Richard Trumka
Encyclopedia
Richard Louis Trumka is an organized labor leader in the United States
. He was elected President of the AFL-CIO
on September 16, 2009, at the labor federation
's convention in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
. He served as the Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL-CIO, from 1995 to 2009, and prior to that was President of the United Mine Workers
from 1982 to December 22, 1995. Mr. Trumka was named in Esquire Magazine's 2011 Americans of the Year.
near Pittsburgh, is an Italian American
, third-generation Polish American
, Roman Catholic, coal miner
son of Frank Richard and Eola Elizabeth (Bertugli) Trumka. He went to work in the mine
s in 1968. He received a bachelor of science
degree from Pennsylvania State University
in 1971 and a law degree
from Villanova University
in 1974. He married Barbara Vidovich in 1982. They have one son.
He was elected to the board of directors of UMWA District 4 in 1981 and became President of the United Mine Workers in 1982.
While President of the UMWA, Trumka led a successful nine-month strike against the Pittston Coal Company
in 1989, which became a symbol of resistance against employer cutbacks and retrenchment for the entire labor movement. A major issue in the dispute was Pittston's refusal to pay into the industrywide health and retirement fund created in 1950. Trumka encouraged non-violent civil disobedience
to confront the company and relied on a corporate campaign
involving Wall Street
investors.
The United Mine Workers conducted a nationwide strike against Peabody Coal in 1993. Trumka was asked to respond to the possibility that some coal companies might hire permanent replacement workers. He told the Associated Press
in September 1993, "I'm saying if you strike a match and you put your finger in it, you're likely to get burned." He also said, "That doesn't mean I'm threatening to burn you. That just means if you strike the match, and you put your finger in it, common sense will tell you it'll burn your finger. Common sense will tell you that in these strikes, that when you inject scabs
, a number of things happen. And a confrontation is one of the potentials that can happen. Do I want it to happen? Absolutely not. Do I think it can happen? Yes, I think it can happen." The Associated Press reported that he was not threatening violence, and noted that UMWA staff had spent "thousands of man hours trying to prevent anything from happening ... to our members or by our members."
Besides his domestic labor activities, Trumka established an office that raised U.S. mineworker solidarity with the miners in South Africa
while they were fighting apartheid. 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
.
During his tenure as Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL-CIO, Trumka focused on creating investment programs for the pension
and benefit funds of the labor movement, capital market strategies, and demanding corporate accountability to America's communities. He chaired 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.
But Trumka's tenure as Secretary-Treasurer was not without controversy. In 1996, Teamsters
president Ron Carey
was locked in a tight reelection battle with James P. Hoffa
, son of disappeared Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa
and a long-time Teamsters union attorney. Hoffa was also out-raising Carey in funds by more than 4-to-1, but the Carey campaign was convinced it could win if the campaign could bypass the local leadership (which supported Hoffa) and get his message directly to Teamsters members. Martin Davis, a Carey campaign consultant who owned The November Group (a direct-marketing company), allegedly contacted Trumka in the summer of 1996 and concocted a scheme whereby the Teamsters would donate $150,000 to the AFL-CIO for spurious get-out-the-vote efforts and the AFL-CIO would pay the same amount to Citizen Action
(a liberal grassroots lobbying and organizing group). Citizen Action would then pay $100,000 to The November Group, which would use the cash to finance Carey's direct marketing effort. The alleged scheme was revealed on August 22, 1997, by a federal government official overseeing the Teamsters' election. The federal government overturned Carey's successful reelection, and ordered a new election. On November 17, 1997, a federal official disqualified Carey from seeking elective office in the union. Carey was indicted on federal perjury charges in January 2001, pled not guilty, and was found not guilty on all charges on October 12, 2001. Trumka invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination
during the government's grand jury
investigation and a congressional panel, but was never charged with any crimes. Although the AFL-CIO had a policy (enacted in the wake of several Teamsters' scandals in the late 1950s) appearing to require anyone who asserted their Fifth Amendment rights to be removed from office, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney
wrote in a letter sent to AFL-CIO member unions in November 1997 that the AFL-CIO policy regarding assertion of Fifth Amendment rights had "never been applied by the federation". The letter went on to say that "The policy calls for removal only when the union determines that the Fifth Amendment is being invoked to conceal discovery of corruption. The AFL-CIO, as you know, has for some time been conducting its own internal inquiry and has no basis to conclude that there was any unlawful conduct by Secretary-Treasurer Trumka. ... It is clear that the policy does not apply." During testimony before a congressional subcommittee on April 30, 1998, Sweeney said that a December 1957 resolution adopted by the AFL-CIO amended the policy so that it would not be automatically invoked but rather applied only if the invocation of Fifth Amendment rights were used "as a shield to avoid discovery of corruption". The labor federation appeared satisfied that Trumka should not step down. After Trumka spoke to an executive session of the AFL-CIO Executive Board in January 1998, board members said their concerns about Trumka's involvement in the scandal had been alleviated. On April 30, 1998, Sweeney said no evidence had yet come to light indicating any wrongdoing by Trumka.
