AFL-CIO Executive Council Elects Holt Baker, Approves Political Mobilization Plans

by Mike Hall, Sep 21, 2007

The AFL-CIO Executive Council today unanimously elected Arlene Holt Baker as AFL-CIO executive vice president, making her the first African American woman in one of the federation’s three top offices. Holt Baker, the daughter of a domestic worker and laborer in Fort Worth, Texas, brings 30 years of experience as a union and grassroots organizer and political activist to the post.

Holt Baker replaces Linda Chavez-Thompson, who served the labor movement for 40 years and announced her retirement earlier this month.

The council, meeting in Washington, D.C., also approved plans for the AFL-CIO’s political and membership mobilization program, Labor 2008. Labor 2008 will be the largest political mobilization ever undertaken by the union movement.

Holt Baker, who as a teenager got her first job in programs established through President Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty” initiative, began her union career with AFSCME.

As an organizer, international representative and, eventually, AFSCME’s international union area director in California, Holt Baker helped public-sector workers win a voice at work and secure contracts with better wages and pay equity for women. She also was instrumental in AFSCME’s political programs, mobilizing union voters in national, state and local elections.

In mapping out political efforts through the 2008 elections, the Executive Council set goals to mobilize millions of union voters across the country to elect a pro-worker president, gain a greater majority in the U.S. Senate and House and expand the ranks of pro-worker state legislators and governors. Says AFL-CIO President John Sweeney:

Today the AFL-CIO is sending a powerful message that we are going to change the course of our country in 2008 by electing a president and candidates at all levels who are committed to restoring the promise of an America to working people. America’s workers are more energized than ever before. They are determined to create an historical political realignment in Washington that will work to rebuild our ailing middle class and restore hope to the millions of workers who have been left behind by seven years of Bush Administration corporate-friendly policies.

Labor 2008 will recruit, train and mobilize more than 200,000 volunteers to carry out the core mission of the union’s political strategy—talking with union members by knocking on doors, making phone calls, distributing information at worksites and communicating online. They will discuss with union voters the vital issues all working families face: health care, retirement security, jobs, economic equality, trade policy and the freedom of workers to form and join unions.

Working America, the AFL-CIO’s community affiliate, will play a big role in expanding the union turnout vote, with plans to increase its membership from 1.6 million to 2 million by summer 2008. Says Gerald McEntee, AFSCME president and chair of the Political Committee:

Our members are building an army to make more calls, knock on more doors and turn out more voters than ever. We’re going for the trifecta: the House, the Senate, and the White House.

The AFL-CIO has not endorsed a candidate for president. While some individual unions have made endorsements, the AFL-CIO must have a two-thirds consensus among its unions, weighted by membership, to endorse.

In 1995, Holt Baker came to the AFL-CIO as an executive assistant to Chavez-Thompson who was the first officer in the executive vice president post, which was created in 1995 by the New Voice ticket during its campaign to head up the federation. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka and Chavez-Thompson were elected on the New Voice ticket in 1995 and most recently were re-elected in 2005.

When Holt Baker came to the AFL-CIO, one of her first assignments was heading up the successful effort to defeat California’s anti-worker, right-wing funded Prop. 226, which would have weakened the voices of union members in the political process.

She also served as the first director of the AFL-CIO’s Voice@Work campaign to build political and community support for freedom of workers to form unions. Most recently, Holt Baker led the efforts to mobilize a labor-movement-wide response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and to bring good jobs and affordable housing to the Gulf Coast region.

Chavez-Thompson dedicated more than more than 40 years to the union movement and while she plans to spend most of her time with her children and grandchildren, she says she will remain active in the cause of social and economic justice as the AFL-CIO’s first executive vice president emerita and chairwoman of the AFL-CIO Immigration Committee. She also will continue to serve as head of the Inter-American Regional Organization of Workers (ORIT), the International Trade Union Confederation’s (ITUC‘s) regional organization for the Americas.

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