John Sweeney

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.

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. In 1977, Sweeney merged Local 32B with Local 32J to form Local 32BJ. In 1979, Sweeney led the maintenance workers of Local 32BJ out on strike again, and won additional contract improvements.

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. 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.

Sweeney also pushed for mergers with a number of other unions, absorbing the National Association of Government Employees (NAGE) and other public employee unions.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

First decade in office

Structural changes

Soon after taking office, Sweeney initiated several programs intended to reverse the decline in union membership and recruit more new members, especially younger people. The AFL–CIO's organizing and field mobilization programs were separated. The Field Mobilization department was given control over the AFL–CIO's regional offices, which were reduced from 12 to four. Sweeney set a goal of spending one-third of the federation's budget on organizing by 1998. An ad hoc executive council committee was established to come up with an organizing strategy for the South and Southwest, while the Union Summer program was established to recruit and deploy college-age activists. A new department, the Working Women's Department, was created and charged with developing ways to give working women a voice and to inject that voice into the labor movement's deliberations.

Two new centers were also established. The new political training center's mission was to train political operatives and assist affiliates in training their staff in political work. The transnational corporate research center's mission was to help unions in organizing and/or contract battles with international corporations.

In August 1996, Sweeney created a Corporate Affairs Department. The department included three new centers: the Center for Workplace Democracy (to deal with labor-management partnerships), the Center for Worker Ownership and Governance (to deal with pension and investment issues) and the Center for Strategic Research (to assist affiliates with research in comprehensive campaigns). The department also was given responsibility for collecting statistics and conducting research on collective bargaining.

In May 1997, Sweeney announced four new organizing programs. The first program was an AFL–CIO-based effort to provide logistical, organizational and training support for state and local unions which wanted to create organizing programs. The second program 'Senior Summer', a program to leverage the labor movement's retirees by training retired workers in organizing and political operations. The third program was the "Union Cities" effort to encourage large central labor councils to be more active and effective, and to encourage smaller CLCs to merge or work more closely to enhance their influence. Lastly, the 'Street Heat' program funneled funds and staff to CLCs and unions so that they could develop rapid-response teams of union members to picket and/or protest when workers were intimidated, coerced or fired.

Brewing unrest

But dissatisfaction began to build once again within the AFL–CIO. The elimination of a number of constitutional and administrative departments, such as the Industrial Union Department, was seen as a strike against those unions which had not supported Sweeney. The directorship of the AFL–CIO Organizing Department was a revolving door, organization of new members had not markedly increased and many unions had taken to raiding one another to increase membership. A number of unions were unhappy with what they saw as AFL–CIO criticism of their organizing programs.

On March 15 2000, the United Transportation Union disaffiliated from the AFL–CIO over a jurisdictional dispute. It was followed in March 2001 by the Carpenters union, which claimed that Sweeney's organizing efforts had failed and that the AFL-CIO structure must be abandoned.

Despite substantial investment in politics, the AFL–CIO had not succeeded in restoring the Democrats to a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. Some union presidents began to argue that the AFL–CIO should stop spending money on political causes and divert resources to organizing new members. Prominent among the dissatisfied leaders was Andrew Stern, president of SEIU and a Sweeney protege.

The growing unrest within the AFL–CIO became public when Sweeney announced on September 18, 2003, that he planned to run for another four-year term at the federation convention in the summer of 2005. When Sweeney had first been elected of the AFL–CIO in 1995, he had proposed a constitutional amendment which would bar anyone 70 years of age or older from seeking executive office. The proposed amendment was never acted on, but Sweeney promised the convention he would not remain in office beyond the age limit he had proposed.

2005 campaign for presidency of the AFL–CIO

New Unity Partnership

Shortly after the March 2004 executive council meeting, Andrew Stern announced the formation of the New Unity Partnership (NUP). Joining Stern were the presidents of UNITE HERE, the Teamsters, the Laborers, UFCW and the Carpenters. Stern had begun working with these union leaders in the fall of 2003 to create a set of principles to reform the labor movement. Although NUP's existence had been revealed in October 2003, the group did not announce its platform until March 2004.

Platforms

The NUP platform included a number of proposals. First, the AFL–CIO should mandate the merger of smaller unions with larger ones, and the AFL–CIO must redraw and enforce jurisdictional lines along those of major industries, or "core jurisdictions". Second, a number of AFL–CIO departments (including health and safety, education, and civil and human rights) must be merged or eliminated. Third, political spending must be significantly reduced in favor of major new AFL–CIO spending on organizing.

