Lane Kirkland

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Joseph Lane Kirkland (March 12, 1922 – August 14, 1999) was a US labor union leader who served as President of the AFL-CIO for over sixteen years.

Lane Kirkland

[edit] Biography

Kirkland was born in Camden, South Carolina and rose over his career to head the 16 million-member American labor movement.

In 1941, Kirkland entered the United States Merchant Marine Academy, graduated 1942, and became an officer on U.S. merchant ships during World War II. After the war, he worked in the Research Department of the AFL. He received a B.S. degree from the prestigious Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.

Kirkland married Edith Draper Hollyday in June 1944, with whom he had five daughters. A year after their divorce in 1972, he married Irena Neumann.

From 1979 to 1995 Kirkland was president of the American Federation of Labor – Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). During his tenure, union membership in the United States declined precipitously. The unions suffered some of their most serious defeats, including the 1981 air traffic controllers's strike and the 1985 Hormel meat packers' strike. On the international front, Kirkland's support of the Solidarity movement in Poland contributed to the decline of communism (he was awarded posthumously with the highest Polish award, the Order of the White Eagle).

The AFL-CIO continued to be highly supportive of U.S. foreign policy during the 1970s and 1980s. The Free Trade Union Committee, which had supported the Vietnam War under Kirkland's predecessor George Meany, was reconstituted as the Free Trade Union Institute (FTUI). The FTUI cooperated with the National Endowment for Democracy, which received CIA funding, to support pro-government unions and subvert anti-government unions in Latin America and Europe.

His best remembered quotation is:

"If hard work were such a wonderful thing, surely the rich would have kept it all to themselves."

Kirkland died in Washington, D.C..

[edit] External links

Organized Labour Portal

Lane Kirkland (1922 - 1999) AFL-CIO history page.
Free Trade Union Institute the foreign arm of the AFL-CIO from 1977.
Lane Kirkland: The AFL-CIO's last cold warrior by Jim Smith
Freedom's Labors: Lane Kirkland worked for more than his union by Fred Siegel. Wall Street Journal. OpinionJournal.com. Tuesday, March 8, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST. Accessed April 3, 2005.

[edit] References

Puddington, Arch. Lane Kirkland: Champion of American Labor. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley and Sons, 2005. ISBN 0-471-41694-0.
Buhle, Paul. Taking Care of Business: Samuel Gompers, George Meany, Lane Kirkland, and the Tragedy of American Labor. New York City: Monthly Review Press, 1999. ISBN 1-58367-003-3.