Richard Trumka fit the profile of a traditional union leader. He got his hands dirty as a miner before he ever gripped a podium and addressed a crowd... The Nation
One of Trumpka's most important positions was opposing the job sucking trade agreements, including the Hillary backed Pacific Trade Agreement in 2016, which Trump used to help beat her. Where was Randi on that issue? Supporting anything Hillary backed. In essence, Randi heading the AFL-CIO would be like inserting a Clinton operative - the Clintons who were fundamentally anti-union --- and if you doubt that just look at the record in Arkansas and the White House.
Sara Nelson actually worked her way up by working on the job. Randi was handed a job to buttress her rise to lead the union. Sara Nelson actually served drinks in the aisles and dealt with unruly customers. I bet Randi never had to deal with an unruly student.
Nelson has been a flight attendant with United Airlines since August, 1996.[6] Soon after beginning her career, based in Boston for United Airlines, Nelson became an activist in the Boston AFA Local. She served in a variety of roles including the elected position of Council Representative. In 2002 Nelson was selected by AFA leaders at United Airlines to serve as Communications Chair.[7]
She previously served as AFA's international vice president for a term beginning January 1, 2011. AFA-CWA represents nearly 50,000 flight attendants at 20 airlines. [She] worked four jobs to pay off her student debt, including as a substitute teacher, waitress, linen salesperson, and temp at an insurance agency.[5]
Funny - Nelson may have as much teaching experience as Randi.
Happy Friday, August 6, 2021
I must have temporarily - or permanently - lost my mind yesterday when I speculated about Randi Weingarten replacing Richard Trumpka as head of the AFL-CIO. [AFL-CIO Trumpka Dead, Is Randi in play to succeed? Implications for AFT/UFT? Flight Attendent union leader and progressive Sara Nelson in running]
Then I watched Randi's appearance on Morning Joe yesterday and video of Trumpka, who headed the Mineworkers union. Would miners and other workers accept a teacher union head as their leader? My brainstrust convinced me I was being delusional. Just watching how Randi waffles and obfuscates and is often so cloying convinced me.
We considered Sara Nelson and as head of the Flight Attendant union with a very public face during the pandemic, she seemed more likely to be accepted. The third option is Liz Shuler, Secretary-Treasurer and designated successor. Thus we will see the first woman to head the AFL-CIO in history -- unless a dark horse emerges.
The first ever woman elected to the position in 2009, Shuler also holds the
distinction of being the youngest officer ever to sit on the federation's Executive Council. Coming from Portland, Oregon, Shuler has been at the forefront of progressive labor initiatives like green job programs and the fight for workers' rights for many years, starting as an organizer at her local union.Prior to her election as secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO, Shuler was part of the Executive Leadership team of the Electrical Workers (IBEW)....Shuler first became active in union work after college. Her first job was as a union organizer for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 125, working on a campaign to organizer clerical workers at PGE.[3][5][7] She became a lobbyist for the IBEW in 1997, representing the union before the Oregon Legislature.[3][5]
OK. Shuler may be the favorite now and actually comes across as more progressive than Randi - for those doubters -- watch what Randi does, not what she says.
But here's something that makes Sara Nelson more legit and more Trumpka-like than either Randi or Shuler -- she actually worked in the industry she represents, just like Trumpka was a real miner.
But wait you say -- doesn't Randi claim to have worked for 6 years as a high school teacher - she mentioned her teaching on Morning Joe. We've reported many times that Randi only worked 6 months on a full schedule at Clara Barton HS, a school hand-picked for the lawyer from the UFT who had to show some in school creds in order to become UFT president. Everyone at the school knew what her future was and she was treated accordingly. That's not real world experience.
Sara Nelson actually served drinks in the aisles and dealt with unruly customers. I bet Randi never had to deal with an unruly student.
As for Shuler, she functioned as a union organizer and lobbyist, which give her some creds. And coming from the IBEW probably rates higher than the AFT, which is still not the largest teacher union. Now if Randi were heading a merged AFT/NEA with almost 4 million members, that might have bolstered her case.
But I also am thinking about the power as AFT leader of a union versus heading the AFL-CIO which is a coalition of unions with no actual power. I could also make a case that Mulgrew as head of the UFT actually has more real power than Randi as head of the AFT -- but the UFT is the tail that wags the AFT dog --- both need each other to maintain their position.
The brainstrust also speculated as to whether Mulgrew would even be taken seriously as a potential AFT leader. I heard from my old buddies in Chicago after they won their election 11 years ago that they had developed a good working relationship with Mulgrew, though politically, the Chicago leadership was more aligned with MORE.
Here's The Nation with a Trumpka obit
Richard Trumka, 1949–2021
The labor leader practiced “true solidarity”—from his days as an anti-apartheid activist to his bold embrace of immigrant rights and Black Lives Matter.
