Labor On The Move: AFL-CIO Special Projects Coordinator Kathy Smith Retires

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)

AFL-CIO Special Projects Coordinator Kathy Smith retired July 26 (a celebration will be held at the AFL-CIO today from 2–4p in the Gompers Room at the AFL-CIO). Smith, who hails from the coalfields on the border of Pennsylvania and West Virginia, landed a job as Executive Secretary to newly-elected UMWA President Richard Trumka in 1984 after earlier stints as a medical transcriptionist at Children’s Hospital and Providence Hospital. She worked for the U. S. Navy in Charleston, SC and WVU Medical Center in Morgantown, WV prior to coming to Washington, DC in 1980. She accompanied Trumka to the AFL-CIO in 1995 as Confidential  Secretary to the AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer and in September 2000 moved to the AFL-CIO Human Resources department where she served as Special Projects Coordinator "under the direction of two union women I greatly admire,  Karla Garland and then Samantha Connolly," Smith told Union City. Her husband, Jim,  is a retired DC Firefighter from IAFF Local 36, and the two are "looking forward to many years of volunteer work at our grandson’s school and sports and quality time in general with the extended family." photo: Smith at a Maryland basketball game with grandson AJ