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AFL-CIO Thanks Sweeney for His Service as President |
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During the 2009 AFL-CIO Convention, President John Sweeney will be stepping down after more than five decades in the union movement and 14 years heading the AFL-CIO. Today, the AFL-CIO Convention unanimously approved a resolution honoring Sweeney and pledging to carry on his values and his hard work.
Union leaders and activists from across the movement stood in support of the resolution, praising Sweeney as a leader and as a person.
As president of the AFL-CIO, Sweeney has fought to strengthen local union organizations and get them involved in their communities, and he also has strengthened the global union movement and increased the role of America’s unions in fighting for workers around the world. Through the creation of Working America, Sweeney helped mobilize and educated 3 million workers without a union. Through the founding of the Alliance for Retired Americans, he gave a voice to 4 million retirees and kept them actively engaged. It’s a record to be proud of and a legacy that will keep the union movement strong in the future.
Denis Hughes, the New York State AFL-CIO president who came up through the ranks of union leadership with Sweeney in New York City, said Sweeney was an inspiration and an innovator:
John really reinvented the way a union should work. He opened it up…he brought the community in. You always strived to make us better than what we do. You strove to make us more open, more progressive than we even know we could be.
AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka praised Sweeney’s dedication to his family, to the AFL-CIO and to all workers:
Everything he has done has been marked by his unwavering commitment to the core mission of our labor movement—fighting for social and economic justice. With Resolution 59, we honor John by recommitting ourselves to the work to which he has dedicated his life.
AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker talked about Sweeney as a mentor, a friend and an advocate for a diverse and energetic union movement:
John’s commitment to diversity moved beyond resolve to implementation. I, along with so many others, am the beneficiary of his commitment to a more diverse labor movement at every level. John is not just a man of words, but a man of action.
John has been tireless in his drive and determination for a social and economic agenda that benefits not just the labor movement but all of America.
Elizabeth Bunn, secretary-treasurer of the UAW, noted that in John Sweeney’s AFL-CIO, the doors were opened to women and people of color, to gay and lesbian workers and to immigrants—and it’s a stronger movement with a brighter future because of it, and because of Sweeney’s energy.
Sweeney accepted the honor and promised that, even as he retired from the AFL-CIO, he would continue to advocate on behalf of workers:
Whatever I’ve been able to do is because of all of you…every one of you I owe a debt of gratitude….It’s been an honor to serve working men and women, and I pledge to continue as long as I can.
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