USW has endorsed Trumka for AFL-CIO president

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The USW has endorsed Trumka for AFL-Cio president: PITTSBURGH – The United Steelworkers (USW) International Executive Board has unanimously endorsed Richard Trumka as the next president of the AFL-CIO.

Trumka, the federation’s current secretary-treasurer, is looking to succeed retiring AFL-CIO President John Sweeney at its convention in Pittsburgh this September. Trumka was first elected AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer in 1995.

“Not only does Richard have the experience and the intellectual capacity to do the job, he brings great heart and passion to the fight for issues that matter to America’s working families,” said USW International President Leo W. Gerard.

“We believe his life-long passion for helping workers, sparked by his own experiences as a third-generation coal miner, makes him the right person for the job.”

Steelworkers know Trumka for his willingness to support them and their issues on the picket lines across the country as well as in the halls of power in Washington, D.C.
http://www.usw.org/media_center/releases_advisories?id=0173
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This is his bio from AFL-Cio:

Richard L. Trumka was re-elected for a fourth term to the office of Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL-CIO in July 2005. He was first elected in 1995, the youngest secretary-treasurer in AFL-CIO history, as part of an insurgent campaign to reinvigorate the American labor movement. In 2009, President Barack Obama named Trumka to the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, chaired by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul A. Volcker.

Trumka led the creation of the AFL-CIO Capital Stewardship Program in 1997 to promote the retirement security of America’s working families. AFL-CIO member unions sponsor pension and benefit plans with more than $400 billion in assets and are a major force in the global capital markets. Under Trumka’s leadership, the AFL-CIO Capital Stewardship Program promotes corporate governance reform, investment manager accountability, pro-worker investment strategies, international pension fund cooperation and trustee education and support.

As a member of the AFL-CIO Executive Council, Trumka is chairman of the Strategic Approaches Committee, charged with assisting affiliated unions that seek assistance in achieving their strategic goals through collective bargaining. He also chairs the AFL-CIO Finance Committee and the AFL-CIO Capital Stewardship Committee, which works to ensure workers’ deferred wages are wisely invested to provide the best long-term benefits to America’s working families.

At the time of his 1995 election, Trumka was serving his third term as president of the United Mine Workers of America. During his tenure as UMWA president, Trumka led the union in two major strikes against the nation’s coal companies—actions that resulted in significant advances in employer-employee cooperation and enhanced mine workers’ job security, pensions and benefits.

A member of the AFL-CIO Executive Council since 1989, Trumka was instrumental in developing tactics to rally the support of international labor on behalf of U.S. workers struggling for workplace justice against multinational conglomerates. He also served on the executive boards of the International Miners’ Federation and the ICFTU and played a key role in organizing a new global coalition of coal miners’ unions in five countries.

Trumka, a third-generation coal miner from Nemacolin, Penn., began working in the mines at age 19. As a member of UMWA Local 6290, he served as chairman of the safety committee. He soon became an activist in the Miners for Democracy reform movement.

He is a graduate of Pennsylvania State University and holds a law degree from Villanova University Law School. He served four years on the legal staff of the UMWA during the reform administration of Arnold Miller, returning to work in the mines in 1978. Subsequently, he was elected to the union’s executive board in 1981 and first elected international president in 1982. Since 1995, he has served as President Emeritus of the United Mine Workers of America.

Among the many awards Trumka has received are the Gompers-Murray-Meany Award from the Massachusetts AFL-CIO and the Labor Responsibility Award from the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in 1990. In 1996 he received The Jewish National Fund Tree of Life Award for his outstanding commitment to the American labor movement, the nation and to the State of Israel. He was also honored by The Sons of Italy Foundation with its 2003 Humanitarian Award.

http://www.aflcio.org/aboutus/thisistheaflcio/leaders/officers_trumka.cfm
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this is the wiki bio: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Trumka

Richard Louis Trumka (July 24, 1949)[1] is an organized labor leader in the United States. He currently serves as the Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL-CIO, a post to which he was elected in 1995. He previously was president of the United Mine Workers from 1982 to December 22, 1995.

Trumka was born in Nemacolin, Pennsylvania, a third-generation coal miner and son of Frank Richard and Eola Elizabeth (Bertugli) Trumka.[1] He went to work in the mines at age 19. He received a bachelor of science degree from Pennsylvania State University in 1971 and a law degree from Villanova University in 1974.[1][2] He married the former Barbara Vidovich in 1982, and they have one son.[1]

From 1974 to 1979, Trumka was a staff attorney with the United Mine Workers at their headquarters in Washington, D.C.[1] He was elected to the board of directors of UMWA District 4 in 1981, and president of the United Mine Workers in 1982.[1]

While president of the UMWA, Trumka led the successful nine-month strike against the Pittston Coal Company, which has been called a rallying symbol for the entire labor movement.[3] A major issue in the dispute was Pittston's refusal to pay into the industrywide health and retirement fund created in 1950. Mr. Trumka encouraged non-violent civil disobedience to confront the company and relied on a sophisticated corporate campaign involving Wall Street investors.

Besides his domestic labor activities, then-President Trumka established an office that raised U.S. mineworker solidarity with the mineworkers of South Africa while they were fighting racial apartheid.[4] He further served as the U.S. Shell boycott chairman, which challenged the multinational Royal Dutch/Shell Group for its continued business dealings in South Africa. For these steps, Trumka received the 1990 Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award.

Upon joining the AFL-CIO, Trumka has focused on creating investment programs for the pension and benefit funds of the labor movement and fighting what he believes to be excessive corporate profits. He chairs the AFL-CIO Industrial Union Council, a consortium of manufacturing unions focusing on key issues in trade, health care and labor law reform. He co-chairs the China Currency Coalition, an alliance of industry, agriculture, services, and worker organizations whose stated mission is to support U.S. manufacturing.

On July 1, 2008, Trumka delivered a speech attacking racism in the 2008 presidential election.[5] A video [6] with an excerpt of the speech attracted more than 525,000 hits on YouTube, with Trumka becoming the first labor speaker to reach such a broad audience in cyberspace.[citation needed]


[edit] Notes
1.^ a b c d e f Who's Who in America. 62nd ed. New Providence, N.J.: Marquis Who's Who, 2007. ISBN 0083797011
2.^ Jim McKay, "From Mines to Summit of Unionism," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 23, 1995.
3.^ Frank Swoboda, "Coal Miner Strike Was Symbol for Labor Movement," Washington Post, January 2, 1990.
4.^ Hill, Sylvia. "Presentation: The Free South African Movement." African National Congress. October 10- 13, 2004.
5.^ John Nichols, "AFL's Trumka: Labor Must Battle Racism to Elect Obama," Capital Times, July 3, 2008.
6.^ AFL-CIO's Richard Trumka on Racism and Obama