Labor On The Move: AFSCME's Bill Lucy Retires; Chuck Gray Passes

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)

AFSCME’s Bill Lucy Retires: Longtime labor icon and civil rights leader William Lucy (r) -- known to everyone as Bill -- has retired after more than four decades at the forefront of the labor movement. As Secretary-Treasurer of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) for nearly 40 years, Lucy helped the union grow from 200,000 to over 1.4 million members nationwide. He also helped define the role of African Americans in the labor movement when he founded the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU) in 1972, the same year he was elected Secretary-Treasurer of AFSCME. Along the way he stood alongside the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in civil rights struggles like the Memphis sanitation strike and Nelson Mandela in opposition to apartheid, organizing the Free South Africa movement to force the U.S. government to take action. In October 1995, Lucy was named a member of the AFL-CIO Executive Council, the highest decision-making body in the powerful labor federation. He is also vice president of AFL-CIO's Industrial Union Department, Maritime Trades Department, and Department of Professional Employees. Click here for a moving video tribute to Lucy at last week’s AFSCME convention. Click here for Union City’s previous report on Lucy’s retirement. Chuck Gray Passes: Chuck Gray (below), Director of the Asian-American Free Labor Institute (AAFLI) and before that, Director of the Federation's International Affairs Department, passed away on June 22nd. AAFLI was one of the four regional institutes that merged to become the Solidarity Center in 1997. Gray “applied his considerable talents to protecting the rights and improving the lives of countless working people all over the world, most of whom he would never meet,” wrote Jim Baker of the International Trade Union Confederation in Brussels, Belgium in the Washington’s Post’s obituary. “He worked and lived with commitment and passion.” Surviving family include his son, Tim Gray, who works at the AFL-CIO.
- photo (top) by Thor Swift, (bottom) courtesy The Washignton Post