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“Why should I listen to anything Harry Kelber says?” exclaimed a visibly indignant Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO.

Maybe because Kelber, 98 years young, has been honestly fighting for labor rights as a worker, union organizer, pamphleteer, author, professor and overall hairshirt of the moribund organized labor movement for 78 years-or 15 years before Trumka, the former coal miner and United Mine Workers’ president, was born.

Kelber writes and speaks about what is on the minds of millions of union workers and non-union workers. Why aren’t organized labor’s leaders more aggressive in addressing the plight of American labor by challenging big companies and their political allies? Why didn’t the AFL-CIO leadership hold Barack Obama in 2009, 2010, and 2011 to his specific 2008 promises to press Congress for a $9.50 federal minimum wage by 2011 and, when under control of the Democrats, get Congress to pass the “card check” that would give millions of workers a chance to organize in Walmart, McDonalds and other companies that employ low-wage labor and provide few benefits?

How can the AFL-CIO’s “policy of silence and secrecy  serve the interest of union members?” Kelber criticizes the Federation for its top-down control, its aversion to any democratic process for its elections, and for not taking full advantage of the Wall Street crash, the taxpayer bailouts, and U.S. corporations sending jobs to repressive dictatorships abroad.