New Orleans, LA
Throughout his life, Vice President Arthur Coia has been an activist and an innovator, dedicated to the members of his union, the Laborers International Union of North America, and to working men and women throughout the nation in his tenure as a member of the AFL-CIO Executive Council.
Coia joined LIUNA Local 271 as a teenager in his native Providence, Rhode Island, and continued his involvement in his local union throughout his days as a Providence College student and as a Boston University law student. Rising to prominence as an attorney who was well known throughout his state as a strong trade unionist and activist, Coia also achieved the prestige of being admitted to practice law before the United States Supreme Court.
Coia served his fellow union members as business manager for the Rhode Island Laborers' District Council and manager of the union's New England and Eastern Canada region. He was elected LIUNA General Secretary-Treasurer in 1989, and in 1993 he was elected as the union's General President. He was elected in the same year as a member of the AFL-CIO Executive Council where he has been a co-chair of the Organizing Committee. He has also served as a vice president of the Building and Construction Trades Department.
Throughout his career of service to the Laborers and to the AFL-CIO, Arthur Coia has been an eloquent advocate for innovation and creativity in organizing, collective bargaining, education and training, workers' health and job safety issues and for effective labor-management relations based on mutual respect.
As he retires as president of LIUNA and as a vice president of the AFL-CIO, the Executive Council conveys the thanks and appreciation of the men and women of the labor movement for his devotion to the goals of social and economic justice for all.