[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 103 (Monday, August 1, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: August 1, 1994]


 
         COMMEMORATING THE DEATH OF LABOR LEADER JOHN DRISCOLL

  Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to a man whose 
imprimatur on the landscape of American labor relations was second to 
none. During his 60-year career in the American labor movement, John 
Driscoll was known in Connecticut as Mr. Labor for his steadfast and 
enduring advocacy of social justice through union organizing.
  It saddens me to inform my colleagues that John passed away on July 
21 at the age of 82. John Driscoll was truly a giant in Connecticut. He 
took on all the important causes of his day, from the organization of 
public employees to workers' compensation, from health benefits to 
protections for American jobs. A civil libertarian, he marched in 
Selma, AL, with Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1965, and years later he 
endorsed a woman to succeed him as president of the Connecticut AFL-
CIO.
  Known and respected as a man whose principles ruled his life, John 
Driscoll was partisan only to them. A brilliant thinker and scholar, he 
was an unlikely champion of the union movement from its glory days in 
the 1930's, when Government was completely out of touch with the needs 
of working Americans. His enlightened and pioneering navigation of the 
labor movement never veered off course as he advanced through the 
leadership of the AFL-CIO in Connecticut. He held the top post in that 
chapter virtually unchallenged from 1961 until his retirement in 1985.
  John could very easily have imitated the armchair philosophers of his 
formative years and chosen a path of sedate and unassuming academia. A 
first generation Irish-American, John Driscoll was born in Waterbury, 
CT, in 1911. He went on to be a brilliant student of philosophy at 
Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT, and later at Brown University in 
Providence, RI. It was at Brown that a speech by the Congress of 
Industrial Organizations' [CIO] union firebrand, John Lewis, 
transformed his thinking and inspired him to pursue his life work.
  Although his Phi Beta Kappa record of scholarship handily led him to 
Harvard Law School, the atmosphere there ultimately proved too 
stultifying for a young man whose passion for social justice and reform 
had been ignited. John Driscoll quit Harvard Law School, rolled up his 
shirt sleeves, and in 1937 set to work for 40 cents an hour at the 
Bristol Co., a Waterbury, CT, factory. There he organized his first 
union--the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers' Union--and began a life-long 
campaign to provide workers, whose collective toil was the grist that 
drove the corporate machines, with a real voice in the workplace. 
Unions, as John would later observe, provided workers with ``a stake in 
society--a share in the fruits of the free enterprise system.''
  His entrance into the world of union organizing at the Bristol Co. 
led to full-time work with the CIO and then the United Auto Workers' 
Union International. He served as the State Post-War Planning Council 
after World War II and served for several years on the State Board of 
Mediation and Arbitration before joining the Connecticut AFL-CIO 
leadership in 1957. He also served on the State's original Commission 
on Higher Education.
  After his retirement, John's influence continued to be felt in State 
labor politics. He chaired the United Labor Agency, which worked with 
dislocated workers and served on the labor advisory committee at the 
University of Connecticut's education center. In later years, John 
Driscoll enjoyed the respect and admiration of his colleagues and 
philosophical adversaries alike, and he was the deserving beneficiary 
of countless honors and awards.
  John Driscoll instinctively understood that American democracy is 
flexible enough to allow disenfranchised groups to achieve the rights 
they deserve. Because he understood the true power of representative 
government in this country, John fought hard in the 1940's and 1950's 
to prevent labor unions from taking on Communist overtones. America, 
for John Driscoll, was a work in progress, and it functioned best not 
through complacency but through advocacy and active citizenship. Its 
Government did not need to be changed, it needed to be utilized. His 
life-long dedication to this principle has made Connecticut and our 
country better.
  I ask my colleagues to join me in honoring this great American from 
Connecticut and in offering our condolences to his wife, Margaret, his 
son, David, his extended family, and his friends.

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