John Sweeney's Real Triumphs

washingtonpost.com — How do we assess Sweeney's tenure as president? That question was actually posed to him, prospectively, at the news conference that immediately followed his initial election. The expectations for American labor were uncommonly high at that moment: Sweeney had just run the only successful insurgent campaign for the AFL-CIO's presidency in the federation's history, based on renewing labor's commitment to organizing after decades of declining membership. No surprise, then, that Sweeney said he should be judged by his record in reversing that decline.

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