solidarity forever

Richard Gibson rgibson at pipeline.com
Thu Jun 11 12:32:43 PDT 1998


June 11, 1998

A.F.L.-C.I.O. Organizing Director Is Ousted

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

ASHINGTON -- The A.F.L.-C.I.O. president, John J. Sweeney, has dismissed the federation's organizing director in a move reflecting concerns about recruiting new members, labor officials said Tuesday.

The likely replacement for the director, Richard Bensinger, the officials said, is Kirk Adams, a regional field coordinator for the A.F.L.-C.I.O.

The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Sweeney acted on Monday in consultation with several union presidents who sit on the federation's organizing committee. An A.F.L.-C.I.O. spokeswoman declined to comment, and Bensinger did not return telephone calls.

Bensinger, a high-energy organizer from Colorado, was never shy about saying that he thought that labor's decline over the past two decades was attributable to union leaders' laziness.

Though admired among his fellow organizers, his direct manner rubbed some officials the wrong way.

Rich Gibson Director of International Social Studies Wayne State University College of Education Detroit MI 48202

http://www.pipeline.com/~rgibson/index.html http://www.pipeline.com/~rgibson/meap.html

Life travels upward in spirals.

Those who take pains to search the shadows

of the past below us, then, can better judge the

tiny arc up which they climb,

more surely guess the dim

curves of the future above them.



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