Why Do Our Officials Remain Mute
In the Public Debate on Hot Issues?

In this election season, there is intense public debate about what to do about Iraq, immigration, health care insurance and global warming. If you tune in on television and radio talk shows, surf the Internet or read your local newspaper, you’re bound to get the opinions, not only of politicians, but also doctors, teachers, scientists, movie stars, truck drivers and housewives, among others. But you’ll rarely find big-time labor leaders speaking publicly, even on economic issues where they are supposed to know a lot more than most of the talk-show guests.

It is sad to note that labor’s chief spokesperson is AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, who unfortunately lacks the charm, sparkling wit and “gift of gab” that would claim the attention of a TV or radio audience. Whatever leadership qualities Sweeney may possess, he is a poor communicator, his public utterances filled with tired clichés about “fairness” and “good jobs” and a series of “we must” that no one takes seriously. It does not help that Sweeney looks more like an elderly deacon than the savvy, straight-talking, well-informed personality that workers would like to see in a labor leader.

Sweeney speaks in a monotone and hardly ever shows strong emotion, even when he mentions the plight of working families. In the many years I’ve known Sweeney, I’ve never heard him crack a joke. Does he ever read a serious book? Does he go to the theater or attend a concert or a ball game? There never is a reference to any cultural, spiritual, or historical event in his speeches or his columns on the AFL-CIO web.

He is a high-class, high-priced bureaucrat, who lives in an impenetrable cocoon where power politics is the favored game and decisions affecting workers’ lives are reached behind closed doors. Sweeney loves that life. The six-figure salary, the perks and prestige suit him perfectly. That’s why he reneged on his promise, at age 70, not to run for president at the AFL-CIO’s 2005 convention.

But what about the 48 labor leaders who are members of the AFL-CIO Executive Council? Why haven’t any of them spoken publicly on issues that are of concern to their members? Most of them are more comfortable handing out orders to subordinates rather than participating in give-and-take public debate, where a slip of the tongue can cause them embarrassing problems. Their major concern is exercising control over their unionized fiefdoms. Why speak up and risk the charge they are trying to upstage Sweeney? It is also a question of guts and spine, leadership qualities that are largely absent in the upper echelons of the union movement.

Public Speaking — a Great Activity to Help Union Organizing

It is crucial that the AFL-CIO and the CtW train a corps of knowledgeable and articulate union members, whose personality and manner can win the attention of a television or radio audience and who would be equally effective in the living rooms of unorganized workers. Every Central Labor Council ought to have a Speakers Bureau, inviting affiliated local unions to send participants.

Good public speakers can create a favorable climate for union organizing. They can express labor’s message in clear, understandable language and respond to various questions that workers may have about joining a union. It is axiomatic that you can’t organize workers without talking to them and hearing them out. So let’s do it.

And wouldn’t it be just great if most of labor’s 16 million members began talking union to their friends, relatives, co-workers and neighbors?

Our two weekly columns and their archives (LaborTalk and The World of Labor) can be viewed and downloaded at our website: www.laboreducator.org.