Next leader of AFL-CIO could see rise in power (Trumka?)

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.sltrib.com/business/ci_12648698

Labor movement » Utah colleague praises Trumka's reverence for his mining past

By Sam Hananel

The Associated Press
Updated: 06/19/2009 04:23:44 PM MDT

Richard Trumka still keeps his old coal miner's helmet on a shelf in his spacious office overlooking the Washington Monument.

The scuffed-up relic is a reminder of how far Trumka has come since he started working in the mines of Pennsylvania at 19, a path that led him to become the youngest president of the United Mine Workers and, later, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO.


AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka is the favorite to become the next president of the nation's largest union federation later this summer -- its first new leader in 14 years. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)


And it's part of the reason why Mike Dalpiaz, the United Mine Workers' international representative in Price, strongly supports Trumka's bid to become president of the nation's largest union federation later this summer.

"One of Richard's greatest traits is that he has never forgotten where he came from," Dalpiaz said last week. "When he went to law school, he worked the graveyard shift in an underground coal mine in Pennsylvania. He made his own lunch. He put on a coal lamp and he got dirty. And Rich never forgot that."

Trumka is the favorite to become the AFL-CIO's first new leader in 14 years at a time of great promise for a labor movement that has spent decades on its heels.

Several large unions that left the AFL-CIO in a bitter dispute four years ago are in discussions to come back. Lawmakers are trying to work out a compromise on a bill that makes it easier for workers to unionize. And it's all happening under a pro-labor president.

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