Arlene Holt Baker

Arlene Holt Baker's outstanding leadership since being appointed to replace retired AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Linda Chavez Thompson was rewarded with election by acclamation to serve a full term in the office by delegates to the AFL-CIO's 26th convention on September 16, 2009.

Arlene's commitment to activism on behalf of working families has been a source of strength that has empowered her to overcome challenges and disappointments that might have deterred a leader of lesser mettle.

As a grade schooler in Ft. Worth, Texas, Arlene Holt Baker revered President John F. Kennedy. So she was thrilled that her mother got her released from school to travel to the parking lot across the street from the Texas Hotel where she heard Kennedy speak briefly before heading off in his motorcade.

Holt Baker got her first job in high school through President Lyndon Johnson's poverty initiative. Working after school at the $1.40-an-hour minimum wage, she made more than the $6 a day that her mother earned as a full time domestic worker.

She began her work in the labor movement with AFSCME in Los Angeles in June 1972, coincidentally in the same month that William Lucy took office as AFSCME's Secretary-Treasurer, the first African American to hold one of that union's top offices.

She moved through the ranks of AFSCME and, as an organizer and international union representative, was successful in helping to organize public-sector workers in California and helping them win contracts that provided better wages and pay equity for women.

Also in California, she helped run AFSCME's political activities, working with AFSCME council and local leaders to mobilize union voters in numerous national, statewide, county, and municipal elections. She was an active member of the California Democratic Party, serving as a state delegate to the Democratic National Convention for the elections held between 1980 and 1996 and as first vice chair of the state Democratic Party from 1993 to 1996.

In 1995, Arlene came to the AFL-CIO as executive assistant to Executive Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson. Working in 1998 for the first time with current AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer candidate Liz Shuler, Arlene's successes included the campaign to defeat the anti-worker California Proposition 226, which was designed to weaken the voices of union members in the political process. She also was instrumental in organizing labor's massive support for the more than 20,000 migrant workers who pick and process strawberries in California, as the workers struggled to join a union through the Farm Workers.

As assistant to the president of the AFL-CIO, Holt Baker became the first director of the AFL-CIO Voice@Work campaign in 1999. Holt Baker launched a dynamic movement to engage elected officials, clergy members, community leaders, and others in support of workers’ freedom to form unions. In 2000, she ran the federation's member education and get out the vote effort in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and later coordinated the AFL-CIO's Count Every Vote activity in the Florida recount.

Beginning in 2004, Arlene served as president of the nonpartisan voter education and mobilization effort Voices for Working Families, which registered and mobilized thousands of women and people of color to vote in under-registered communities.

She returned to the federation in 2006 to lead the AFL-CIO's Gulf Coast Recovery effort. That work has included partnering with the AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust's Gulf Coast Revitalization Program and the Building Trades Gulf Coast Pilot Project to bring affordable housing and good jobs to people in the region, and working closely with national and local advocates in fighting for the just rebuilding of the Gulf region.

On September 21, 2007, Arlene Holt Baker was unanimously approved to fill out the term of retiring Executive Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson, becoming the first African American to be elected to one of the federation’s three highest offices.

Serving as executive vice president of the AFL-CIO, Holt Baker continues to use her voice and her platform to advocate for the rights of workers to organize, health care reform, fair trade, immigrant rights, LGBT rights, voting rights, and the right for all union members to be able to fully participate in democratic unions that reflect the rich diversity of the workplace.