[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 16 (Wednesday, January 25, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S82-S83]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          TRIBUTE TO JOHN PENN

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, the State of Illinois is my home, and it 
holds an important place in the history of the American labor movement. 
All of us learned the name Upton Sinclair in our early days in school, 
the author of the 1906 novel ``The Jungle,'' which told the story of 
the horrendous working conditions endured by, largely, immigrant 
workers in Chicago's meatpacking plants and led to Federal regulation.
  A. Philip Randolph, founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car 
Porters, one of America's first unions for African-American workers, 
was a civil rights champion and a leader of the 1963 March on 
Washington.
  There is also the story of Mary Harris ``Mother'' Jones, an Irish 
immigrant who survived the Great Famine in Ireland, the yellow fever 
epidemic of 1867, which took the lives of her husband and children, and 
after her own dress shop was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire of 
1871, she went on to become a woman labor organizer and a fierce and 
beloved champion of coal miners. Before she died, she said she wanted 
to be buried in a place of honor among coal miners. She is buried in a 
town near my home called Mount

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Olive, IL, in the Union Miners Cemetery, the only union-owned cemetery 
in America.
  Aside from being legends of labor history, Upton Sinclair, A. Philip 
Randolph, and Mother Jones had something else in common. They are all 
members of the Illinois Labor History Society's Union Hall of Honor, 
which was founded in 1969 to make sure that important figures and 
defining chapters of America's labor history are not forgotten.
  The society's highest honor is to be named to its Union Hall of 
Honor. Last month, a longtime friend of mine, John Penn, was inducted 
into the Illinois Labor History Society's Union Hall of Honor. After 
nearly 60 years of protecting workers' rights in Illinois, the Midwest, 
and our Nation, John has certainly earned that honor. He is one of 113 
men and women who have been inducted into the Union Hall of Honor, but 
to me John is one in a million.
  He got his first union card in 1965, when he was 16 years old, 
joining the Laborers' International Union of North America Local 362 in 
Bloomington, IL. He took a break by joining the United States Air 
Force, serving in Vietnam, Korea, Guam, and then returning back to 
Bloomington and Local 362.
  It was the same path taken a generation earlier by his father, Paul 
Penn, a World War II veteran who rose to become president of the same 
local. But John's family connections didn't win any special treatment. 
He had to rise through the ranks, and rise he did--from business 
manager of Local 362 to business manager of the 36-county North Central 
Illinois Laborers' District Council, then business manager of the four-
state Great Plains Laborers' District Council, and, in 2008, vice 
president and regional manager of LIUNA's 10-State Midwest region and a 
member of the international union's general executive board, positions 
to which he has been reelected three different times.
  Under John Penn's leadership, LIUNA Local 362 grew, giving a voice to 
scores of workers who previously had never benefited from union 
representation.
  Some years ago, in response to several tragic accidents, John made 
himself known to many by stopping all highway construction in McLean 
County to force the State of Illinois to improve protections for 
vulnerable construction workers and others on the State's roadways. 
That action culminated in the creation of the Illinois State's Work 
Zone Safety Committee and implementation of numerous policies that 
saved lives.
  Somehow, John also found time to resurrect Bloomington's Labor Day 
parade, to serve on several community and State boards, including the 
United Way of McLean County, the Children's Christmas Party for 
Unemployed Families, Illinois Special Olympics, the McLean County 
Promise Council, and the Bloomington-Normal Advancement and Economic 
Development Council.
  He was honored by his hometown newspaper, the Bloomington Pantagraph, 
as its 2003 Person of the Year. He received a Thousand Points of Light 
Foundation award from then-President Clinton in 1997 in recognition of 
his volunteer efforts and those of all Bloomington-Normal building 
tradespeople who he recruited over the years to take part in these 
organizations.
  At the end of this month, John Penn is retiring from this position 
with the Laborers' union. As he begins this new chapter, Loretta and I 
wish John and Mary, his wife of 55 years, good health, good times with 
their daughter Shawn, their children and grandchildren.
  John, you made a real difference for so many people. You are truly a 
hall of famer, and thanks for all that you have done.

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