Return to UMWA Home Page
Richard L. Trumka was elected Secretary Treasurer of the AFL-CIO on October 25, 1995. Anticipating his election, the UMWA 51st Constitutional Convention, meeting in September, unanimously voted to make Trumka president emeritus for life. Trumka stepped down as UMWA president on December 22, 1995, and was succeeded by vice president Cecil Roberts.
Born in Nemacolin, Pennsylvania in 1949, Richard Trumka was first elected UMWA president in 1982, at the age of 33 and was reelected twice. Other than John L. Lewis, Trumka served as UMWA president longer than any other in the union's history.
A third-generation coal miner, Trumka graduated from the Carmichaels Area High School and began work as a general inside laborer at the Nemacolin Mine at the age of 19. During his years in the mines Trumka worked as a shuttle car operator, roof bolter, motorman, track man, loading machine operator, continuous miner operator, cutting machine operator, pipeman and rock duster. In the early 1970s Trumka earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Pennsylvania State University in accounting and economics and later earned a law degree from Villanova University Law School.
After serving four years with the UMWA's legal staff during the reform administration of president Arnold Miller, Trumka returned to the mines in 1978. In 1981 he was elected to the UMWA International Executive Board from the union's District 4 in southwestern Pennsylvania. During his presidency, Trumka was elected three times to serve on the AFL-CIO's Executive Council. As a member of the Executive Council, Trumka chaired the AFL-CIO's Strategic Approaches Committee and the AFL-CIO's Energy Committee. Trumka also served on the executive boards of the AFL-CIO's Industrial Union Department (IUD), Maritime Trades Department (MTD) and the Transportation Trades Department (TTD).
In 1990 Trumka received the Labor Responsibility Award from the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. He is also the recipient of the 1995 Gompers-Murray-Meany Award from the Massachusetts AFL-CIO. Recognized as a national leader and a strong advocate of worker rights, President Clinton named Trumka to serve on the Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform in 1994.
Return to UMWA Home Page