[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 150 (Tuesday, August 24, 2021)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E920-E922]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            RICHARD L. TRUMKA AND UNITE HERE: A REMEMBRANCE

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. ROSA L. DeLAURO

                             of connecticut

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, August 24, 2021

  Ms. DeLAURO. Madam Speaker, I rise to include in the Record a 
statement written by John W. Wilhelm, Retired President, UNITE HERE, in 
honor of the late Rich Trumka.

       UNITE HERE had a special bond with Rich Trumka. His 
     unexpected death this month hit the labor movement hard. It 
     was a personal loss for me, and the loss of a passionate 
     advocate for the members of our Union.
       Rich Trumka was a leader of principle and courage. He was a 
     third generation coal miner from immigrant Italian and Polish 
     stock, growing up in the little Appalachian coal town of 
     Nemacolin in southwest Pennsylvania.
       His Union, the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), is 
     one of the most important Unions--arguably the single most 
     important--in American labor history. The UMWA was founded in 
     1890, one year before HERE. The UMWA has always been 
     important to its fiercely loyal members, working for brutal 
     companies in a dangerous industry. It was equally important 
     to the American labor movement because the UMWA was the 
     driving force in the creation of the CIO and the massive 
     industrial organizing campaigns of the Great Depression, as 
     well as a crucial political ally for President Roosevelt and 
     the New Deal.
       My mother, who grew up in the coal country of Southwest 
     Virginia, always said that the only good things that ever 
     happened to the Appalachian people were Franklin and Eleanor 
     Roosevelt and the United Mine Workers.
       After the legendary Mine Workers leader John L. Lewis 
     retired in 1960. the Union lost its way. Rich Trumka went to 
     Penn State, intending to play football until he got hurt, and 
     then the Villanova Law School. Rich could have done anything, 
     but he decided to become part of a growing reform movement in 
     the UMWA. After the murder of reform leader Jock Yablonski, 
     Rich redoubled his efforts. In 1982, at age 33, he was 
     elected President of his Union.
       Rich set out to restore the confidence of the miners in 
     their Union, and to restore the Union's hard-earned respect 
     from the coal companies. His rebuilding program culminated in 
     the epic 10-month strike of 2,000 Union miners against the 
     Pittston Coal Company in 1989-1990. Pittston was a creative

