State and Local Leaders Honor Sweeney, Discuss Labor’s Future

by James Parks, Sep 12, 2009

IUPAT President Jimmy Williams and AFL-CIO President John Sweeney share a laugh at the state and local conference.

Christine Trujillo, president of the New Mexico Federation of Labor, addresses the state and local conference today in Pittsburgh.

Participants at the state and local conference discussed strategies for building a stronger labor movement in our communities.

The AFL-CIO state federations and local central labor councils are the keys to reviving the union movement in communities across the country. They prove their value every day by building political power from the ground up, training new leaders, supporting organizing drives and creating coalitions with groups who share our goals.

Today, more than 250 state and local leaders met in advance of the AFL-CIO’s 26th Constitutional Convention to discuss the best ways to build a stronger union movement in our states and communities. The State Federation, Area and Central Labor Council Conference offers a forum for local union leaders to discuss strategies and share best practices to build on the political and organizing successes since the last convention four years ago.

Retiring AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, who was honored for his leadership over the past 14 years and commitment to strengthening the movement’s grassroots, told the local leaders they had pulled the federation through some difficult times.

You all proved that a unified labor movement at the grassroots is what workers need.

You’ve played a key role in all the progress we’ve made from passing so many minimum wage and living wage laws, to supporting our organizing campaigns that have brought in an average of 450,000 new members every year, to leading our crusade for diversity, inclusion and full participation of women and minorities.

When so many in the media wrote us off politically, you put the wheels on the strongest political program in our history.

But there is still plenty of work to be done. Postal Workers (APWU) Secretary-Treasurer Terry Stapleton, vice chair of the Executive Council Committee of State and Local Strategies, told the group:

We are here to change the labor movement, to strengthen the labor movement and to change the United States for working people.

James Williams, president of the Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT), who chairs the committee, agreed, saying:

We are at the crossroads of change in the labor movement. We can sit inside Washington, D.C., but the real labor movement is in the streets of Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Wisconsin. It is up to you to make the movement better. You know what you have to do.

Unity, solidarity and strong grassroots action are even more important now, Sweeney said, because working people are on the threshold of achieving two of their most cherished goals: affordable, quality health care for everyone and the freedom to organize and bargain for every worker in America.

In a very real sense, the AFL-CIO has become the action center of the progressive movement in our country. At the national level as well as the state and local level we’re not only mobilizing our own union family we’re pulling our allies along with us.

Sweeney added that his legacy is the strong grassroots strength of the progressive movement:

My legacy is all of you, who believe as I do that the highest calling in life is building a bigger, stronger labor movement and using it to help working families have the kind of lives they deserve. Your responsibility is to continue the work we’ve begun together—not just keeping the pace, but increasing it. I can ask no more of you and you should demand no less of yourselves.

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