Union Leaders Give Chavez-Thompson ‘Full Support’ in Texas Lt. Gov. Race

by Mike Hall, Jan 26, 2010

Linda Chavez-Thompson, AFL-CIO executive vice president emerita, and candidate for the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor of Texas, “is a tireless advocate for civil, human, women’s and worker rights,” says the AFL-CIO Executive Committee in a statement expressing its full support for her run.

Meeting yesterday in Washington, D.C., union leaders praised Chavez-Thompson as

one of America’s most revered and respected labor leaders….A little over two years after retiring from the AFL-CIO, she has decided to take her four decades of experience to another level to help working families in the state of Texas.

In the March 2 primary, she is running against Democratic candidates Ronnie Earle, a former county district attorney, and Austin delicatessen owner Marc Katz.

In 1995, Chavez-Thompson became the first person of color to be elected to one of the federation’s three highest offices, and the Executive Committee said her election

represented an historic change for the AFL-CIO and the recognition of her lifelong dedication to the cause of organized labor.

Since her 2007 retirement, Chavez-Thompson has continued to champion workers’ rights in her role as head of the Inter-American Regional Organization of Workers (ORIT), the International Trade Union Confederation’s (ITUC‘s) regional organization for the Americas. She also will serve as an adviser to AFL-CIO state federations and labor councils.

Last year, she traveled to Colombia on a delegation that told Colombian President Alvaro Uribe the U.S. union movement cannot support the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement until real progress is made to protect the lives and rights of trade union members.

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