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     campaign, with the mine workers' trademark militant picket 
     lines backed up by massive, repeated civil disobedience, 
     strategic corporate and political action, and determined 
     support from women organized as the Daughters of Mother 
     Jones.
       My predecessor as HERE General President, Edward T. Hanley, 
     supported Rich Trumka from the time Rich became President of 
     UMWA. During the Pittston strike, Edward saw a CNN report 
     that Pittston had put on a lobster dinner for the scabs, 
     outdoors where the pickets could see the scabs eating. That 
     angered Edward. He told Rich that the company fed the scabs 
     once, but HERE would feed the strikers every day. He sent 
     five cooks who were members of HERE Local 863 at the 
     Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia to Camp Solidarity in 
     Castlewood, Virginia, the strike headquarters. The Greenbrier 
     HERE members prepared three meals a day, seven days a week, 
     until the strikers won.
       The key issue in the strike was retiree health care. 
     Pittston unilaterally gutted the health benefits of its 
     retirees, and refused to pay into the health care fund for 
     retired miners who had been employed by other companies that 
     had gone out of business.
       Rich told me that Ed Hanley's help was crucial to settling 
     the Pittston strike. During the AFL-CIO Convention in 1989 in 
     Washington DC, Edward invited Rep. Daniel Rostenkowski, his 
     life-long Chicago friend who was then Chairman of the House 
     Ways and Means Committee, to meet in the bar at the Sheraton 
     Wardman Park Hotel, site of the Convention, and asked Rich to 
     join them. By the wee hours of the next morning, Rich, 
     Edward, and Rep. Rostenkowski shook hands on the framework to 
     settle the Pittston strike.
       The strike continued full force, but the Sheraton Wardman 
     Park framework succeeded. Pittston reluctantly agreed to pay 
     for retirement security for its own current and future 
     employees and their spouses. The UMWA strikers triumphantly 
     returned to work.
       For the retirees from other companies for whom the strikers 
     had also been fighting, Dan Rostenkowski promised Rich Trumka 
     and Ed Hanley that Congress would step in to help. Bob 
     Juliano, HERE's peerless Legislative Representative, worked 
     with the UMWA and the Congressman's staff to structure the 
     solution. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, Democrat of West Virginia, 
     sponsored legislation which required that all coal companies 
     pay the retirement costs of their own retirees and spouses. 
     It also guaranteed Federal funding of benefits for ``orphan'' 
     retirees, those whose employers had gone out of business. 
     Congress passed this landmark legislation, and President 
     George H.W. Bush signed it in 1992.
       It was the Pittston strike that solidified an enduring bond 
     between HERE and the United Mine Workers. The good turn that 
     our Union did for Rich Trumka and the UMWA has been repaid 
     many times over in the intervening years.
       Rich Trumka found in HERE three things he admired: workers 
     with the bravery and tenacity to fight for justice, a Union 
     courageous enough to take on strikes that like Pittston 
     seemed impossible, and a Union that organizes and fights for 
     immigrant workers.
       The Culinary and Bartenders Union in Las Vegas was our 
     Union's largest affiliate in the 1980's, and it still is. By 
     1990 the Culinary and Bartenders had made progress in 
     rebuilding after the terrible 1984 Las Vegas strike, but two 
     tough obstacles loomed.
       The first was a brutal 9-month strike in 1990 at the 
     Horseshoe in Downtown Las Vegas. The second was the historic 
     Frontier strike on the Strip, which lasted six years, four 
     months, and ten days, from 1991 through 1998, with no striker 
     ever going back to work across the 24/7 picket line.
       The Union had to win these two strikes, both against very 
     wealthy families answerable to no one. Benefit, wage, and job 
     security standards were at stake. So was the Union's 
     aggressive Las Vegas organizing program.
       Rich came to Las Vegas over and over during the Horseshoe 
     and Frontier strikes. Rich would be the first to agree that 
     the Union won both strikes because of the courage and 
     commitment of the strikers and strike captains, the 
     extraordinary leadership of Joe Daugherty as well as D. 
     Taylor, Richard McCracken, and other organizers and 
     researchers, the steadfast support financially from the city-
     wide Culinary and Bartenders membership, and the unwavering 
     support of President Hanley and the International Union.
       But Rich Trumka's role in those victories cannot be 
     overstated. The Frontier strikers adopted the slogan of the 
     Pittston strikers, ``One Day Longer.'' Rich inspired the 
     strikers and the entire Union membership again and again, 
     giving all of us confidence that we would win. He worked hard 
     to ensure broad support from the entire American labor 
     movement. He led the charge for Desert Solidarity during the 
     Frontier strike, the largest labor action in Las Vegas 
     history, which closed down the Strip on a busy Saturday 
     night, with participation from Unions throughout the country. 
     Rich also gave our Union a lasting gift by assigning Vinny 
     O'Brien, an amazing talent who organized Desert Solidarity 
     and went on to help so many UNITE HERE Locals over the next 
     20 years.
       In 1995, during the Frontier strike, Rich joined John 
