AFL-CIO President John Sweeney last month announced that he and Executive Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson and Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka will seek re-election at the federation’s next convention, scheduled for the summer of 2005.“Eight years ago, we ran for office calling for an AFL-CIO that focused on changing and growing the labor movement and making workers’ voices heard in their workplaces, their communities, the nation and the global economy,” Sweeny said. “We’ve achieved a lot. We have made growth the number one priority of our movement, more unions than ever are focused on organizing and we are building a movement to defend workers’ freedom to form unions. We have created a political program for the labor movement that is second to none —a model imitated across the political spectrum. We are changing the debate about trade and globalization and we’re building power for workers in the capital markets. We have created a vibrant new labor movement at the grassroots, helped unite the union movement to stand up for immigrant workers’ rights, and brought thousands of young people into our efforts through Union Summer and campus outreach.”
However, he also cautioned, “We have to escalate our efforts to confront America with its own human rights crisis, the destruction of American workers’ freedom to form unions, and escalate our capacity at every level to help workers form unions. We must create a new industrial policy to stop the hemorrhaging of middle class manufacturing jobs that are the backbone of this country and we must work to extend quality, affordable health care to every man, woman and child in America. The fight for good jobs, secure, defined benefit pensions, civil and workers’ rights and workers’ freedom to form unions has never been more urgent.”
Sweeney was elected president of the AFL-CIO in October 1995 and has been re-elected twice since then. At the time of his election, he was serving his fourth four-year term as president of Service Employees International Union.
Chavez-Thompson became the highest-ranking woman in the labor movement when she was first elected to the new position of AFL-CIO executive vice president at the federation’s 1995 convention. Previously, she was vice president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and executive director of AFSCME Council 42.
The youngest secretary-treasurer in AFL-CIO history, Trumka was first elected to the post in October 1995 at the age of 46. At that time, he was serving his third term as president of the Mine Workers.
Printer Friendly Page