PAGE 2 | December 21, 2018 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
NORTHWEST
EXIT INTERVIEW
LABOR
PRESS
Questions for Washington AFL-CIO’s Jeff Johnson
(International Standard Serial Number 0894-444X)
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DEPARTMENT OF
CORRECTIONS
Morales won in the end
In an article in our Nov. 16 issue on
the election results for labor-en-
dorsed candidates and measures,
we reported that former Jobs with
Justice board member Eddy Morales
lost narrowly to incumbent Kirk
French in a race for Gresham City
Council. But after the issue went to
press, Morales pulled ahead of in-
cumbent Kirk French and in the end
won by 25 votes.
Don’t forget Canada!
In the article “A sister to lead the
Brotherhood” in our Dec. 7 issue, we
referred to Evelyn Shapiro — the
newly elected leader of the Pacific
Northwest Regional Council of Car-
penters — as the first woman to
lead a regional council of the United
Brotherhood of Carpenters. Actu-
ally, she’s the first in the United
States, but within the Carpenters
union as a whole that trail was
blazed by Deb Romero, executive
secretary-treasurer of the Atlantic
Canada Regional Council.
Washington’s top labor leader,
Jeff Johnson, 67, is retiring Jan. 4
after a 32-year career at the
Washington State Labor Council
(WSLC), a federation of 600 local
unions with over 400,000 mem-
bers. Labor Press senior staff re-
porter Don McIntosh spoke with
him by phone Dec. 13.
You’ve been WSLC president eight
years. What are you most proud of? I
think what I’m most proud of is that we
made deep and meaningful relationships
with community. Adding those voices to
union voices made us so much more
powerful. …. I think this is how we build
the movement to get a voice for workers
in determining what our future economy
looks like.
Do you think Washington’s labor
movement is stronger or weaker
than it was 30 years ago? It’s much
stronger and bigger. I mean, there was a
time in Washington state history in the
mid-‘50s where we actually had 55
percent of the work force organized. I
really wouldn’t know what that meant on
a daily basis here —in 1955 I was four
years old and lived on the East Coast —
but I presume it meant that we were
fairly powerful. But relative to when I
started in this movement in this state in
1986, we are much stronger, more
powerful. We have a much stronger social
and economic vision than we did before,
and we have more leaders that are
willing to take the risks necessary to lead
a movement, and fewer leaders that are
just worried about maintaining their
positions in office.
Is there anything you’re not going to
miss about the job? The things you
don’t miss are the inter-union squabbles
over jurisdiction, when 90 percent of the
workforce is unorganized. I’m not going
to miss the squabbling about whether we
are a social movement or strictly a
movement about wages, hours, and
working conditions. That stuff is old. I’ve
been a progressive union member since
the 1970s coming out of New York City. In
my estimation we resolved that issue 40
years ago: We’re a social movement. That
doesn’t mean we don’t care for and
advocate for our own members every day
of our lives. It’s just that we do it in a
larger context.
Your career in the labor movement
began with teaching labor
economics at Empire State College in
the State University of New York.
How did you get there? I went to
college because my mother forced me to.
I was working as a cabinet maker in high
school. I loved the work. But I was facing
an ultimatum, so I went to college. It was
the late ‘60s, early ’70s. I went to college
[at Georgetown University] in D.C. and
got radicalized pretty quickly, trying to
sort through the meaning of the civil
rights movement and the Vietnam War,
and that led me to the study of
economics and study of political
economy. Through that work and living in
the inner city in D.C., I decided I needed
to get a better handle on economics. And
I chose to go to graduate school at the
New School for Social Research in New
York City. I enjoyed the studies, but I
worked full time, drove a truck for a
moving company. And I got more and
more interested in the labor movement.
Then I saw there was an opening for a
position teaching labor economics at the
Harry Van Arsdale Center for Labor
studies, which was a really brilliant
program negotiated by [IBEW leader] Van
Arsdale with the State University of New
York so that all IBEW Local 3’s
apprentices, as they went through their
formal apprenticeship program, also were
required to get an associates degree in
labor studies. I got to teach in that
program, which catered to union
members across the labor movement.
Do you have any advice for other
leaders in the labor movement? One,
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