AFL-CIO President John Sweeney: Solidarity Is Our Way of Life
With the convening of the 26th AFL-CIO Constitutional Convention this afternoon in Pittsburgh, nearly 2,000 delegates, alternates and guests took part in the formal opening ceremony and paid tribute to retiring AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. Following greetings by Pennsylvania AFL-CIO President Bill George, Jack Shea, president of the Allegheny County [Pittsburgh] Labor Council, and former Pittsburgh Steelers player Franco Harris, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka welcomed everyone, noting how great it is to be in Pittsburgh, “the city of bridges.”
And bridges are the perfect illustration of what we’ll be talking about over the next few days. Bridges that connect diverse people, diverse unions, diverse communities and diverse nations. Bridges to cross together, so we can turn around America….Some of the bridges America needs have been burnt—destroyed by years of a rampant corporate agenda embraced by the Bush administration. It’s hard to overstate just how damaging those years have been.
Our unions and the workers we represent are suffering in a historic collapse. But at the very same time, we have historic opportunities. New bridges with a new administration, a new Congress and rivers of hope flowing through the people of our country. Our Convention has a theme for today: We are many, we are one.
That’s our power—and it’s our joy.
Women, minorities and LGBT comprise up 43 percent of convention delegates—making up the most diverse ever AFL-CIO Convention and meeting the requirements of a convention resolution passed in 2005 that stated delegates must represent the composition of their unions. After the resounding hymns of the Solidarity Chorus, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid greeted the convention by video.
But at the heart and center of today’s events was the tribute to AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, who has devoted more than 50 years to improving the lives of America’s working families. From Vice President Joe Biden to Working America regional director Jenn Jannon, famous leaders and everyday workers talked in the video about how Sweeney strengthened the union movement through his outreach to diverse groups of workers and through massive member political mobilization that reshaped Congress and the White House.
Sweeney, raised in the Bronx, learned the importance of unions as a child, seeing the difference between the wages and working conditions of his father, a member of the transit union, and his mother, who worked as a domestic without a union. Sweeney began his lifelong devotion to organizing when, as a teenage caddy working at a country club golf course, he organized fellow caddies to successfully demand a raise.
His first job in the labor movement was with the International Ladies’ Garment Workers, which later merged with the Clothing and Textile Workers Union. He joined SEIU Local 32B in New York City in 1961 as a union representative. Sweeney was elected president of Local 32B in 1976 and led two citywide strikes of apartment maintenance workers during the 1970s. In 1980, he became president of SEIU and has led the AFL-CIO since 1995.
Following a moving video tribute to Sweeney, he said in his keynote address:
I’ve loved our labor movement all my life. There is no greater honor than the opportunity to serve working people, and the best thing about this job has been all of you. You are the magic of our movement, the source of my spirit and the iron will that moves us forward.
Under Sweeney’s leadership the AFL-CIO became the nation’s strongest grassroots political action movement to work for progressive change. He enlarged the labor movement by founding Working America, an affiliate for people without a union on the job that now has 3 million members. He forged new alliances with communities of faith, academics, students and more—and through new partnerships with worker centers and workers who are doing groundbreaking organizing on their own. For Sweeney, his life’s work has been underlined by the driving force of the union movement: solidarity. To thunderous applause and several standing ovations, Sweeney delivered his final keynote address as AFL-CIO president.
For us, solidarity is more than just a strategy, it’s a way of life. We believe in helping each other. We care about our brothers and sisters.
Solidarity is what gives workers the collective courage to form a union, to fight back against a greedy employer.
Solidarity is what compelled thousands of first responders and construction workers to risk their lives at Ground Zero eight years ago last Friday.
Solidarity is what saved 155 airline passengers who could have drowned in the icy waters of the Hudson River.
Solidarity is what compels a firefighter to dive into an inferno to save a stranger, a teacher to refuse to give up on a child or back off from a battle with a school board.
Your solidarity is what pulled us through when our federation split apart—you cared more about our common purpose than your own self-interest—and proved that: “We are many, we are one.”
Solidarity, the heart and soul of America’s labor movement—and the core of AFL-CIO President John Sweeney’s life mission.
