by Mario Aguirre
Linda Chávez-Thompson
Linda Chávez-Thompson, the first person of color to hold one of the top three elective offices at the 10-million-member AFL-CIO, retired Sept. 21 after serving as its executive vice president for the 5last 12 years.
Chávez-Thompson, 63, a second-generation U.S. citizen of Mexican descent, plans to remain active with a variety of AFL-CIO responsibilities while representing it with allied organizations, she told Weekly Report during an interview at her Washington, D.C., office on her next-to-last day officially on the Job.
As the union’s executive vice president emeritus, she will remain in the capital and will travel over the next few weeks before rejoining family members and friends in San Antonio. Chávez-Thompson, who has 35 years of experience in the labor movement started working with the Laborers ‘local union in her native Lubbock in 1967. Soon after that she went to work for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees where she became the international vice president in 1988. In 1993 she became the first Hispanic woman elected to the union’s executive council.
“In everything she’s done over a lifetime of service, Linda has broken new pathways for the labor movement,” AFL-CIO, president John Sweeney said in a statement.
“Countless working women and men, not only in the United States but through out 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 actions, and wherever she’s gone, she’s earned tremendous affection.”
Now Chávez-Thompson says she hopes to dip into some pastimes which she was unable to indulge in before, such as starting a garden that doesn’t get taken over by weeds.
She emphasized her intention to continue working for immigration reform because “certain people, primarily Latinos, are being mistreated. Their rights are being abused. Their rights are being violated, and we have to stand up for them because they can’t stand up for themselves.
In her efforts to help immigrants withstand discrimination, she said her primary intention is to encourage Latinos to join the labor movement, and to urge union activists to dedicate themselves to the community.
Chávez-Thompson spoke openly to Weekly Report about the AFLCIO’s opposition to competition from non-union immigrant workers in the mid-9Os, and how it changed its ways in 2000, recognizing a lack of organizational support offered to immigrants.
During her 12-year tenure, Chávez-Thompson stood at the forefront in the battle against unfair trade policies that encourage companies to relocate overseas in search of the least expensive labor possible.
“If I’ve done even a very small piece of that, I consider the last 12 years of my life here in the labor movement well worth it,” she said. Throughout her career, Chavez-Thompson maintained a busy lifestyle with her two children and grandchildren. Her husband, Robert Thompson, long-time president of AFSCME’s San Antonio local, died in 1993.
In retirement, she says she will continue to chair the AFL-CIO Immigration Committee and serve as head of the Inter-American Regional Organization of Workers, the International Trade Union Confederation’s regional organization for the Americas.
She will also spearhead an organization that represents nearly 44 million workers in the Western Hemisphere—the United States, the Caribbean, Mexico, Central America and South America—a project that she says she is committed to for the next four years.
She hopes her menu of commitments won’t give the weeds an opening to choke her Texas garden again. Just some flowers. No decision yet as to what kind. But no vegetables, although she does like squash.
Chavez Successor Elected Arlene Holt-Baker, the first African-American to hold such a top position with the AFL-CIO, was elected Sept. 21 by unanimous vote of the union’s board of directors to succeed Chavez-Thompson as executive vice president.
Hispanic Link.