     Sweeney and Linda Chavez Thompson as the candidate for 
     Secretary-Treasurer on the first slate to contest the AFL-CIO 
     leadership in the 40 years since the AFL and CIO merged. That 
     slate won. Ed Hanley surprised many of his labor friends by 
     supporting the Sweeney ticket. Rich served as Secretary-
     Treasurer until 2009, when he was elected to succeed the 
     retiring Sweeney as President of the AFL-CIO.
       In his new AFL-CIO position, Rich's support of HERE didn't 
     let up. He was there when the Frontier strikers joyfully went 
     back to work at midnight on January 31, 1998. And his support 
     wasn't confined to just Las Vegas: wherever our Union needed 
     help, Rich was there. As just three examples among many, he 
     marched in the People's Graduation action by Locals 34 and 35 
     at Yale University in 1996, he was arrested in a civil 
     disobedience supporting Local 2 members at the San Francisco 
     Hilton in 2010, and he kicked off our global Hyatt Boycott 
     that same year. He was everywhere we asked him to be, and he 
     was always inspirational.
       Rich Trumka had a deep relationship with his fellow miners, 
     and with workers of all kinds. He believed in his soul that 
     all people are created equal. Solidarity was not an 
     abstraction to him, perhaps because of his roots in the mines 
     and the United Mine Workers. The pro-worker, pro-immigrant 
     doctrine of his Catholic faith informed his sense of 
     solidarity. When UNITE HERE's Father Clete Kiley started 
     reviving the tradition of Catholic labor priests, Rich was 
     all in.
       In 2000, when HERE took the lead in changing AFL-CIO policy 
     to embrace the cause of immigrant workers, Rich supported 
     that fight, drawing on the experiences of his own immigrant 
     family.
       A shining chapter of his AFL-CIO leadership came in 2008. 
     Rich relentlessly crisscrossed the Midwestern and Appalachian 
     states, bluntly insisting that white Union members had to 
     confront the racism that held some back from voting for 
     Barrack Obama for President. With his trademark plain-spoken 
     eloquence he described racism as just another form of divide 
     and conquer. His ability to connect with white workers on 
     matters of race and immigration was unmatched.
       Rich was very disappointed when HERE helped lead several 
     Unions out of the AFL-CIO in 2005 to organize an alternate 
     federation, Change to Win. Nevertheless, when the Service 
     Employees International Union under then-president Andy Stern 
     attacked UNITE HERE and perverted the goals of Change to Win, 
     Rich warmly welcomed us back into the AFL-CIO fold at the 
     same 2009 Convention where he became AFL-CIO President. He 
     addressed the UNITE HERE 2014 Convention, D. Taylor's first 
     as President.
       Rich Trumka was passionate. He was one of the great orators 
     of our time. He was a voracious reader and a keen student of 
     history, especially of the Civil War. Many of us have been 
     frustrated with the AFL-CIO, but I never doubted for a moment 
     Rich's commitment, his moral authority, and his integrity.
       Rich Trumka supported worker struggles everywhere. He 
     inspired workers wherever he went. Many different Unions and 
     many different battles benefitted from his help.
       But in UNITE HERE, our members have perhaps benefitted to a 
     greater measure than any other Union except, of course, his 
     own United Mine Workers. We had a very special relationship.
       I last saw Rich in Washington DC in May of this year. We 
     met at his favorite breakfast place, the Hay-Adams Hotel 
     across the street from the AFL-CIO building. He was in a 
     nostalgic mood. He reminisced with the members of UNITE HERE 
     Local 25 who were servers in the dining room about his 
     intervention when new owners at the Hay-Adams had sought to 
     evade their Union obligations. I told him I had just visited 
     Lebanon, Virginia, my grandfather's home town, where my 
     mother and sister are buried, and nearby Castlewood, where 
     HERE members cooked for the Pittston strikers at Camp 
     Solidarity. I reminded Rich that shortly before my mother 
     passed away he had visited her for several hours, compared 
     notes with her about growing up in coal country, and left her 
     with an autographed copy of a book on UMWA history.
       Rich and I talked at that breakfast about many struggles, 
     among them Pittston, the Horseshoe, the Frontier, the fight 
     to change the AFL-CIO immigration policy, and his heroic work 
     in the 2008 presidential campaign. We talked about our mutual 
     admiration for Ed Hanley, D. Taylor, and Joe Daugherty. We 
     talked as well about struggles not yet won, particularly his 
     determination to reform labor law by passing the PRO Act in 
     Congress and his commitment to winning for immigrants.
       During that breakfast Rich told me that he had decided to 
     retire at the AFL-CIO Convention in 2022. He was looking 
     forward to spending time with his family and especially his 
     grandchildren, and to pursuing his hobbies, reading, visiting 
     Civil War battlefields, and being in nature, where he loved 
     to hunt, fish, and camp.
       His sudden death means that he won't get those 
     opportunities. Like Ed Hanley, he left us too soon. For that 
     I am sad. But miners, UNITE HERE members, and workers 
     everywhere are blessed that he came our way. His inspiring 
     life will outlast the sadness for me, and I hope eventually 
     for his family.

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