AFL-CIO President Richard L. Trumka has a record of innovation and assertion through his rise to leadership of the country’s largest union federation. His many successes as a labor leader are driven by his deep knowledge of solidarity’s significance, his need to challenge corporate indifference and his strong commitment to a number of different causes, including education and racial equality.
Mr. Trumka was elected President of the AFL-CIO in September 2009. He previously served as the AFL-CIO’s Secretary-Treasurer for 15 years. Joining the organization as the youngest secretary-treasurer in its history, Mr. Trumka carved out a unique and innovative leadership role, creating investment programs for the pension and benefit funds of the labor movement as well as fighting excessive corporate profits. He urged the creation of, and chairs, the AFL-CIO Industrial Union Council, a consortium of manufacturing unions that focus on key issues in trade, healthcare and labor law reform.
A member of the AFL-CIO Executive Council since 1989, Mr. Trumka is Chairman of the Strategic Approaches Committee, assisting affiliated unions that want to achieve their goals through collective bargaining. He also chairs the AFL-CIO Finance Committee and the AFL-CIO Capital Stewardship Committee, which seeks to provide the best long-term benefits for America’s working families. He has also served on the executive boards of the International Miners’ Federation and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions as well as played a key role in organizing a new global coalition of coal miners’ unions in five countries.
A third-generation coal miner from Nemacolin, Pennsylvania, Mr. Trumka began working in the mines when he was 19 years old. After college, he worked on the legal staff of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) for four years before returning to mine work in 1979, while doing pro bono legal work for local Nemacolin families during his hours away from the mine. Mr. Trumka rose quickly through the ranks of the mining community, first serving as UMWA Local 6290’s Chairman of the Safety Committee and later on the union’s International Executive Board. In 1982, he was elected the UMWA’s youngest president and has been serving as President Emeritus of the UMWA since 1995. His three-term UMWA presidency led to many accomplishments, including the passage of the federal COAL Act, the UMWA joining the AFL-CIO and two major strikes against the nation’s coal companies, which resulted in significant advances in mine workers’ benefits.
Mr. Trumka has been awarded with many honors, including the Gompers-Murray-Meany Award from the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, the Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award and the Labor Responsibility Award from the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in 1990. He also received the Jewish National Fund Tree of Life Award in 1996 and the Sons of Italy Foundation’s Humanitarian Award in 2003.
Mr. Trumka earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Pennsylvania State University and his Juris Doctor from Villanova University.