Kelber Calls for Changes in Convention Voting Rules So Each Delegate Will Have the Same Single Vote

News Release

Harry Kelber, a candidate for a vice president seat on the AFL-CIO Executive Council, says that because of a lop-sided convention voting system that favors big international unions, it is virtually impossible for any independent candidate to challenge incumbents.
Kelber offers the following data to support his charge that the Executive Council has become a self-serving, self perpetuating oligarchy.

In the last 23 elections of national officers since the founding of the AFL-CIO, the only actual contest with a printed ballot was in 1995, when John Sweeney ran successfully for the federation presidency. But no incumbent Executive Council member was ever defeated in those fifty years.

A small union, like the Federation of Professional Athletes, had 1.700 convention votes, based on the size of its membership, which was more than six times the combined votes of the delegates from 47 State Federations and 226 Central Labor Councils who attended the AFL-CIO’s 2001 convention.

At the 2001 convention, each of the 22 delegates from the Service Employees International Union was entitled to 57,796 convention votes. By contrast, California and New York State Federations, each serving more than two million union members, had only one convention vote apiece.

Under the convention voting rules, the big international unions are entitled to as many votes as their reported per capita payments to the AFL-CIO, while state federations and central labor councils are restricted to one vote each, no matter what their size or importance.

This is an outrageously undemocratic system, yet neither Sweeney nor Stern have ever lifted a finger to change it, because it serves their bureaucratic interests, Kelber says. One of his campaign slogans is, "One Delegate, One Vote"

There is nothing radical about giving every delegate the same one vote. It is fair and equitable and used by most organizations, including the Canadian Labour Congress, to which most AFL-CIO international unions are affiliated and abide by its rules. Equality in voting is practiced even at meetings of the Executive Council, Kelber says.

With Sterns four or five insurgent unions preparing to quit the AFL-CIO, it will be interesting to see what effect their departure will have on the composition, of the Executive Council.