On July 1, 2008, Trumka delivered a speech attacking racism
in the 2008 presidential election
. A video with an excerpt of the speech attracted more than 535,000 hits on YouTube
as of July 1, 2009. Trumka's video was "surely the first YouTube moment in the history" of the labor movement.
Trumka was elected president of the AFL-CIO after the retirement of John Sweeney
in 2009.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. He was elected President of the AFL-CIO
AFL-CIO
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, commonly AFL–CIO, is a national trade union center, the largest federation of unions in the United States, made up of 56 national and international unions, together representing more than 11 million workers...
on September 16, 2009, at the labor federation
National trade union center
A national trade union center is a federation or confederation of trade unions in a single country. Nearly every country in the world has a national trade union center, and many have more than one. When there is more than one national center, it is often because of ideological differences—in some...
's convention in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
. He served as the Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL-CIO, from 1995 to 2009, and prior to that was President of the United Mine Workers
United Mine Workers
The United Mine Workers of America is a North American labor union best known for representing coal miners and coal technicians. Today, the Union also represents health care workers, truck drivers, manufacturing workers and public employees in the United States and Canada...
from 1982 to December 22, 1995. Mr. Trumka was named in Esquire Magazine's 2011 Americans of the Year.
Life and career
Trumka, born in Nemacolin, PennsylvaniaNemacolin, Pennsylvania
Nemacolin is a census-designated place in Greene County, Pennsylvania, United States founded as a company town around the workings of a YS&T company owned and operated coal mine in 1917 and named for a legendary Amerindian ally Chief Nemacolin, who showed the Virginia settlers how to cross the...
near Pittsburgh, is an Italian American
Italian American
An Italian American , is an American of Italian ancestry. The designation may also refer to someone possessing Italian and American dual citizenship...
, third-generation Polish American
Polish American
A Polish American , is a citizen of the United States of Polish descent. There are an estimated 10 million Polish Americans, representing about 3.2% of the population of the United States...
, Roman Catholic, coal miner
Coal mining
The goal of coal mining is to obtain coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content, and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from iron ore and for cement production. In the United States,...
son of Frank Richard and Eola Elizabeth (Bertugli) Trumka. He went to work in the mine
Mining
Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, from an ore body, vein or seam. The term also includes the removal of soil. Materials recovered by mining include base metals, precious metals, iron, uranium, coal, diamonds, limestone, oil shale, rock...
s in 1968. He received a bachelor of science
Bachelor of Science
A Bachelor of Science is an undergraduate academic degree awarded for completed courses that generally last three to five years .-Australia:In Australia, the BSc is a 3 year degree, offered from 1st year on...
degree from Pennsylvania State University
Pennsylvania State University
The Pennsylvania State University, commonly referred to as Penn State or PSU, is a public research university with campuses and facilities throughout the state of Pennsylvania, United States. Founded in 1855, the university has a threefold mission of teaching, research, and public service...
in 1971 and a law degree
Law degree
A Law degree is an academic degree conferred for studies in law. Such degrees are generally preparation for legal careers; but while their curricula may be reviewed by legal authority, they do not themselves confer a license...
from Villanova University
Villanova University
Villanova University is a private university located in Radnor Township, a suburb northwest of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States...
in 1974. He married Barbara Vidovich in 1982. They have one son.
