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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message -----
<DIV style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A
title=hkelber@earthlink.net href="mailto:hkelber@earthlink.net">Harry Kelber</A>
</DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B> <A title=" dlj725@hughes.net"
href="mailto:%20dlj725@hughes.net">david johnson</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Wednesday, May 09, 2012 5:21 PM</DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> FW: The Nation: Harry Kelber Interview</DIV></DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV><FONT face="Calibri, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt"><BR>------ Forwarded Message<BR><B>From: </B>Lew
Friedman <<A
href="mailto:lromfried@gmail.com">lromfried@gmail.com</A>><BR><B>Date:
</B>Wed, 9 May 2012 13:31:47 -0600<BR><B>To: </B>Harry Kelber <<A
href="mailto:hkelber@earthlink.net">hkelber@earthlink.net</A>><BR><B>Subject:
</B>Fwd: The Nation: Harry Kelber Interview<BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><IMG
src="cid:46A8347D2AFA41A7910095F133445378@owneryr3fp4mcb"><BR><BR><B><BR></B></SPAN><B><FONT
size=7><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 36pt">Labor Educator Harry Kelber Is
Interviewed<BR>By the magazine’s reporter, Josh Eidelson</SPAN></FONT><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt"> <BR></SPAN></B><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt">Over eight
decades in the labor movement, Harry Kelber has been a rank-and-file union
leader, an author and an academic. At 25, he edited two weekly labor newspapers.
At 57, he helped found a labor college at Empire State College. At 81, he ran
for AFL-CIO vice president. Now 97, he writes three columns a week for his
website, The Labor Educator. <I>The Nation</I> talked to Kelber about
his experience of the labor movement’s past, his critique of its present and
what he sees in its future. What follows is a condensed and edited transcript of
our conversation.<BR><BR><B><I>As a teenager during the Depression, you led a
grocery workers’ strike. How did you do it?<BR></I></B><BR>We were working
seventy-eight hours a week at Weinstein’s. On Saturday nights, whoever had the
lowest sales for the week was fired. I was a favorite of the owner, and he said,
“I’ll make you an assistant manager.” When I said no, he fired me on the
spot.<BR><BR>So I called up a union. We went around talking to workers around
the city, and we decided that the next morning that we would all assemble
outside the store, and no one would go in. The manager and the assistant manager
were the only ones who stepped into the store. That created quite a
commotion.<BR><BR>We kept up that strike for four months, until we were pretty
desperate, and then just at the moment we were exhausted and said we can’t
continue this, we reached an agreement. The strike was settled, and workers went
back with a five dollar increase and an improvement in the workload—on the
condition that I was never to return to the store.<BR><BR><B><I>How did it shape
your view of the labor movement?<BR></I></B><BR>What I saw during the Depression
convinced me that we needed a new society to allow people to earn a
living.<BR><BR>It was during the toughest time. But my co-workers had very good
motivations: They felt that they were being abused, and that there was no future
for them. And they wanted to have a little recognition and respect. And we won
Social Security, child labor laws and a resurgent movement. Now, why can’t we do
that today?<BR><BR><B><I>What does the past year’s uprising in Wisconsin mean
for labor?<BR></I></B><BR>There’s a marvelous new development. It shows the
possibility of workers responding to horrible legislative actions. I think it’s
going to spread throughout the country.<BR><BR>One of the problems that the
labor movement has to deal with is that it seems to be always on the defensive,
trying to block anti-worker campaigns. If you act like a union you’re going to
grow. But there are not too many unions that are growing. A lot of them are just
trying to survive, even with concessions to the employer. That’s not
healthy.<BR><BR>Wisconsin is very heartening, and my feeling is that at some
point, there will be a congress of all these people from all these separate
actions around the country, who will seek either to change the AFL-CIO or to set
up an entirely new organization that will represent the needs and sentiments of
working people.<BR><BR><B><I>How do you see Occupy’s plans for a General Strike
May 1? What can the labor movement learn from Occupy?<BR></I></B><BR>In terms of
“general strike,” I would say that before occupiers takes that action they
should check around with all the unions to see what support it will get. It
would be terrible if it had minimal support and no one really
noticed.<BR><BR>But there is no question that there will be support for May
Day <I>actions</I>. Occupy is doing a great job, and certainly has a good
outlook. They have made a tremendous impact on the American labor movement, and
I am positive that important changes will be taking place in the AFL-CIO because
