In Memoriam: AFL-CIO COPE Director John Perkins; AFA's Edith Lauterbach

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)Former AFL-CIO COPE Director John Perkins – who organized the 1981 Solidarity Day March in Washington (right) – died at 80 on February 5. Perkins began his career with the Carpenters Union in Elkhart, IN, serving as Business Agent for his local union there and rising to lead the Indiana State Building and Construction Trades Council. He joined the AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education (COPE) staff in 1971, became director in 1982 and retired in 1993. Edith Lauterbach (left), the last founding member of the first union for flight attendants, died earlier this week in San Francisco. She was 91. Hired by United Airlines in 1944, when flight attendants were still referred to as “sky girls” and “coeds,” Lauterbach quickly began questioning flight attendant safety, wages and working conditions, says AFA-CWA. “By 1945, after joining forces with four flight attendant colleagues, the first union organized, run and controlled by women was founded. And for nearly seven decades, her role and involvement in our union has been invaluable to hundreds of flight attendant leaders and an inspiration to countless activists… Her devotion to collective bargaining rights resulted in improving the lives of flight attendants through AFA-negotiated contracts.” Click here for more on the AFL-CIO Now blog. - photos: (above) 1981 Solidarity Day March; (below) Lauterbach; photos courtesy Corbis Images and AFL-CIO