how he’s going to accomplish this miracle? Or does even he really believe it? Some critics call Brother Trumka’s speeches  “sheer  demagoguery.”  

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It’s amazing how Brother Trumka gets away without telling union members what’s going on within the AFL-CIO.  We haven’t the vaguest idea  how our dues money is spent, because he and his secretary-treasurer have refused to give out any information. We don’t know if there’s a  plan to organize new workers or what is happening with the  Employee Free Choice Act (EFPC) or  health and safety legislation and other  issues affecting our livelihood and well-being.

Tight-lipped silence is Brother Trumka’s usual response to questions that displease him. He can ignore critics, because his job as AFL-CIO president, under present convention rules, cannot be challenged, not only for the next eight years, but  for his lifetime until he finally decides to retire.

Is the AFL-CIO a democratic organization?  Are members’ rights important? Is this how unions should be run?-Harry Kelber