National Nurses United

Labor of Love F Nearing 98, Harry Kelber is still pushing the labor movement to do better and fulfill its potential. BY C A R L G I N S B U R G rom his perch high up on Brooklyn Height���s north bank, Harry Kelber can see across New York Harbor at all of Wall Street, its skyscrapers stacked in jagged outline. ���They are dominating our country. The government is subservient to Wall Street,��� said Kelber, never one to pull punches. ���We need a settlement to make up for what was taken. They are getting away with murder.��� On June 20, Harry Kelber turns 98. With remarkable clarity, focus, and recall, this venerable labor activist and educator, writer, father and grandfather, has the poise���and hearing!���of a man several decades younger. He is articulate and passionate, indefatigable and prolific��� still turning out three columns a week for distribution on the Internet, various newsletters, and his extensive network of labor contacts. ���Our unions should be particularly concerned about the 5.3 million people who have not had a paycheck for 27 weeks or more,��� he wrote recently. This day, he added, ���Union leaders need to win victories���small and large. But you can���t call curtailment of anti-union legislation a victory!��� Kelber has seen much in his long life, which makes this conclusion all the more startling: ���Billion-dollar CEOs and millions without healthcare living on poverty wages, and a corrupt political system. I have never seen it quite as bad as today.��� He was asked, what is the secret of a mind so engaged at 97? ���I do not get easily discouraged,��� he offered with a smile. ���And I don���t go to bed until I���m tired.��� Which is very late���well past midnight. Next to him sits a pile of publications, works of Upton Sinclair and Jack London, and a rifled New York Times from that day. ���The Times has a peculiar way on labor,��� Kelber noted. ���Good on events 18 N AT I O N A L N U R S E but short on criticism. Reporters soft pedal, afraid to lose their access to labor leadership.��� Kelber was raised in Brooklyn, one of four siblings and the first born in the United States. His father, Zalman, emigrated from Russia in 1911, leaving behind a wife, Ita, and daughter. It took two years of working and saving to bring them over. His father, whose English was never more than rudimentary, was a founder of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers. He attended public schools, graduating from Thomas Jefferson High School, and to this day touts it������top-notch public schools,��� he says. Just three months into his freshman year at Cornell University, Zalman Kelber died and Kelber���s mother summoned him home, for good. He would need to help support the family. It was 1933 and a Depression was raging. Weinstein Food Store, a big store along the lines of today���s supermarket, hired him. He worked 78-hour weeks, for two years. It was at Weinstein that he learned first hand of the pernicious practice of ���speed up.��� Weinstein would add up sales at the end of each day. ���The person with the lowest sales could get fired, unless total sales were up,��� Kelber recounted. ���We were shivering.��� Labor was in his blood; now it was in his muscle. Today, he notes that both he and National Nurses United Executive Director RoseAnn DeMoro, who once worked and unionized supermarket checkers, ���come out of grocery stores.��� Over his long career, Kelber has been and continues to be one of the most outspoken constructive critics of the labor movement, of unions, and of labor leaders at the helm of organizations such as the AFL-CIO. In an even and articulate manner, Kelber saves his considerable ire for W W W. N A T I O N A L N U R S E S U N I T E D . O R G A P R I L | M AY 2 0 1 2

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