LaborTalk (134)         February  8, 2011

Will AFL-CIO’s Partnership with U.S. Chamber And Obama’s Woo of Chief CEOs Yield Jobs?

By Harry Kelber

So the AFL-CIO  has  developed a partnership with the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce, one of its worst enemies, that
has opposed labor legislation for longer than most of us
can remember.

What we gain from this strange partnership is the lobbying
power of the three-million member Chamber in the fight
for a job-creating, costly infrastructure, while it continues
to lobby for cuts in government spending. Are we blind to
the contradiction?

The agreement won’t stop the Chamber from supporting 
attacks on unions. It won’t change the Chamber’s policy
of encouraging the outsourcing of hundreds of thousands
of good-paying American jobs. It wants to get rid of
many of the federal regulations that protect consumers,
so that their companies can become more competitive.
That’s some “partner!”

And on Feb. 7, we find President Obama addressing a meeting
of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, pledging the assembled
tycoons  he would build a friendlier, more cooperative ,
pro-business relationship,  forgetting that the Chamber had
aggressively opposed his health care and  banking agenda and
spent more than $50 million  during the 2010 midterm election
to help the Republicans gain control of the House.

President Obama’s  basic message to the business community
was that Corporate America must feel some sense of duty to
our society as well as to its  natural focus on profit-making—
an attempt at an even-handed statement—reportedly pleasing
very few at the meeting.

‘Profits Before People’ Is Still the Wall Street Motto
Obama’s suggestion that the business community can help the
economy recover by spending its reserves on job creation (the
banks and big-time Wall Street investors have more than two
trillion dollars in cash stashed away in their vaults) was met with
skepticism by outspoken members of the audience.
Harold Jackson, an executive at a Buffalo medical supply
company, said: “Any business person  has to look at the
demand to their company for their product and services
and make hiring decisions,” Jackson said:  “I think it’s a
little outside the bounds to suggest if we hire people we
don’t need, there will be more demand,”

Indeed, employers are not hiring many full-time people,
because  they can get their workers to take up the slack
by working longer and harder, or by hiring temporary
workers who can be fired when they are no longer needed.
Sympathy for the millions of unemployed doesn’t enter
into their equation in business practices.

*   *   *   *   *

There is a growing, discontent against  the AFL-CIO’s
leadership from  labor activists and ordinary  union members
that is simmering in various parts of the country, but hasn’t
reached a public boiling point.

Many members are angry that  they can’t find out how their
dues payments are being spent.  They are denied the right
to run for high union office. When they ask questions of
their leaders, they get no response.  They don’t have the
protection of an ethical practices committee against
abusive treatment.

Nor is that all. Under  the present leadership, the AFL-CIO
has lost more than a million members in the past two years.
It botched up its campaign for an Employee Free Choice Act
and failed to clarify the provisions of the new heath care law
for its members. And what have they done  to improve the
wages and benefits of low-paid workers?

Critics have made the case that the AFL-CIO is  not a
democratic organization;  that  it has been hijacked by a
group of leaders of big international unions, and that it
has become a self-perpetuating, self-serving  oligarchy.

And so, the grievances of the rank-and-file are festering,
without large-scale public complaints. No one knows
when union members  will find the courage to  speak out
for their rights, but the time will come, sooner or later.

Look at Egypt, where millions of workers, who had not
complained publicly about injustice for nearly 30 years,
took to the streets to finally speak up for their rights. If it
happened in Egypt  could it happen  here in the United

States? Who knows? -Harry Kelber