New AFL-CIO chief for Tennessee stresses safety
By Duane Marsteller | The Tennessean
Executive Q&A: Gary W. Moore
When Gary W. Moore first ran for the state legislature in 2004, few thought he could win.
He was taking on a well-known, well-financed incumbent who had been in office for 20 years. Not only that, Moore was challenging him in the primary - usually the political graveyard of first-time office-seekers.
The long odds didn't deter Moore. The result: He not only won the Democratic nomination, he took the general election and since has represented the 50th House District - which covers his home in Joelton and other portions of western Davidson County - for seven years.
Now, he's taking on perhaps an even greater challenge: Enhancing labor unions' clout and public image in Tennessee, a state not known as being labor-friendly.
Moore, 62, was elected the Tennessee AFL-CIO Labor Council's president at the organization's biennial convention earlier this month. The council has 279 local affiliates with 62,000 members, or about half of all union membership in Tennessee.
Moore takes the post as it and other unions' influence, never strong in Tennessee to begin with, continues to weaken because of declining membership. Just 4.7 percent of Tennessee workers belonged to a union last year, half of what it was in 2002, according to federal data.
Education is key to reversing that trend, said Moore, a soon-to-be-retired Nashville firefighter who has been a staunch union member and official for 32 years. He sat down with Tennessean business reporter Duane Marsteller last week to discuss his plans for his new position.
Why did you decide to seek the top leadership spot of the Tennessee AFL-CIO Labor Council?
I wanted to provide some different direction. I want to try to unite labor. As you very well know, union membership has dwindled over the years mainly because manufacturing has gone overseas. What remaining membership we have I'm going to try to make it more cohesive and try to to bring it together more collectively. That's my goal.
What do you hope to accomplish?
Number one, I want to bring labor back together. My goal, with my firefighting background, is real heavy on public safety, so therefore I'm looking at public-worker safety. The statistics say last year here in Tennessee we had almost 75 people die in job-related injuries. I want to turn that around. I want to get to the bottom of this and try to save lives. When you look at thousands of (job-related) injuries statewide, that concerns me as well. I also want to bring labor back, turn it around from where it is right now.
Why do you think labor is in the shape that it is today?
I think the biggest problem out there is that it's portrayed that labor is bad, that labor is evil, and nothing could be farther from the truth. Again, labor (unions) provides a service to its members, and that's what we want to do.
Tennessee has long been known for not being labor-friendly. How do you plan to overcome that challenge?
I think that education is going to be the key. Again, the perception is that labor's created the problems and nothing's further from the truth. If you look at the national level, you'll see a lot of politics, people saying we're breaking the store and we're doing this and we're doing that. They fail to look at the flip side of it: What the top executives are making. They're basically embezzling money from the company and getting a golden parachute when they leave, yet the working men and women are being blamed for all the problems.
Studies have shown that most of the wealth created since the recession has gone into corporate profits, not wages. What, on a statewide level, could be done about that?
One thing we need to do is educate the public, make them more aware of where their money's really going. A good example is any company that has moved out of state to a foreign country. They move over there on the premise that, bottom line they're going to save a lot of money .... but in reality none of that savings is shared with the general public. They turn around and sell at the same price as when they were making it in the United States. They're not sharing the savings with the consumer. They're pocketing it. It's just corporate greed.
What specific ideas or proposals do you have in order to make that happen?
I'm an elected official as well. I serve in the state House as a Democrat. But as an AFL-CIO president, I want to portray it as a non-partisan organization, a labor group that supports individuals and their issues. One thing you're going to see is us reaching out to all elected officials and trying to educate them on our concerns and what our issues are and hopefully convey that to them in a manner that will be beneficial to the state of Tennessee.
You're a state legislator as well. How are you going to handle wearing the two hats?
My whole life I've worn two or sometimes three hats, like being president of the (firefighters) local and being a state legislator. I feel I can do the same thing with the AFL-CIO. Make no mistake, though, I will have to rely on other board members to pull their weight.
How do you plan to reach out?
The primary thing I want to do is educate the legislators. When I say legislators, I'm not talking only about state legislators. I'm also talking about local elected officials as well. We have in place right now a labor-management organization within the state that may have not been fully utilized. But the main goal is to educate the public on what labor really represents, what labor really is and what labor really has done for the people in the state of Tennessee.
Union membership has been on a steady decline, both nationally and in Tennessee. What's your plan to reverse that trend?
The manufacturing moving overseas is going to be a trend that's going to be hard to deal with here at the state level. The governor has in the past, as well as the current governor, been trying to do what they can to move businesses to Tennessee. We would like to reach out and help in that respect. We hope that some of those jobs will be union jobs and we will show the individuals (holding those jobs) the advantages of becoming and belonging to a union.
What relevance do unions have today in Tennessee?
I think they have a major role. Again, it goes back to safety. It's our job to make sure every member goes home at the end of their work shift. That's not always been the case. Unfortunately it will never be 100 percent, but we certainly want to send our members safely home to their families. That's our driving goal.
