Chicago, IL
With respect and appreciation, the Executive Council of the AFL-CIO honors Vice President Carolyn Forrest as she retires from a lifetime of outstanding leadership and dedicated service to her union and to the good of working men and women.
Only weeks after going to work as a spotwelder in 1957, she led an organizing drive in her plant that resulted in a vote by her co-workers to join UAW Local 408. Her skills as a leader and as an outspoken advocate for her members led to her election as a steward and later as secretary-treasurer of her local, and in 1967 UAW President Walter Reuther asked her to join the staff of the national union where she developed skills and expertise working for the best interests of UAW members in fields ranging from auto parts and supplier plants to office, technical and professional university employees.
Appointed as an assistant to former UAW Presidents Douglas Fraser in 1977 and Owen Bieber in 1983, Carolyn Forrest has shouldered key responsibilities for direction of a number of the union’s major departments such as the aerospace and the women’s departments. She has handled overall responsibility for negotiating and grievances with a number of major employers, and she has been a member of both government and private sector defense policy and technology advisory committees.
As one of the labor movement’s foremost women leaders, Carolyn Forrest was a founding member of the Coalition of Labor Union Women, and she has been an eloquent voice in encouraging the full participation of women and people of color in every aspect of the labor movement and throughout our society.
On behalf of the men and women of the AFL-CIO, and of their families, the Executive Council extends the warmest gratitude and sincerest thanks to Carolyn Forrest for her principled, heartfelt and tireless commitment to her union, to this federation and to the goals of justice, dignity, equality and freedom for all working people.