A Tribute to Rich Trumka

This is an unexpected tribute to Rich Trumka, the longtime leader of the AFL-CIO who passed away last week.?

I met Rich when we both served on President Obama’s Jobs and Competitiveness Council. The AFL-CIO didn’t cover GE, but I had a good relationship with our union leaders and had respect for the process.

One of our Council “report outs” was in Pittsburgh in October 2011. Before meeting with the President, we would break the Council into groups of four to meet with local segments of business leaders. My group included then Intel CEO Paul Otellini, then DuPont CEO Ellen Kullman, and Rich. The session quickly eroded into a Tea Party shouting match, with small businesses accusing large company CEOs of “sucking up to Obama” and “crony capitalism.”

Then Rich stepped in as the peacemaker. He said, “if these guys don’t do well, none of us will.” As we walked out, I thanked him; he told me that as much as he enjoyed seeing us get beaten up, it was getting boring.

Early in my career (in the 1980s) at GE, human resources was almost entirely union relations. But the fact is that relations between unions and companies were terrible. One of my early posts was at GE Appliances in Louisville, Kentucky, known at that time as “Strike City.” These bad relations led to a generation of outsourcing across many companies, where moving work was easier than re-investing in the U.S. Ultimately this hurt business, unions lost good jobs, and business leaders lost the debate that globalization was good for all.

We all needed to pivot. In recent days, I see more businesses willing to invest in the U.S. They see that the front-line workforce is a key to competitiveness and relations in local communities. Some even take pride in creating jobs. And, union leaders, like Rich and Bob Santamoor from the IUE/CWA, defend their members while exploring new ways to work. Rich understood -- unlike his predecessors -- that his members couldn’t win on their own. He had courage.?

The role for unions in our economy will continue to be debated. But unions are not going away. Business should want them to have good leaders.

Rich was an “in your face” advocate, a defender of workers, smart in the right way, and a learner. His eyes burned bright, his smile was strong, his voice was gruff. He was someone business leaders could learn from and work with, even if he had a different point of view on their companies.?

The last time we met was over dinner in D.C. This was after the Jobs Council, and we had no real business – I just wanted to pick his brain. Most of the time we discussed his son who played linebacker at Cornell; I could relate as a former college football player. I think of his son and the rest of his family now and wish them peace.?

I hope we carry some of Rich’s values, ideas, and combativeness forward, particularly as we prepare to spend billions of dollars rebuilding our nation’s infrastructure. Winning for U.S. businesses means investing in growth here, including in the working people who make, build, and maintain what we need.