First Woman of Color Elected As Top Officer at National AFL-CIO, Chavez-Thompson Worked Tirelessly for Civil, Human and Workers’ Rights

AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson will step down to return home to San Antonio and be with her family effective Sept. 21, President John Sweeney announced today.

Chavez-Thompson was elected to the office of executive vice president in 1995.  A second-generation American who is the daughter of cotton sharecroppers, Chavez-Thompson became the first person of color to hold one of the top three elected offices at the AFL-CIO.  She had previously served on the AFL-CIO Executive Council as a leader in AFSCME.  Traveling and speaking to union and community groups constantly, she has been the face of America's new union movement to millions.  Chavez-Thompson has worked to strengthen state and local labor movements and has served as a strong voice on behalf of civil, human and women’s rights.  She also has been a national leader on the issue of immigration and immigrant workers’ rights.

“In everything she’s done over a lifetime of service, Linda has broken new pathways for the labor movement,” Sweeney said. “Countless working women and men, not only in the United States but throughout the Western Hemisphere, have a better life because of all she's contributed.  She’s inspired tens of thousands of people to contribute through their own action, and wherever she’s gone, she’s earned tremendous affection."

Under the AFL-CIO constitution, Chavez-Thompson, a native of Lubbock, Texas, will become the AFL-CIO’s first executive vice president emerita.  She will continue to chair the AFL-CIO Immigration Committee and serve as head of the Inter-American Regional Organization of Workers (ORIT), the International Trade Union Confederation’s (ITUC) regional organization for the Americas.  She will also serve as an advisor to state federations and labor councils.

In a letter to Sweeney formally communicating her retirement, Chavez-Thompson said she wrestled with her decision.  “I am blessed to have had 12 years worth of wonderful experiences, meeting thousands of union members and workers who have given me hope that our labor movement continues to be a major factor in their lives,” she wrote.  “You … have given me the opportunity of a lifetime, which was to go where I never dreamed I could go, and do more than I ever dreamed I could do.”

Sweeney has asked the AFL-CIO Executive Council to support his recommendation of Arlene Holt Baker, who currently serves as assistant to the president, to fill the remainder of Chavez-Thompson’s term.  Holt Baker has more than 30 years of experience in the labor movement and is a longtime member of AFSCME.  Prior to coming to the AFL-CIO in 1995, she directed AFSCME’s work in California as International Union Area Director.  At the AFL-CIO, Holt Baker led the efforts to mobilize a labor-movement wide response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In 2004, she was executive director of Voices for Working Families, a 527 organization that mobilized working people around core economic issues.  The council will vote on Holt Baker’s nomination on Sept. 21.