John Joseph Sweeney (May 5, 1934 – February 1, 2021) was an American labor leader who served as president of the AFL–CIO from 1995 to 2009.Greenhouse, Steven. "Man in the News: John Joseph Sweeney", New York Times, October 26, 1995.Greenhouse, Steven. "Promising a New Day, Again". New York Times. September 15, 2009; Greenhouse, Steven. "Labor Leader Is Stepping Down Both Proud and Frustrated". New York Times. September 12, 2009.
Early years Born in The Bronx, New York, Sweeney was the son of James, a city bus driver, and Agnes, a domestic worker, both Irish immigrants. Sweeney's family moved to Yonkers in 1944, where Sweeney attended St. Barnabas Elementary School and graduated from Cardinal Hayes High School. Sweeney's father took him to numerous union meetings, and it was there that Sweeney began his lifelong commitment to the American labor movement.Dembart, Lee. "Building Workers Union Chief", New York Times, May 4, 1976.Silverstein, Stuart. "Union Chief Has Bold Plans in Bid to Lead AFL-CIO". Los Angeles Times. July 17, 1995.
Sweeney enrolled at Iona College in New Rochelle in 1952. Sweeney worked as a grave-digger and building porter to pay his tuition, and joined his first union at this time. In 1956, he graduated with a degree in economics.
Union career with ILGWU and SEIU
After graduation, Sweeney became a clerk at IBM. But his commitment to the labor movement led Sweeney to take a two-thirds cut in pay to become a researcher with the International Ladies Garment Workers Union in 1956 (now UNITE HERE).
In time, Sweeney met Thomas R. Donahue, then a union representative with the Building Service Employees International Union (BSEIU, now the Service Employees International Union or SEIU). Donahue asked Sweeney to leave the ILGWU, and he became a contract director with BSEIU Local 32B in 1960. BSEIU changed its name to the Services Employees International Union in 1968. In 1972, Sweeney became assistant to the president of Local 32B in addition to his existing duties as contract director. He was elected to the executive board of Local 32B the same year. In 1973, Sweeney was elected vice president of the local.
In 1976, John Sweeney was elected president of Local 32B. He resigned his position as contract director. Three months after taking office, Sweeney led the 45,000 members of SEIU out on a surprise strike against the New York Realty Advisory Board a day before the union's contract was due to expire. After 17 days, the union won a new contract with significant wage and benefit increases.Stetson, Damon. "Most Landlords Agree on Terms in Building Strike". New York Times. May 20, 1976. In 1977, Sweeney merged Local 32B with Local 32J to form Local 32BJ."History – 32BJ", SEIU Local 32BJ, no date. In 1979, Sweeney led the maintenance workers of Local 32BJ out on strike again, and won additional contract improvements.McFadden, "Office Buildings Struck by 1,700 In Wage Dispute", New York Times, January 13, 1979.
In 1980, Sweeney was elected president of the national SEIU. Sweeney continued to serve as president of Local 32BJ until mid-1981, and drew a salary as a consultant to the local until 1995.Cohn, "Hard Labor", The New Republic, October 6, 1997. Under Sweeney's tenure, SEIU made rapid gains in membership. The union began the decade with about 625,000 members. However, Sweeney began pushing for rapid expansion into new sectors and base areas. SEIU joined with the National Association of Working Women to organize office workers, and the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) to organize nursing home workers. The union also dramatically expanded its reach among maintenance workers in the health care field and business offices.Brown, "Union, Women's Group Join to Gain Clerical Jobs", Washington Post, March 4, 1981; Hartson, "Unions Halt Campaign Against Nursing Home Chain", Associated Press, March 1, 1984.
Sweeney also pushed for mergers with a number of other unions, absorbing the National Association of Government Employees (NAGE) and other public employee unions.Causey, "Federal Diary", Washington Post, December 16, 1982; Hartson, "Health Care Workers Approve Merger", Associated Press, March 17, 1982; Townsend, "More Unions Use Mergers to Fight Growing Staff Costs, Thinning Ranks", Christian Science Monitor, June 25, 1980; Hartson, "New Union Affiliation Ends Fierce Organizing Competition", Associated Press, January 16, 1984; Reza, "Merger Brings County Workers Into SEIU Fold", Los Angeles Times, January 22, 1991; "California Resident Physicians Join Largest Health Care Union", press release, Service Employees International Union, October 3, 1990; "15,000 Service Workers Merge With Million-Member Union", press release, Service Employees International Union, September 29, 1993.
By 1993, SEIU had more than one million members. It was the first AFL–CIO union to reach the million-member mark in more than 20 years. But while Sweeney had emphasized the organization of new members, about half of its growth had come through merger.Verespej, "Today's Union Leaders.."., Industry Week, July 5, 1993. Sweeney initiated other changes at SEIU as well. The union began pushing for stronger federal laws in the area of health and safety, sexual harassment, and civil and immigrant rights. It also advocated for legally-mandated paid family leave, health care reform and a raise in the minimum wage. Internally, Sweeney devoted nearly a third of the union's budget to organizing new members and pushed for stronger diversity in the union's ranks.Milkman, L.A Story: Immigrant Workers and the Future of the U.S. Labor Movement, 2006.
