DC – Former AFSCME Leader Elected to AFL-CIO Post
Washington, D.C.
Trail Blazer | Arlene Holt Baker, new AFL-CIO executive vice president.
Photo Credit: Jay Mallin
Arlene Holt Baker, former AFSCME area director in California, was elected in September to become executive vice president of the AFL-CIO, the third-highest-ranking position in the national federation.
Holt Baker, who worked for AFSCME as an area director from the late 1980s to 1995 before joining the staff of the AFL-CIO, is the first African American to serve as one of the top three officers of the 10-million-member federation. She fills the unexpired term of another AFSCME alumna: Linda Chavez-Thompson, who retired.
“Arlene’s dedication to the labor movement is deep-rooted,” says AFSCME Pres. Gerald W. McEntee. “Her vision of a future in which workers continue to make great strides to improve their lives is a clear one. She’s a fighter.”
The child of a domestic worker, Holt Baker became a laborer in Fort Worth, Texas, and then spent the next three decades as a union and grassroots organizer. In California, she helped public-sector workers form unions with AFSCME, and to win contracts that provided improved wages and pay equity for women.
Holt Baker left the AFL-CIO in 2004 to lead Voices for Working Families, which registered and mobilized thousands of women and people of color to vote in under-registered communities. Two years later, she returned to the AFL-CIO to lead its Gulf Coast Recovery effort, and handle other special projects for Pres. John Sweeney.
