Richard Trumka was an unabashed progressive who could get President Joe Biden’s ear—and had hope for the future of organized labor.
Richard Trumka, head of the AFL-CIO, recently died at 72 years old. He spent much of his life in unions, rising from mineworker to labor attorney to confidant for politicians like President Joe Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who gave a tearful tribute to Trumka on the floor last week.
The 1980s were a terrible time for American labor. President Ronald Reagan fired air traffic controllers, which set off a huge wave of union-busting in the private sector. The American labor movement is in decline by that point. In 1989, the Pittston Coal Company, one of the big coal-mining companies in Appalachia, just canceled the health benefits of 1,500 retirees and disabled miners.And this is in a brutal industry. You have retirees who desperately need health care.
The mineworkers start to strike. A judge then puts issues an injunction that puts huge fines on the leadership if they’re going to continue to strike. This could have been the bankruptcy of the UMW, but people thought this was something that was worth doing. Finally, in February of 1990. the Pittston Coal Company agreed to pay $10 million toward the health care of miners who had retired before 1974. The mineworkers get the fines from the injunction dropped in exchange for some community service.
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