Lori J. Pelletier will lead the Connecticut AFL-CIO after delegates to the state federation’s convention elected her to the newly created position of executive secretary-treasurer, which will be the principal officer running the federation’s day-to-day operations. She has served as secretary-treasurer since 1999. Pelletier is the first openly LGBTQ person elected to the top office at an AFL-CIO state federation. 

Pelletier is a member of Machinists (IAM) Local 700 that represents more than 1,700 workers at Pratt & Whitney’s Middletown, Conn., plant, where she worked for 15 years and served in a number of local union offices. She says:

This is an opportunity of a lifetime, and I am truly honored and humbled to have been elected to serve the working men and women of our Connecticut labor  movement….Workers both union and nonunion need a strong labor movement to ensure that all the gains made in the past are protected, and I am extremely optimistic that the future of our labor movement is bright.

Along with her responsibilities at the Connecticut AFL-CIO, Pelletier is currently the co-president of Pride At Work, an AFL-CIO constituency group that organizes and mobilizes lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender workers. See the video below for her address at the recent AFL-CIO Diversity Conference held in conjunction with the AFL-CIO Convention 2013 (Pelletier starts speaking at 1 hour, 40 min.).   

John W. Olsen, who served as the state federation’s top officer during his 25 years as Connecticut AFL-CIO president, is retiring. He is a plumber by trade and a member of Plumber and Pipefitters (UA) Local 133. In his farewell address to the convention, he said:

It was the courage and determination of so many people I met on picket lines, in organizing drives or at rallies that fueled my sense that, as a union leader, I needed to be fearless about speaking out and acting on behalf of working families.

Sal Luciano, executive director of AFSCME Council 4, was elected state federation president and told delegates:

In a time when the deck is stacked against working people, Lori and her team are the best possible people to lead the fight back toward livable wages, retirement security and rebuilding the middle class.