All of us in the union movement mourn the death of Alan Kistler, one of the most respected, creative, and best-loved leaders in our movement for more than a half-century.

Alan first joined the union movement as a 17-year-old volunteer picketer in several strikes in his hometown of Pittsburgh. He had already held union cards as a hotel elevator operator, copy boy, cub reporter, and steel mill laborer shoveling molten steel when he was recruited by the legendary Steelworkers president Phil Murray to the organizing staff of the old CIO in 1952. Four years later, Alan joined the staff of the recently merged AFL-CIO in its Organization Department. He would later serve as its Director of Organization and then Organization and Field Services from 1973 to 1986. He was so widely trusted throughout the union movement that after he retired in 1986, he was asked to serve as an umpire mediating jurisdictional disputes between unions. For many years, he also served the movement he loved as president of the Human Resources Development Institute, where he led the AFL-CIO's job training efforts.

Alan deeply believed not only in contributing to the union movement but also to his church and community. He was deeply influenced by the Catholic Worker movement and worked closely for many years with its founder Dorothy Day. In Greenbelt, Maryland, the planned community created during the New Deal where he made his home, he served as a City Council member from 1955 to 1959 and mayor from 1959 to 1961.

In our movement, Alan leaves behind a wonderful legacy: higher wages and benefits for three generations of workers at the University of Chicago Hospital who formed a union with his help when he was a student attending the university on the GI Bill; a new vision of joint organizing by unions in the same city; a creative strategy he pioneered with the Los Angeles-Orange County Organizing Committee that is still vital and thriving; a strong commitment to unions for professional employees in a time when some thought the idea would never succeed; and a better life for countless workers throughout America who forge our steel, teach our kids, mine our coal, and nurse us back to health.

All of us who knew him and were proud to have him as our friend will miss this good, decent man. We send our condolences to his children—Kevin, Mary Anne, and Margaret—and his eight grandchildren.

Contact: Alison Omens (202) 637-5018