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/richard-trumka-afl-cio-death
In one of his early moves as the new president of the United Mine Workers of America, Richard Trumka established a solidarity program with Black mine workers in South Africa. It was the mid-1980s. The apartheid regime was tightening its brutal grip on South Africa, and then-President Ronald Reagan was refusing to align the United States with the global movement to put economic pressure on the racist regime. As the thirtysomething leader of a union that was fighting plenty of its own battles at home, Trumka responded to the call from the National Union of Mineworkers in South Africa for a boycott of Royal Dutch Shell, a multinational oil conglomerate that had invested heavily in mining and other South African industries.
Trumka chaired the US boycott committee, playing a critical role in getting other unions on board and, with TransAfrica’s Randall Robinson, became one of the most outspoken advocates for the economic struggle against apartheid. With Robinson, the UMWA president urged the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations to support the boycott, explaining, “Without Shell, the South African government could not withstand the pressure and would fall. They are the pillar. That company, more than any other, is propping up the government of South Africa.” Trumka then toured the country to rally support for the boycott and the broader fight against apartheid, telling union crowds that they had to join this struggle.
“True labor solidarity cannot be limited by national boundaries or the color of a person’s skin. My opposition to apartheid comes not only from my personal beliefs and values, but is also deeply rooted in the history of my union,” he declared at a historic rally in Chicago in 1988.
Richard Trumka, who would go on to become the president of the AFL-CIO, died unexpectedly Thursday at age 72.
He had many strengths as a union leader. But his greatest strength was his willingness to push this country’s labor movement to be better. “Unafraid to challenge racism and classism anywhere,” recalled Wade Henderson of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “Richard Trumka was a civil- and human-rights champion who leaves behind a legacy matched by few. From his participation in the Free South Africa Movement protests to his influential leadership of the AFL-CIO, he unquestionably moved mountains in the fight for a more just and equal society.”
Long before he assumed the presidency of the AFL-CIO in 2009—after a 14-year stint as its secretary-treasurer—Trumka positioned himself as an old-school labor activist who was willing to fight for the movement, as he did perhaps most notably during the epic 1989–90 strike against the Pittston Coal Company. But there was more to Trumka’s vision. He had come out of the mines with an agenda for getting union members to embrace new realities and new opportunities. He did not always succeed. During his decades as an AFL-CIO leader, unions faced setbacks in fights over trade policy (especially during the presidency of a Democrat, Bill Clinton, who had been elected with labor support); wrangled over organizing strategies so intensely that some major affiliates broke with the federation; faced a brutal assault on collective-bargaining rights from Republican governors such as Wisconsin’s Scott Walker and Ohio’s John Kasich; and struggled to adjust to the radical transformation of work with the full arrival of the digital age, apps, and the gig economy.
Yet Trumka never lost sight of his mission as a modernizer for a labor movement that had often been too slow to embrace international solidarity, too cautious in addressing racial disparities, and too myopic in its approach to immigrant workers. What was striking about Trumka was his determination to move beyond “lip-service solidarity” and get down to the serious work of organizing on behalf of economic, social, and racial justice.
Trumka did this, too, in the thick of the 2008 presidential race, when he boldly confronted the reality of racism within the ranks of the movement to which he had devoted his life.
“Brothers and sisters, we can’t tap dance around the fact that there are a lot of folks out there who do not want to vote for Barack Obama because of the color of his skin,” Trumka told the United Steelworkers convention that July. “A lot of them are good union people; they just can’t get past this idea that there’s something wrong with voting for a Black man,” he continued. “Well, those of us who know better can’t afford to look the other way.”
Then, in one of the most meaningful statements of the 2008 campaign, Trumka declared:
I’m not one for quoting dead philosophers, but back in the 1700s, Edmund Burke said: “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.” Well, there’s no evil that’s inflicted more pain and more suffering than racism—and it’s something we in the labor movement have a special responsibility to challenge. It’s our special responsibility because we know, better than anyone else, how racism is used to divide working people. We’ve seen how companies set worker against worker—how they throw whites a few extra crumbs off the table—and how we all end up losing.
That’s why the labor movement—imperfect as we are—is the most integrated institution in American life. I don’t think we should be out there pointing fingers in peoples’ faces and calling them racist; instead we need to educate them that if they care about holding on to their jobs, their health care, their pensions, and their homes—if they care about creating good jobs with clean energy, child care, pay equity for women workers—there’s only going to be one candidate on the ballot this fall who’s on their side… only one candidate who’s going to stand up for their families… only one candidate who’s earned their votes… and his name is Barack Obama!
Trumka was proven right. Obama recognized that his 2008 victories in swing states such as Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania—where Republican strategists had hoped to stir tensions sufficiently to peel off a significant number of union votes—owed much to the diligent campaigning by Trumka and his allies.
When Trumka took over as AFL-CIO president the following year, he continued to prod the labor movement to make real the promise of the labor anthem “Solidarity Forever.” In his acceptance speech at the federation’s convention in Pittsburgh, Trumka promised to forge “a new kind of labor movement—one shaped to meet the needs of Americans in a changing economy.”
Did Trumka ever need his miner's check? Like to pay the mortgage?
ReplyDeleteDid Nelson need her flight attendant check? Like to buy groceries?
I imagine Nelson worked for the pleasure of being groped.
ReplyDeleteI imagine Nelson worked for the pleasure of being groped.
ReplyDelete