1995 campaign for presidency of the AFL–CIO In 1995, Sweeney and a small group of other national union presidents approached AFL–CIO president Lane Kirkland and asked that he retire. Dissatisfaction with Kirkland's leadership had grown in the early 1990s. There were a number of issues: Failure to pass labor law reform in President Bill Clinton's first term, failure to stop the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), failure to achieve health care reform, failure to pass legislation banning the permanent replacement of strikers, and failure to shift public discourse in a more liberal, pro-union direction. The fact that Kirkland was traveling in Europe while the U.S. Senate was considering the ban on permanent replacements was seen as all too indicative of his real priorities. Most frustrating of all was Kirkland's lackluster response to the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994. He seemed blatantly uninterested, even hostile, to plans calling for a more aggressive political program.Kilborn, "Bringing Down Labor's Giant Leader", New York Times, September 4, 1995.Uchitelle, "Top Union Official Is to Retire", New York Times, May 9, 1995.Franklin, "First Public Feud in Years Stings AFL-CIO Leadership", Chicago Tribune, May 14, 1995.Swoboda, "Key Union Leaders Want Kirkland to Leave", Washington Post, January 28, 1995.Swoboda, "Kirkland Faces Union Revolt", Washington Post, May 10, 1995.Swoboda, "Kirkland Will Leave AFL-CIO", Washington Post, June 13, 1995.
Opposition The opposition to Kirkland came to a head at the mid-winter AFL–CIO executive council meeting in Bal Harbour, Florida, February 19–20, 1995. Since the start of the new year, Sweeney had twice held meetings with Kirkland to tell him that key members of the executive council were disappointed with his leadership and that he should step down in favor of secretary-treasurer Thomas R. Donahue.Swoboda, "Lane Kirkland Signals He'll Fight to Keep Job", Washington Post, February 21, 1995.Swoboda, "By Challenging Kirkland's Leadership, AFL-CIO Crosses a Threshold", Washington Post, February 23, 1995.
The weekend before the executive council meeting, 11 union presidents on the executive council agreed to form a "Committee for Change". The group was committed to removing Kirkland as president of the AFL–CIO. The group included Sweeney; Gerald McEntee of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME); Owen Bieber of the United Auto Workers (UAW); George Becker of the United Steelworkers of America (USWA); Ron Carey of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT); Arthur Coia of the Laborers' International Union of North America (LIUNA); Wayne Glenn of the United Paperworkers International Union (UPIU); Frank Hanley of the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE); George Kourpias of the International Association of Machinists (IAM); Sigurd Lucassen of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America (UBC); and Richard Trumka of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA). Together, these unions had sufficient votes to remove Kirkland at the October AFL–CIO convention and elect a new president.Silverstein, "Kirkland to Quit in August in Bid to Block Opposition", Los Angeles Times, June 13, 1995.
The first choice of the Committee for Change was AFL–CIO secretary-treasurer Thomas R. Donahue, who had developed a reputation as an effective innovator. He had lobbied for the creation of an AFL–CIO committee to examine changes in the workplace, pioneered the federation's communication efforts (including the construction of a television studio at AFL–CIO headquarters) and led the campaign against NAFTA. But Donahue refused to challenge a man whom he had served loyally for nearly 16 years.Grow, "AFL-CIO Interim Leader May Pay Big Price for Loyalty", Minneapolis Star-Tribune, September 12, 1995.
Kirkland refused to resign or retire. The executive council meeting turned rancorous. The dissident members of the executive council argued for a change in leadership and policy. But Kirkland pointed to his administration's policies and initiatives and claimed that the dissidents were disloyal and power-hungry.
On May 8, 1995, Donahue announced he was resigning as secretary-treasurer effective at the October AFL–CIO convention. The next day, Kirkland announced he was running for re-election.
The Committee for Change decided to run its own candidate against Kirkland. McEntee was considered too abrasive and had aggressively pursued disputes with other unions to be a consensus candidate. Trumka was considered too young and too militant. In contrast, Sweeney had a reassuring demeanor, an amiable personality and many friends on the executive council. He also would be seen as the "organizing candidate" the group wanted.Swoboda, "AFL-CIO Candidate Rejects Unity Ticket", Washington Post, June 29, 1995.
The group also agreed to nominate Trumka as secretary-treasurer of the AFL–CIO. The group also proposed to create a new office, that of executive vice-president, charged with mobilizing state federations and central labor councils and reaching out to minorities and women. The new position was also a way of ensuring that there would be an executive position which could be filled with a woman or a minority, thus gaining additional political support for the dissidents. The Committee for Change recruited Linda Chavez-Thompson, a member of the AFL–CIO executive council, a vice-president of AFSCME and an activist on the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement.Swoboda, "AFL-CIO Elects New Leadership", Washington Post, October 26, 1995.
On June 13, the Committee formally announced its slate of candidates and the name of its platform, "A New Voice for American Workers". The slate of candidates became known as the "New Voice" slate. Shortly thereafter, 10 more unions announced their opposition to Kirkland's re-election. Now a total of 21 unions representing 56 percent of the delegates to the convention were opposed to Kirkland's presidency.
Faced with such discouraging numbers, Kirkland announced that he would resign effective August 1.