National labor career
From 1974 to 1979, Trumka was a staff attorney with the United Mine Workers at their headquarters in Washington, D.C.Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
He was elected to the board of directors of UMWA District 4 in 1981 and became President of the United Mine Workers in 1982.
While President of the UMWA, Trumka led a successful nine-month strike against the Pittston Coal Company
Pittston Coal strike
The Pittston Coal strike was a United States labor union action led by the United Mine Workers Union against the Pittston Coal Company, nationally headquartered in Pittston, Pennsylvania. The strike, which lasted from April 5, 1989 to February 20, 1990, resulted from Pittston's termination of...
in 1989, which became a symbol of resistance against employer cutbacks and retrenchment for the entire labor movement. A major issue in the dispute was Pittston's refusal to pay into the industrywide health and retirement fund created in 1950. Trumka encouraged non-violent civil disobedience
Civil disobedience
Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government, or of an occupying international power. Civil disobedience is commonly, though not always, defined as being nonviolent resistance. It is one form of civil resistance...
to confront the company and relied on a corporate campaign
Comprehensive campaign
A comprehensive campaign is labor union organizing or a collective bargaining campaign with a heavy focus on research, the use of community coalition-building, publicity and public pressure, political and regulatory pressure, and economic and legal pressure in addition to traditional organizing...
involving Wall Street
Wall Street
Wall Street refers to the financial district of New York City, named after and centered on the eight-block-long street running from Broadway to South Street on the East River in Lower Manhattan. Over time, the term has become a metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, or...
investors.
The United Mine Workers conducted a nationwide strike against Peabody Coal in 1993. Trumka was asked to respond to the possibility that some coal companies might hire permanent replacement workers. He told the Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
in September 1993, "I'm saying if you strike a match and you put your finger in it, you're likely to get burned." He also said, "That doesn't mean I'm threatening to burn you. That just means if you strike the match, and you put your finger in it, common sense will tell you it'll burn your finger. Common sense will tell you that in these strikes, that when you inject scabs
Strikebreaker
A strikebreaker is a person who works despite an ongoing strike. Strikebreakers are usually individuals who are not employed by the company prior to the trade union dispute, but rather hired prior to or during the strike to keep the organisation running...
, a number of things happen. And a confrontation is one of the potentials that can happen. Do I want it to happen? Absolutely not. Do I think it can happen? Yes, I think it can happen." The Associated Press reported that he was not threatening violence, and noted that UMWA staff had spent "thousands of man hours trying to prevent anything from happening ... to our members or by our members."
Besides his domestic labor activities, Trumka established an office that raised U.S. mineworker solidarity with the miners in South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
while they were fighting apartheid. He further served as the U.S. Shell boycott
Boycott
A boycott is an act of voluntarily abstaining from using, buying, or dealing with a person, organization, or country as an expression of protest, usually for political reasons...
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
Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award
The Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award is awarded annually by the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Policy Studies. It is awarded to those advancing the cause of human rights in the Americas. The Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award commemorates Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt, who in 1976...
.
During his tenure as Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL-CIO, Trumka focused on creating investment programs for the pension
Pension
In general, a pension is an arrangement to provide people with an income when they are no longer earning a regular income from employment. Pensions should not be confused with severance pay; the former is paid in regular installments, while the latter is paid in one lump sum.The terms retirement...
and benefit funds of the labor movement, capital market strategies, and demanding corporate accountability to America's communities. He chaired 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.
But Trumka's tenure as Secretary-Treasurer was not without controversy. In 1996, Teamsters
Teamsters
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters is a labor union in the United States and Canada. Formed in 1903 by the merger of several local and regional locals of teamsters, the union now represents a diverse membership of blue-collar and professional workers in both the public and private sectors....
president Ron Carey
Ron Carey (labor leader)
Ronald Robert Carey was an American labor leader who served as president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters from 1991 to 1997. He was the first Teamster General President elected by a direct vote of the membership...
was locked in a tight reelection battle with James P. Hoffa
James P. Hoffa
James Phillip Hoffa is an attorney and labor leader and the General President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Hoffa was first elected during December 1998 and took office on March 19, 1999...