of it.<BR><BR>Organized labor should learn from Occupy that working people have
to be involved in their own fate. In the AFL-CIO and the labor movement, union
members are utterly ignored. The AFL-CIO is ruled by a handful of international
union presidents. They can ignore working people at their pleasure and do
whatever they want to do. For more than 100 years, no member out of a state
federation of labor or central labor council or local union has ever been
elected to a national leadership position.<BR><BR>Organized labor also has to
recognize the significance of inequality, here and around the world. I mean the
fight against inequality has now erupted, and what the occupation of Wall Street
has done at a very minimum is to make that an issue that will continue forever
until there is some reasonable solution.<BR><BR><B><I>How can labor wield more
power in our politics?<BR></I></B><BR>AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka promised,
as a concession to worker protests, that they would have an independent worker
voice and that they would not be dependent on the Democratic Party—that they
would speak in terms of their own needs and desires. But that has never
happened. There’s a division within labor about what to do about the Democratic
Party. There’s strong opposition to many of the Democratic leaders, but there’s
no action taken to form some kind of committee that will take this opposition
forward.<BR><BR>They just had another demonstration on tax day. Their policy is
to have demonstrations and e-mails as pressure points against the White House.
By now they should know it doesn’t work. They’re pretending.<BR><BR>There is no
single action that can turn this quiescent, do-nothing leadership around. If the
two candidates are anti-labor, we can run our own. We may not win an election,
but we’re making a statement. And we must be more energetic. For example, hold
sit-downs in Congress, or a four-hour strike.<BR><BR>Or leave it to workers and
tell them: “Look, you’re not going to have any jobs in the future—what do you
propose to do?” Let the workers decide, because if you’re in a situation where
the future is as bleak as many workers are facing, they’re not going to sit
around and mope around. They’re going to find ways to express their anger. Right
now they’re not expressing their anger in sufficient form.<BR><BR><B><I>How do
you see the state of labor’s relationship to other progressive
movements?<BR></I></B><BR>The AFL-CIO has, to its credit, tried to broaden
itself by adding new allies to its campaigns, allies that agree in general, or
in some cases on particular issues. And that’s all to the good. But not much has
come from that. They put out literature, they perform an educational job, and
that’s pretty much it.<BR><BR>On the other hand, the AFL-CIO website and
statements from its officials will absolutely ignore the topic of contraception
and abortion, because they say these are controversial issues. They ignore the
fact that women represent 42 percent of the entire AFL-CIO
membership.<BR><BR><B><I>What will the labor movement look like twenty years
from now, or fifty?<BR></I></B><BR>Working people in the future will have to
deal with the fact that millions of workers will no longer have jobs, because
the economy is already in the process of change. New technology and automation
are reducing the workforce. That will be the most serious problem: who will get
the jobs?<BR><BR>What kind of living will the workers of tomorrow have? I don’t
fancy that it will be really great. The unions are still limited to wages and
hours. But we could end up with a poorly educated working class that cannot
compete with the working class of other countries. It’s going to be a very tough
thing for our children and grandchildren to cope with.<BR><BR>Our generation did
pretty well at surviving—not great, but pretty well. But the question that
bothers me is, What is the legacy that we can leave our children and
grandchildren that will help them in their future lives? I don’t see
any.<BR><BR>But I have confidence that our children and grandchildren will find
a way to deal with the incredible pressing problems that they will face. I have
in mind the Egyptian spring. Workers will stand so much, and then rebel. I do
have confidence that we will see that day. We are seeing some of it
today.<BR><BR>I, as an individual, am absolutely committed that for whatever
years I have left, I will do my part to see that working people have their
rights, and that the kind of chance for living that we promise people in the
preamble to our Constitution actually takes place.<BR><BR>I wouldn’t be working
spending my late years involved in these activities if I did not believe that
there’s something in human character in the human being that will rebel against
consistent abuse. I’m counting on that.<BR>
<HR align=center SIZE=3 width="100%">
<BR><B>Source URL:</B> <A
href="http://www.thenation.com/article/167632/qa-harry-kelber-working-people-have-be-involved-their-own-fate">http://www.thenation.com/article/167632/qa-harry-kelber-working-people-have-be-involved-their-own-fate</A><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR>------
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