Richard Trumka’s legacy will be the AFL-CIO’s future

by C.M. Lewis

Source: Flickr

Richard L. Trumka, long-time President of the AFL-CIO, has died, leaving a void previously filled by a giant of the movement—one once at the forefront of efforts to reform labor.

Trumka was born in southwestern Pennsylvania into a coal mining family. He, too, entered work in the mines in 1968, just over a year before Jock Yablonski, a reformer in the United Mine Workers’ of America, was murdered in southwestern Pennsylvania on the orders of the incumbent President, Tony Boyle. Trumka, who later completed a Bachelors’ of Science at Penn State University and became a lawyer for the UMWA after attending Villanova for law school, was deeply affected by Yablonski’s reform movement; Yablonski’s son, Chip, said that Trumka,“helped restore things to the way they should have been.”

When Trumka was first elected to office with the AFL-CIO as Secretary-Treasurer in 1995, he did so in the first contested convention election in AFL-CIO history. He won as he won the UMWA Presidency: as a militant reformer. As part of John Sweeney’s “New Voice” slate, he joined what was described as an “insurgent campaign to reinvigorate the American labor movement.” Sweeney and Trumka had a mission: to rebuild an ailing movement through large investments in organizing. As an AFL-CIO official, Trumka was deeply involved in these efforts, including coordinating support for the long-running Frontier casino strike in Las Vegas—a pivotal moment for Culinary 226. 

His description as a firebrand was earned. Along with leading bruising strikes as UMWA President, he made the case for razing labor law to the ground and starting over, pointing to Ronald Reagan’s weaponization of the National Labor Relations Board as proof that the law had evolved to trap organized labor. Such a position was unorthodox at best, but Trumka made the case, and he made it well. The law upon which the movement had too heavily relied could not be held as a barrier to advancing workers’ rights.

Under Sweeney and Trumka, organized labor began to embrace positions once unthinkable; the AFL-CIO, once a vocal proponent of the war in Vietnam, came out in opposition to the Iraq War. Positions on undocumented workers changed to emphasize immigrant justice, rather than the nativist positions once commonplace. In 2009, at the same convention in which Trumka was elected AFL-CIO President, the AFL-CIO vocally adopted a position in full support of LGBTQ+ rights.

But the opportunity to fulfill the full promise of “New Voice” didn’t last, and organized labor was forced to weather serious challenges. George W. Bush was elected President in 2000, launching an assault on federal workers and invoking Taft-Hartley to bust a longshore strike. The AFL-CIO split in 2005, and union density continued to decline. Over time, efforts to provide additional organizing support through the AFL-CIO declined as well, focusing instead on political lobbying. 

Trumka’s militancy tempered. By the time he was elected AFL-CIO President in 2009, replacing John Sweeney, he was no longer a firebrand arguing to raze labor law to the ground. But he still pushed the movement to fulfill its promise. During the 2008 Presidential primary, he gave a speech challenging racism within the labor movement; in 2014, he went to St. Louis in the wake of Michael Brown’s murder and made an impassioned case that organized labor could not ignore the growing movement for Black Lives.

Now, some people might ask me why our labor movement should be involved in all that has happened since the tragic death of Michael Brown in Ferguson. And I want to answer that question directly. How can we not be involved?

He also navigated the difficult waters of the Trump presidency: ones which brought unprecedented challenges and signs of life for organized labor. Trump’s presidency posed a unique crisis for the AFL-CIO; his victory raised serious questions about continued support for Democratic candidates from some rank-and-file union members. There were missteps; at times, Trumka was criticized for being too friendly with the Trump administration. But he never shied from holding Trump to account when necessary.

Navigating the Covid-19 pandemic presented a generational challenge for organized labor, and Trumka did not shy from placing organized labor on the side of the public good. The AFL-CIO strongly promoted vaccinations and fought for prioritizing workers in the pandemic’s economic relief, securing worker-first provisions totally absent from bills passed in the wake of the 2008-2009 financial crash. In recent weeks, Trumka forcefully supported vaccine mandates—a controversial choice viewed by some labor unions as an attack on their bargaining rights, and an expansion of employer power. 

Perhaps the most difficult challenge faced by Trumka came within the past year, and was in an area in which he had consistently pushed the movement forward: race. George Floyd’s murder and the national reckoning over policing showed that Trumka was unwilling to move beyond his sentiments expressed in 2014 and question the place of police within the labor movement. His positions, and the wider positions of the Federation, earned widespread criticism from activists and rank-and-file members who felt that labor should be doing more.

His difficulty with the recent sea-change in social movements highlights a stark reality: Trumka was not perfect, and his legacy is a complicated one. Allegations have been made that he targeted political enemies within the AFL-CIO leadership, and many labor leaders have had bitter experiences with Trumka’s exercise of his power. The AFL-CIO under his leadership was also criticized for its labor practices, fairly denounced as hypocritical. None would accuse him of being a collaborative leader, or one particularly tolerant of dissent.

Despite Sweeney and Trumka’s mission, organized labor has not arrested its decline. Some would argue that renewed emphasis on political lobbying (at the expense of organizing) hasn’t demonstrated better outcomes for the movement, pointing to legislative inertia in spite of Democratic control of Congress and the White House. The Change to Win split, while no longer as bitter as it once was, has yet to be healed. Unifying the movement seemed beyond Trumka—and not a thing in which he was particularly invested. 

But he and Sweeney were a break with the past, jettisoning the staid warhawks that once dominated AFL-CIO leadership. Bureaucrats like George Meany, Lane Kirkland, and Thomas Donahue were relics not fit for the purpose of leading the movement. By sweeping away the past, Sweeney and Trumka made more possible, and some of the gains which the movement has made—notably, the meteoric growth of the Service Employees’ International Union, which Sweeney once headed—can be traced to their vision for what the movement could be. 

This will ultimately be his legacy, and the legacy of New Voice. They failed to do what they promised, but they paved the way for future leadership to deliver. For all their failings, our movement is immeasurably better than it was in 1995, and better than it would have been had they not been elected. 

Richard Trumka did not deliver the movement he promised, and which we deserve. What he did do was make such a movement possible, clearing the way for something better than the decaying House of Labor presided over by past AFL-CIO leaders. Our House still needs rebuilding—and we need new, bold leadership to do it. The movement we build, and the leaders which lead it, will be Trumka’s legacy.

C.M. Lewis is an editor of Strikewave and a union activist in Pennsylvania.