Dissident Elected To Presidency Of Afl-Cio Sweeney Defeats Donahue With Pledge To Revive Labor Movement

Union leader John J. Sweeney captured the presidency of the AFL-CIO on Wednesday, winning a landmark insurgent campaign launched to turn around the wounded and longslumbering American labor movement.

The campaign, along with marking the first contested election for the helm of the labor federation since the AFL and CIO merged in 1955, also rewrote U.S. labor history by putting the first member of a minority into a top executive office. That official is Linda Chavez-Thompson, 51, a Texas-bred Latino and sharecropper’s daughter who was elected to the newly created job of executive vice president.

Rounding out the victory for the Sweeney forces was the election of the remaining member of the so-called “New Voice” ticket, Richard L. Trumka, president of the United Mine Workers. The three took office immediately.

The election gives Sweeney - head of the Service Employees International Union, the nation’s fastest-growing labor organization - and his running mates a bully pulpit for inspiring union recruiting throughout the work force.

But daunting obstacles confront the new AFL-CIO president, whose union is known for its street protests and other confrontational tactics. They range from increasingly aggressive anti-union stands by employers to the numbing inertia and dissension within organized labor itself.

Still, union leaders and other workplace authorities said the hard-fought campaign already has infused the movement with new enthusiasm.

“You have a sense that labor, at the least, is climbing back on its feet,” said Thomas Geoghegan, a Chicago labor lawyer and author.

Thomas Kochan, an industrial relations expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, added, “It gives the whole labor movement a breath of fresh air and puts a whole new face on their efforts to organize.”

Sweeney, 61, the son of Irish immigrants, was elected to a two-year term at the AFL-CIO’s convention in midtown Manhattan. Sweeney garnered 56 percent of the votes cast by delegates on behalf of the AFL-CIO’s 13 million members and 78 unions, vs. 44 percent for his one-time mentor, Thomas R. Donahue.

Donahue, 67, served as the labor federation’s No. 2 executive, secretary-treasurer, for nearly 16 years but was named president on an interim basis Aug. 1 after his predecessor, Lane Kirkland, was driven into retirement by the Sweeney candidacy.

But Donahue, after getting off to a late start in the race for the full two-year term, never was able to seriously erode the lead held by Sweeney, his one-time protege.

Also defeated was Barbara J. Easterling, 61, who filled Donahue’s former post as secretary-treasurer in August, becoming the first woman to gain a top executive post of the labor federation.

Underscoring the labor federation’s increasing recognition of workplace diversity, negotiators established an executive council that includes 15 women or minorities. The previous 35-member board had six women or minority members.

In his conciliatory acceptance remarks to the convention, Sweeney promised to hew to his campaign platform and called the election victory “a moment of hope and promise for the future.”

The challenges, however, will be huge. Unions now account for only 15.5 percent of the work force, down from a high of roughly 35 percent in 1945.