Sweeney told the press he would initiate an internal discussion of Stern's views after the November 2004 presidential election, with a goal of creating a proposal by July 2005. But Stern declared that this would be too late for consideration at the AFL–CIO's biennial convention.

Implementation of criticisms

At the August 2004 AFL–CIO executive council meeting, Sweeney attempted to implement some of NUP's criticisms by announcing the formation of a task force to investigate organizing the Wal-Mart grocery and discount department store chain. Sweeney also announced the creation of an Immigrant Worker Project to oversee the federation's work on immigrant rights and organizing efforts.

On November 10, 2004, Sweeney announced a process and timeline for considering reform of the AFL–CIO. Sweeney said he would chair a committee composed of the federation's 25-member executive committee which would make reform recommendations to the February 2005 AFL–CIO executive council meeting.

New Unity Partnership: 2005

In January 2005, Stern announced that the New Unity Partnership had disbanded. Its purpose had been to create discussion over the future of the labor movement, Stern said, and that goal had been accomplished.

At the March 2005 AFL–CIO executive council meeting, however, no consensus on reform emerged. Instead, the executive committee of the AFL–CIO recommended that the federation earmark half of all income for political and legislative mobilization. The executive committee also recommended rebating up to millions of dollars to unions which spent at least 30 percent of their budget on organizing. There appeared to be little support in the executive committee for mandatory mergers.

But several former New Unity Partnership members disagreed with these proposals. The Teamsters demanded a 50 percent of dues to member unions, as well as streamlining the AFL–CIO by moving many of its functions out of the headquarters to the state and local field operations, eliminating other functions, and reducing the size of the executive committee.

In May 2005, Sweeney formally submitted the executive council's proposals to the AFL–CIO convention for consideration in July.

On June 16, Stern and his allies announced the formation of a new organization, the Change to Win Coalition. The Change to Win Coalition included five unions: SEIU, UFCW, the Laborers, UNITE HERE and the Teamsters. They were joined by the Carpenters on June 27. The Change to Win Coalition released a set of proposals for reforming the AFL-CIO that largely reflected its member union's proposals.

In mid-June, the AFL–CIO executive council voted to submit Sweeney's reform plan to the AFL–CIO convention in July. Discussion on the outstanding proposals from the February meeting continued, but no consensus was reached.

Additional counter-proposals were proposed throughout the summer. The Change to Win Coalition union presidents sought and received authority from their governing bodies to disaffiliate from the AFL–CIO, but it became clear that the Change to Win coalition could muster only a third of delegates at the AFL–CIO convention.

A contentious convention: 2005

On July 25, 2005, as the AFL–CIO convention got under way, SEIU and the Teamsters announced that the negotiations had failed and that they were disaffiliating from the AFL–CIO. The same day, SEIU, the Teamsters, UFCW and UNITE HERE announced that their delegates would boycott the AFL–CIO convention.

Sweeney angrily denounced the disaffiliations. Gerald McEntee called the disaffiliation threats a power-play, claiming that the Change to Win coalition had demanded that Sweeney announce his retirement within six months and endorse a replacement of their choosing.

With the Change to Win unions boycotting the AFL–CIO convention, Sweeney's re-election and the adoption of his reform plans became a foregone conclusion.

On July 29, UFCW disaffiliated from the AFL–CIO, bringing the total number of members lost to 4.6 million of the AFL–CIO's 13 million members.

On September 13, the 450,000-member union UNITE HERE voted to disaffiliate from the AFL–CIO.

The breakaway unions officially formed a new labor federation, Change to Win, on September 27, 2005.

Both Sweeney and Change to Win reached out to one another after the break-up of the AFL–CIO, although the relationship was difficult. Sweeney primarily focused on stabilizing the AFL–CIO and its state, area and local bodies financially, structurally and politically. Sweeney kept a relatively low profile, seeking the spotlight only during disputes with Change to Win or when addressing national issues such as immigration policy.

Sweeney retired as President of the AFL–CIO on September 16, 2009, and became President Emeritus. He won the "Roving Ambassador for Peace" award from the World Peace Prize Awarding Council in 2016, because of his long-standing devotion to social justice and fair employment opportunities for American workers.

Personal life

Sweeney co-edited a study about the labor movement and co-wrote two books about unions, including America Needs a Raise: Fighting for Economic Security and Social Justice. He was married to Maureen Power, a former schoolteacher, and lived with her in Bethesda, Maryland. He had two children, John (an information technology professional) and Patricia (who owns a site selection company, Sweeney Contract Solutions, LLC). He has a granddaughter, Kennedy. He was also a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

Sweeney's hobbies included golf and bowling. He died on February 1, 2021, at his home in Bethesda at the age of 86.