, son of disappeared Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
James Riddle "Jimmy" Hoffa was an American labor union leader....
and a long-time Teamsters union attorney. Hoffa was also out-raising Carey in funds by more than 4-to-1, but the Carey campaign was convinced it could win if the campaign could bypass the local leadership (which supported Hoffa) and get his message directly to Teamsters members. Martin Davis, a Carey campaign consultant who owned The November Group (a direct-marketing company), allegedly contacted Trumka in the summer of 1996 and concocted a scheme whereby the Teamsters would donate $150,000 to the AFL-CIO for spurious get-out-the-vote efforts and the AFL-CIO would pay the same amount to Citizen Action
Citizen Action
Citizen Action was a national liberal consumer and public activist group that was active in the United States during the 1980s and 1990s.-History:...
(a liberal grassroots lobbying and organizing group). Citizen Action would then pay $100,000 to The November Group, which would use the cash to finance Carey's direct marketing effort. The alleged scheme was revealed on August 22, 1997, by a federal government official overseeing the Teamsters' election. The federal government overturned Carey's successful reelection, and ordered a new election. On November 17, 1997, a federal official disqualified Carey from seeking elective office in the union. Carey was indicted on federal perjury charges in January 2001, pled not guilty, and was found not guilty on all charges on October 12, 2001. Trumka invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination
Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which is part of the Bill of Rights, protects against abuse of government authority in a legal procedure. Its guarantees stem from English common law which traces back to the Magna Carta in 1215...
during the government's grand jury
Grand jury
A grand jury is a type of jury that determines whether a criminal indictment will issue. Currently, only the United States retains grand juries, although some other common law jurisdictions formerly employed them, and most other jurisdictions employ some other type of preliminary hearing...
investigation and a congressional panel, but was never charged with any crimes. Although the AFL-CIO had a policy (enacted in the wake of several Teamsters' scandals in the late 1950s) appearing to require anyone who asserted their Fifth Amendment rights to be removed from office, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney
John Sweeney (labor leader)
John Joseph Sweeney was the president of the AFL-CIO from 1995 to 2009.-Early years:Born in The Bronx, New York, Sweeney is the son of Joseph and Agnes , both Irish immigrants. The family moved to Yonkers in 1944, where Sweeney attended St. Barnabas Elementary School and graduated from Cardinal...
wrote in a letter sent to AFL-CIO member unions in November 1997 that the AFL-CIO policy regarding assertion of Fifth Amendment rights had "never been applied by the federation". The letter went on to say that "The policy calls for removal only when the union determines that the Fifth Amendment is being invoked to conceal discovery of corruption. The AFL-CIO, as you know, has for some time been conducting its own internal inquiry and has no basis to conclude that there was any unlawful conduct by Secretary-Treasurer Trumka. ... It is clear that the policy does not apply." During testimony before a congressional subcommittee on April 30, 1998, Sweeney said that a December 1957 resolution adopted by the AFL-CIO amended the policy so that it would not be automatically invoked but rather applied only if the invocation of Fifth Amendment rights were used "as a shield to avoid discovery of corruption". The labor federation appeared satisfied that Trumka should not step down. After Trumka spoke to an executive session of the AFL-CIO Executive Board in January 1998, board members said their concerns about Trumka's involvement in the scandal had been alleviated. On April 30, 1998, Sweeney said no evidence had yet come to light indicating any wrongdoing by Trumka.
On July 1, 2008, Trumka delivered a speech attacking racism
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
in the 2008 presidential election
United States presidential election, 2008
The United States presidential election of 2008 was the 56th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on November 4, 2008. Democrat Barack Obama, then the junior United States Senator from Illinois, defeated Republican John McCain, the senior U.S. Senator from Arizona. Obama received 365...
. A video with an excerpt of the speech attracted more than 535,000 hits on YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
as of July 1, 2009. Trumka's video was "surely the first YouTube moment in the history" of the labor movement.
Trumka was elected president of the AFL-CIO after the retirement of John Sweeney
John Sweeney (labor leader)
John Joseph Sweeney was the president of the AFL-CIO from 1995 to 2009.-Early years:Born in The Bronx, New York, Sweeney is the son of Joseph and Agnes , both Irish immigrants. The family moved to Yonkers in 1944, where Sweeney attended St. Barnabas Elementary School and graduated from Cardinal...
in 2009.