AFL-CIO Power Struggle
The massive Republican congressional victories in 1994 represented a moment of crisis for organized labor and served to catalyze long simmering dissatisfaction in the AFL-CIO with Kirkland's leadership. Donahue could probably have been easily elected to succeed Kirkland were it not for the latter's resistance to passing the scene gracefully. The dissenting union leaders quickly lined up behind the leadership of Donahue's former protege and then-SEIU President John Sweeney, who proved unable to reach an amiable resolution with Kirkland and Donahue. Kirkland finally stepped down in the late spring of 1995 and Donahue became President, defeating Sweeney in an Executive Council election 22 to 11. Sweeney defeated Donahue at the AFL-CIO convention in December 1995.
Read more about this topic: Thomas R. Donahue
Famous quotes containing the words power and/or struggle:
“Abused as we abuse it at present, dramatic art is in no sense cathartic; it is merely a form of emotional masturbation.... It is the rarest thing to find a player who has not had his character affected for the worse by the practice of his profession. Nobody can make a habit of self-exhibition, nobody can exploit his personality for the sake of exercising a kind of hypnotic power over others, and remain untouched by the process.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“This socialism will develop in all its phases until it reaches its own extremes and absurdities. Then once again a cry of denial will break from the titanic chest of the revolutionary minority and again a mortal struggle will begin, in which socialism will play the role of contemporary conservatism and will be overwhelmed in the subsequent revolution, as yet unknown to us.”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)