[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 15]
[Senate]
[Page 21657]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



               IN RECOGNITION OF FRANKLIN DELANO GARRISON

 Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to a 
true champion for working people from my home State of Michigan, Frank 
Garrison, who is retiring this month from his position as president of 
the Michigan AFL-CIO after more than 40 years in the labor movement.
  In many ways, Frank's life story is the story of the labor movement 
itself over these past 65 years. Born Franklin Delano Garrison in 1934, 
during the depths of the Great Depression, he was named for the 
President who gave hope to millions of working Americans and whose 
Works Projects Administration provided Frank's father with a job. At 
the age of 10, Frank entered the workforce himself, shoveling coal into 
his school's boilers so his brothers and sisters could eat lunch at 
school.
  While these early years taught Frank the value of work, they also 
taught him that to achieve their piece of the American dream, working 
people needed strong advocates, both in the workplace and in 
government. He joined the United Auto Workers in 1952 working at the 
Saginaw Steering Gear plant in Saginaw, Michigan. Once in the union, 
the same work ethic that filled that school boiler with coal helped 
Frank rise through the ranks. He held several positions in his local 
and his region on his way to becoming the UAW's Legislative Director in 
1976 and the Executive Director of the Union's Community Action Program 
in 1982. During those years, he played a key role in many election 
campaigns and even helped an upstart former President of the Detroit 
City Council win a seat in the United States Senate.
  In 1986, after the sudden death of Michigan AFL-CIO President Sam 
Fishman, Frank was selected president by the AFL-CIO's General Board. 
Throughout the thirteen years he has served in that position he has 
upheld the finest traditions of the labor movement. In an era when 
special interests tried to dominate the political debate, Frank's was a 
voice that spoke for the broad interest of working people, whether or 
not they ever carried a union card--fighting for a higher minimum wage, 
for health care for all, to strengthen Social Security and Medicaid and 
to preserve those industrial jobs that had brought economic security to 
working families in Michigan and throughout the country. Few Americans 
have fought longer or harder for working people than Frank Garrison. 
His pursuit of justice in the workplace has improved opportunity and 
security and safety for an untold number of Americans.
  And through it all, the good times and the bad, the victories and the 
defeats, Frank never lost touch with the convictions that brought him 
to the labor movement in the first place. And he never lost that 
twinkle in his eye or the ability to fill a room with laughter, 
sometimes at my expense, but more often at his own. He has been a 
strong leader, a wise counselor, but most of all a loyal friend.
  Mr. President, Frank Garrison has earned the respect and gratitude of 
so many people from my home state of Michigan both within and without 
the labor movement, and across the political spectrum. I know my 
colleagues will join me in wishing him and his family well in his well 
deserved retirement, and in offering him a heartfelt ``thank you'' for 
his lifelong commitment to improving the lives of working men and women 
and their families.

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