George Meany

His father was a plumber who served as president of his union local, and quitting high school at 16 to follow him into the trade was less a choice than an inheritance. Meany served a five-year apprenticeship and took his journeyman's certificate in 1917, with Local 463 of the plumbers and steamfitters. By then he was the household. His father had died of heart failure the year before, his brother was in the Army, and his mother and six younger children were behind him. He caught semiprofessional baseball to make up the money. In 1919 he married Eugenia McMahon, a garment worker in the ILGWU. Local 463 put him on its executive board in 1920 and made him full-time business agent in 1922. He never worked as a plumber again.

In 1934 he took over the New York State Federation of Labor and got 72 of his bills enacted in Albany in his first year of lobbying. Washington came in 1939, as secretary-treasurer of the AFL, and the AFL presidency in 1952 on William Green's death. He negotiated with the CIO for three years and closed the merger on December 5, 1955 — one federation, 15 million members, himself at its head for 24 years. He expelled the Teamsters in 1957. He backed Lyndon Johnson's war, lost Walter Reuther's auto workers in 1968, and endorsed nobody for president in 1972.

He never went on strike in his life. He said it himself: never went on strike, never ran one, never ordered anyone else to run one, never had anything to do with a picket line. A plumbers' business agent ran American labor for 27 years out of hearing rooms and corridors, and the method reached everything. The federation lobbied hard for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Johnson gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963. He also opposed an AFL-CIO endorsement of the March on Washington that year, and left the whites-only locals in the building trades alone. When A. Philip Randolph pressed him on them from the convention floor in 1959, Meany demanded to know who the hell had appointed him guardian of all the Negroes in America. The executive council censured Randolph in October 1961.

He retired on November 19, 1979, at 85, eight months after Eugenia died and 57 years after Local 463 first put him on a payroll. Cardiac arrest killed him seven weeks later. Jimmy Carter called him an American institution. The verdict since has split roughly along the line Randolph drew. His defenders point to the ethics codes, the expulsions, and a federation the rackets never took. Labor historians date the long slide to his watch: union membership fell from about 33 percent of the non-farm workforce in 1955 to 23 percent in 1979. The labor studies center he founded in 1969, and that carried his name, closed in April 2014.

George Meany's life against the full span of the corpus.

• The AFL-CIO merger other
  Three years of negotiation, closed December 5, 1955 — 15 million members in one federation 1955
• AFL-CIO Codes of Ethical Practices other
  Adopted after the McClellan hearings, with a standing Committee on Ethical Practices to enforce them 1957
• Civil Rights Act of 1964 law
  The federation lobbied for it, including the fair employment title 1964
• Social Security Amendments of 1965 law
  Medicare and Medicaid — health coverage for the aged had been a federation demand for years 1965
• Occupational Safety and Health Act law
  Federal workplace safety standards, long pressed for by the AFL-CIO 1970
• George Meany Center for Labor Studies other
  Founded in Silver Spring, Maryland, and dedicated by him in 1974 — later the National Labor College 1969

• 1917 aged ~23 Takes his journeyman plumber's certificate with Local 463 He had quit high school at 16 for a five-year apprenticeship. The local made him its full-time business agent in 1922.
• August 29, 1934 aged 40 Becomes president of the New York State Federation of Labor Seventy-two bills he promoted in Albany were enacted in his first year, and he worked closely with Governor Herbert Lehman.
• November 25, 1952 aged 58 Becomes president of the AFL after William Green's death He had been the federation's secretary-treasurer in Washington since 1939.
• December 5, 1955 aged 61 The AFL and the CIO merge and elect him president Fifteen million members. Only about two million organized workers remained outside the new federation.
• December 6, 1957 aged 63 Expels the Teamsters after Jimmy Hoffa refuses to resign The McClellan committee hearings had exposed both the Beck and the Hoffa factions.
• October 12, 1961 aged 67 The executive council censures A. Philip Randolph Randolph had brought the council charges of discrimination in affiliated unions.
• 1968 aged ~74 Walter Reuther takes the auto workers out of the AFL-CIO The UAW stayed out until 1981.
• 1972 aged ~78 The federation endorses no one for president Meany would not back George McGovern and would not back Richard Nixon either.
• November 19, 1979 aged 85 Retires after 57 years as a union official Lane Kirkland succeeded him. Meany died of cardiac arrest in Washington on January 10, 1980.

• Walter Reuther 1907–1970
  United Auto Workers leader who helped build organized labor into a major economic and political force. rival
• A. Philip Randolph 1889–1979
  Labor and civil-rights leader who pressured presidents to desegregate defense work and the armed forces. opposed
• Jimmy Hoffa 1913–1975
  Teamsters president who won American truckers their first national contract, and disappeared in 1975 expelled
• Lyndon B. Johnson 1908–1973
  36th President who signed the Civil Rights Act and launched the Great Society programs. allied with
• Samuel Gompers 1850–1924
  Founding leader of the American Federation of Labor who established durable craft-union organization. succeeded the movement of
• John L. Lewis 1880–1969
  Union leader who built the United Mine Workers and helped found the CIO, expanding industrial unionism and collective bargaining. opposed by