PITTSBURGH - Former UMWA President Richard Trumka, who is well known in the West Virginia coalfields, was elected today as the new President of the national AFL-CIO.
Trumka will be joined in leadership of the nation's largest organized union by two women, Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler and Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker. Shuler, 39, is the youngest person ever to become an officer of the AFL-CIO.
Trumka, who previously served as AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer, Shuler, formerly the executive assistant to Electrical Workers (IBEW) President Edwin Hill, and Holt Baker, who was re-elected as executive vice president, were voted into office by acclamation this afternoon at the AFL-CIO national meeting.
Trumka reflected on his upbringing in a union family in western Pennsylvania in his acceptance speech.
"Even though the face of the American labor movement has changed, one thing hasn’t: It’s that the surest, the fastest, most effective way to lift workers and our families into the middle-class is with the strength, that can only, only come with a union contract," Trumka said. "And, sisters and brothers, that fundamental truth hasn’t been more critical to the future of this country than it is right now because, today, the American middle-class isn’t being squeezed—we are being crushed. The mirage of prosperity through borrowed money has dissolved—and now we’re left with the reality of a hollowed-out economy and a broken financial system."
Trumka succeeds John J. Sweeney, who retired as president after serving in that role since 1995. Trumka had been second in command at the AFL-CIO as secretary-treasurer.
Trumka was leader of the Mine Workers from 1982 to 1995.
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