Jerry Tucker On The AFL-CIO Convention

The following report on the 2009 AFL-CIO Convention in Pittsburgh is posted by Jerry Tucker, special correspondent to the Monthly Review and MRZine. Tucker is a former International Executive Board Member of the UAW and a founder of the New Directions Movement within that union. He is also a co-founder of the Center for Labor Renewal and Director of the Solidarity Education Center and Healthcare Justice Education Fund.

If you're looking for the muscular flavor of working-class history, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the location for the 26th Constitutional Convention of the AFL-CIO, is a good choice. No longer present in the city, though, is the heavy air of round-the-clock steel mills that once produced the spine of American industry, where unionism won wages that lifted a generation out of poverty. The air is cleaner, the downtown skyline sports world-class architecture, and the region is now called the "Golden Triangle" by the flacks of the employing class. The once brawny city at the headwaters of the Ohio River is a logical fit to host the main contingent of a once brawny labor movement.

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