AFL and AFL-CIO Office of the President, George Meany papers
Collection
0062-LBR-RG1-038
George Meany began his career as a journeyman plumber in New York City, and soon was elected to be business agent of New York Local 463 in 1922. After serving in the New York City Central Trades and Labor Assembly, and the New York State Federation of Labor, he was elected to be Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL in 1939. Upon the death of AFL President, William Green, George Meany was elected as the next president of the AFL. This collection comprises the records of the last two decades of George Meany's AFL-CIO presidency. It includes national and international unions correspondence; state and local central bodies correspondence; miscellaneous correspondence and subject files; international affairs files; government agencies correspondence; speeches; copybooks; AFL-CIO committees material; state governments correspondence; organizers correspondence; merger and jurisdictional dispute files; constitutional and trade departments records; ethical practices; committee records; and personal papers.
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198.00 Linear Feet
This collection is comprised of the records of the last two decades of George Meany's AFL-CIO presidency. Documents primarily relating to affiliated unions date from 1940, but the bulk of the collections falls within the years 1961 to 1979. The collection contains correspondence, printed material, clippings, reports, speeches, and writings. Although Meany retired in December 1979, isolated documents dating to 1981 occasionally appear.
Like earlier groups of records from the Office of the President, the arrangement of these records reflects the way the office functioned, documenting activities such as relations with affiliates, negotiations with the international labor movement, research into various subjects, communications with staff departments and with a wide variety of individuals and groups outside the house of labor. George Meany's miscellaneous correspondence contains the most disparate materials, but that series can often yield documents of great value.
Born in New York City on August 16, 1894, George Meany was the son of Michael Joseph and Anne Cullen Meany. In 1910 Meany followed his father into work as a plumber becoming, first, an apprentice plumber and, in 1917, a journeyman plumber. He joined the United Association of Plumbers and Steam Fitters of the United States and Canada (UA) and in 1922 won the position of business agent to New York Local 463. From then he mounted steadily through the ranks of union leadership, serving as a delegate to the New York City Central Trades and Labor Assembly, winning as seat in 1932 as a vice-president of the New York State Federation of Labor, and moving to the presidency of the state body in 1934. During his years at the state federation, Meany focused on lobbying activities before the state legislature, on efforts to initiate federal work relief, and on restoring the membership and finances of the state organization.
Meany's career took a major turn in 1939 when he was elected to the position of secretary-treasurer of the American Federation of Labor (AFL). He was an active federation officer, particularly after 1948, when he began to take over more of the decision-making from President William Green who had become ill. During his years as secretary-treasurer, Meany served on numerous boards and committees including: National Defense Mediation Board, National War Labor Board, executive board of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, National Advisory Board on Mobilization Policy, and the Contract Compliance Committee.
When William Green died in 1952, the AFL executive council appointed Meany as acting president, and he subsequently won the position which he held until his retirement in December 1979. Along with Walter Reuther of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), Meany spent much of the first years in office working for the merger of the CIO with the AFL. The merged organization, AFL-CIO, elected Meany its first president in 1955. Meany's work as president was marked by fervent anti-communism, avid interest in international affairs, and considerable influence in the councils of the Democratic Party.
George Meany married Eugenie A. McMahon on November 26, 1919. They had three children: Regina Meany Mayer, Genevieve Meany Lutz, and Eileen Meany Lee. Meany died January 10, 1980, within weeks of retiring from the AFL-CIO presidency. He is buried in Gates of Heaven Cemetery in Silver Spring, MD.
This collection is organized into fifteen series:
The AFL-CIO Office of the President, the Metal Trades Department, and the AFL-CIO Office of the Secretary-Treasurer transferred these records to the George Meany Memorial Archives in 1979, 1982, and 1983. The George Meany Memorial Archives transferred these records as part of a major transfer of their archive and library holdings to the University of Maryland Libraries in 2013.
Bill Hartley, Mark Wilkens, Daniel Lewis, Juliette Arai, Julia Lehnert, Kate Snodgrass, and M. Lee Sayrs at the George Meany Memorial Archives initially processed these records in 1999. The University of Maryland Libraries received the records and the finding aid in 2013. In 2017, Bria Parker exported and cleaned the finding aid contents from the Eloquent Systems database using OpenRefine, and finally transformed the finding aids into Encoded Archival Description (EAD) using a series of programmatic scripts. The finding aid was ingested into ArchivesSpace in 2018, at which point Rebecca Thayer updated the descriptive content for accuracy. Revisions include changes to biographical/historical notes, scope and content notes, and the creation of new collection numbers. Rebecca Thayer also enhanced custodial histories and re-wrote collection titles to better conform to archival standards.
Part of the Special Collections and University Archives