For many, John Sweeney is known as the former head of the AFL-CIO, a position from which he retired in 2009 after 14 years of service. For most of the preceding 57 years, he was a member and officer of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), having served 15 of those years as its president. His tenure as president is reflected in the "SEIU Executive Office: John Sweeney Collection" currently available for viewing at Wayne State University's Walter P. Reuther Library.

Sweeney's tenure with SEIU began as a cemetery worker with Local 365. He briefly left SEIU, but returned and rose through the ranks of SEIU Local 32B in New York City. Ultimately, he was elected that local's president and oversaw its merger with Local 32J, making it one of the largest locals in the AFL-CIO with 55,000 members. With this background, he moved into the office of SEIU international secretary-treasurer in 1980, a position he held for only six months before ascending to the office of international president upon the retirement of George Hardy. Sweeney's initial years as SEIU president coincided with the presidency of Ronald Reagan, whose tax cuts and dismissal of air traffic controllers marked him as anti-labor. Similarly, the Reagan-controlled National Labor Relations Board worked against the efforts of SEIU and organized labor generally.

Even as the ranks of organized labor suffered declines during Sweeney's tenure as SEIU president, the union reached the million-member mark 11 years into his presidency, a milestone Sweeney had vowed to reach. By the time he stepped down as SEIU president, membership had increased by nearly 500,000. Nowhere did SEIU's ranks grow more rapidly than in its public sector membership, in which a number of independent public employee unions and associations affiliated with SEIU. Membership among health care workers also grew rapidly during this period.

Sweeney reorganized the union in 1984, creating building service, health care, industrial and allied, clerical and public sector divisions in order to better accommodate its diverse membership. These divisions benefited from expanded research and organizing departments that Sweeney established, and with this support, the union pursued campaigns that allowed SEIU to grow in strength during an era characterized by antagonism toward unions. 

The collection spans more than 175 linear feet and contains an assortment of correspondence, internal memoranda, reports, speeches and testimony, agendas and programs to events, meeting minutes, press releases, newspaper clippings and handwritten notes, among other records. It is the largest SEIU collection housed at the Walter P. Reuther Library and contains files documenting the activities of local unions, joint councils and other SEIU affiliates. In addition, the files of SEIU executive board members, vice presidents, divisions, departments and staff members are found within the collection. Researchers also can review records documenting the meetings, hearings, conventions and conferences Sweeney attended and before which he often gave speeches or testimony. Also located in the collection are records reflecting Sweeney's interest in health care reform as well as material documenting the conventions SEIU held during Sweeney's tenure as president.

For more information, refer to the Walter P. Reuther Library website at http://www.reuther.wayne.edu/ or contact Louis Jones, Ph.D., CA at louis.jones@wayne.edu or (313) 577-0263.

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