AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, one of the nation’s most powerful labor leaders, has died, Democratic officials announced Thursday.
“The working people of America have lost a fierce warrior at a time when we needed him most,” the Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the floor of the Senate.
Trumka, 72, headed the influential labor organization for more than a decade, representing some 12.5 million workers.
He had emerged as a close ally of President Joe Biden, recently backing COVID-19 vaccine mandates for union workers — a major initiative being pushed by the president, The Hill said.
Biden on Thursday called Trumka “a close friend” who was “more than the head of AFL-CIO” after learning of the labor leader’s death.
Trumka, a third-generation coal miner from Pennsylvania, rose through the union ranks to lead the AFL-CIO — the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, the nation’s largest union conglomerate, the Washington Post reported Thursday.
Details of Trumka’s death were not immediately available.
In a statement Thursday the AFL-CIO said “the labor movement, the AFL-CIO and the nation lost a legend today.”
“Richard Trumka devoted his life to working people, from his early days as president of the United Mine Workers of America to his unparalleled leadership voice of America’s labor movement,” the statement said.
“He was a relentless champion of workers’ rights, workplace safety, worker-centered trade, democracy and so much more.”
The AFL-CIO encompasses 56 separate labor unions.
With Post wires