Richard Trumka: AFL-CIO President Quiz

Answer: John Sweeney

John Sweeney was President of the AFL-CIO from 1995 to 2009.

Walter Reuther was the president of the United Auto Workers Union from 1946 till his death in 1970 in a plane crash.

John L Lewis was the long time president of the United Mine Workers and in the 1930's he helped to found the CIO-Congress of Industrial Organizations.

Samuel Gompers founded the American Federation of Labor (AFL), He was a premier figure in American Labor history.

Answer: United Mine Workers

Richard Trumka was the President of the United Mine Workers of America from 1982 to 1995. As UMWA head Trumka fought against employer cutbacks and sought to revive militancy in the labor movement.

Answer: The Anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa

Whilst head of the UMWA, Trumka established an office to support solidarity with South African miners fighting against apartheid. The office established by Trumka supported the boycott of companies who dealt with South Africa.

Answer: Shell

Trumka served as the U.S. chair of the Shell boycott which challenged the Royal Dutch/Shell group for doing business with apartheid South Africa.

Answer: Richard Trumka never worked as a miner

Richard Trumka worked as a coal miner in Pennsylvania from 1968 to 1974.

Richard Trumka was born in Nemacolin, Pennsylvania near Pittsburgh.

Richard Trumka is both an Italian-American and a third generation Polish-American.

Richard Trumka earned a Law Degree from Villanosa University and a Bachelor of Science Degree from the Pennsylvania State University in 1971.

Answer: Sam Church

Sam Church was the President of the UMWA from 1979 to 1982. He was defeated by Richard Trumka in a election for Union President in which Trumka defeated Church by a two to one margin, despite red-baiting by Church and claims by Church that Trumka was ineligible for the presidency.

John L Lewis was UMWA president from 1920 to 1960 and he was one of the founders of the CIO.

Jimmy Hoffa was president of the Teamsters Union from 1958 to 1971 and had been accused of being involved with organized crime. He is famous for having dissapeared due to apparent foul play in 1975.

Cecil Roberts was Richard Trumka's successor as President of the UMWA, beginning his service in 1995.

Answer: Pittston Coal Strike

Richard Trumka led the successful nine-month Pittston Coal Strike in 1989. The Union victory forced the Pittston Coal Company to pay into the industry wide employee health and retirement fund. Trumka championed the use of non-violent civil disobedience tactics during the strike.

The UPS strike of 1997 was conducted by the Teamster Union. The Battle of Matewan took place in 1920 in the small coal town of Matewan, West Virginia. It was a fight between coal miners who were attempting to organize a union and the Stone Mountain Coal Corporation which hired armed enforcers to break the strike. The Bituminous Coal Strike of 1977-1978 was a Coal Strike by the UMWA. It lasted for 110 days.

Answer: Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Prize

Richard Trumka was awarded the Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award in 1990 for his leadership in the boycott of the Royal Dutch/Shell group for doing business with apartheid South Africa.

The Letelier-Moffitt Award is named after the Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier and the American political activist Ronni Moffitt. They were assassinated by Pinochet's secret service in Washington D.C. The Award is given by the liberal Institute for Policy Studies and it is given to those who have advanced human rights in the Americas.

Answer: YouTube

The video and its popularity was referred to as "the labor movement's first YouTube Moment" by "The Washington Post". The video helped to make Trumka more prominent to the broader public.

Answer: The need to pass right to work laws.

Right to work laws are anti-union laws that unions oppose.

The Employee Free Choice Act would make it easier to unionize workplaces by allowing employees to unionize a workplace without a NLRB election if enough of the employees at the workplace sign cards requesting union representation. Proponents of the law claim that the card check process will make union busting by employers more difficult and allow millions of workers who want union representation to get it.

Many corporations have outsourced jobs to foreign countries, usually countries where the workers get much lower wages then American workers and have few or any benefits.

The percentage of the American workforce that is unionised reached its peak in the 1950's and the percentage has been on the decline up till Rumka's election as AFL-CIO President.